d from generation to generation in Iceland, and in the early
part of the fourteenth century was committed to writing.

It will be seen that the saga to which I have referred was not written
primarily with a view to establish Leif's claim to be the discoverer of
Wineland. In the first place the story, in the shape in which we have
it, is more than a century and a half older than the Columbian
discovery, and there could, accordingly, be no great glory in having
found a country which had since been lost. Secondly, the saga is (like
most Icelandic sagas) a family chronicle, purporting to relate all
matters of interest pertaining to the race of Eric the Red. The Wineland
voyages are treated as remarkable incidents in this chronicle, but they
hardly occupy any more space than properly belongs to them in a family
history which is concerned with a great many other things besides. The
importance of this as corroborating the authenticity of the narrative,
can scarcely be over-estimated.

[Signature: Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen.]

HAROLD, KING OF ENGLAND

(1022-1066)

[Illustration: Harold, King of England.]

Harold II., the last of the native English kings, was the second son of
Earl Godwin by his Danish wife Gytha, the sister of Earl Ulf, and was
born about 1022. At an early age he was made Earl of the East Angles and
he shared his father's outlawry in 1051, finding a refuge in Ireland.
Next year, together with his brother Leofwin, he crossed the Channel
with nine ships, defeated the men of Somerset and Devon at Porlock, and
ravaged the country, next joined his father at Portland, and shared the
triumph of his return. Harold was at once restored to his earldom, and
next year (1053) succeeded to his father's earldom of the West Saxons.
Henceforward he was the right hand of King Edward, and still more after
the deaths of the old Earls Leofric and Siward, he directed the whole
affairs of the kingdom, with an unusual union of gentleness and vigor.
His brother Tostig succeeded Siward as Earl of the Northumbrians in
1055, and two years later two other brothers were raised to earldoms:
Gurth to that of the East Anglians, Leofwin to one formed out of Essex,
Kent, and the other shires round about London. Meantime Harold drove
back the Welsh marauders of King Griffith out of Herefordshire, and
added that post of danger to his earldom. The death in 1057 of the
AEtheling Edward, the son of Edmund Ironside, who had been brought back