bathing on the coast of England, and that the immediate cause of his death was a wound which he had received from an arrow aimed at him from one of his own ships while he was in the water, she determined to inform Gorm in a figure of speech of the fate of their son. Accordingly she put herself and all her attendants in deep mourning and caused the chief hall of her house to be hung with the ashy-gray coloured hangings used at the grave feasts of Northmen of noble birth. Then, seating herself with her women at the entrance door, she awaited Gorm's approach. The King noticing these signs of mourning and struck by the silence and dejection of the Queen at once guessed the truth, and pausing at the threshold, exclaimed, "My son, Knud, is dead!" "Thou hast said it, and not I, King Gorm," answered Thyra, and thus the news of Knud's death was conveyed to his father without being followed by the vengeance which had been threatened to those who informed him of it.

Harald, 936-985.-Gorm died soon afterwards, of grief it was said, and was succeeded by his son Harald, Blaatand, or Blue Tooth, who was believed by the people to have been the murderer of his brother. He was a man of a cruel and crafty nature, and when his nephew Guld, or Gold-Harald, demanded part of the kingdom in right of his father Knud, Harald put him off by promising him help to conquer Norway, and having enticed the Norwegian king, Harald Graafell, to his court, on pretence of wishing to send cattle and corn into Norway, where there was a famine at the time; he induced GuldHarald to slay Harald Graafell. Then, instead of fulfilling his promises to his nephew, he sent for the Norwegian traitor, Hakon Jarl, with whom he had formed a secret compact, and helped him to obtain Norway on condition that he should rule as his vassal. The Jarl at first paid the required taxes to Denmark and acknowledged Harald as head king in Norway, but when

Harald caused two grave mounds, one of 100 feet, and the other of 50 feet in height, to be erected at Jellinge, in the district of Ribe in Jutland, in honour of his father Gorm and his mother Thyra. This is recorded in runic letters upon a large stone that once stood on the lower mound, which is supposed to have enclosed the remains of the queen. These high mounds, which still exist, have been found to contain rooms, in which were stored away small silver and gilt cups and other things that might have been used by the king and queen in their every-day life.

the Danish King, with his habitual treachery refused to give him, in accordance with his former promises, any of the treasures of Guld-Harald, who had been murdered by his uncle's orders, Hakon quarrelled with him and made himself independent of him.

Harald Blaatand professed to be a Christian during the latter years of his life, and allowed himself, together with his queen and his son Svend, to be publicly baptized by the German monk Poppa. This man according to the legend had performed miracles, and had led many Danes to renounce paganism by taking up in their presence red-hot bars of iron, and letting a waxen covering be consumed upon his body while he was reciting psalms. When the people saw these wonderful things they admitted that his God was more powerful than theirs, and allowed themselves to be signed with the cross. Bishoprics were soon afterwards established at Aaarhus, Ribe and Slesvig; but when the Emperor Otho I. assumed the right of granting charters to the prelates of those sees, freeing them from the payment of all taxes and services to the Danish crown, King Harald tried by force of arms to seize upon their lands. Then the Emperor came in 975 with a large army into Holstein, and by the treachery of Hakon Jarl, who had been called upon to help the king, the Dannevirke were burnt and the German troops enabled to overrun all Slesvig and Jutland, on which Harald was forced to submit, and peace was restored on condition of his leaving the bishops unmolested.

The only one of Harald's many sons who outlived him was called Svend. This youth, although he had been baptized with his parents, hated the Christians and tried to follow in his grandfather King Gorm's steps, and do as much harm to them and their religion as he could. Like many other princes in those times, he had been sent away from home when a boy to learn the use of arms from some brave warrior. It happened that the chief in whose house he was trained was a very great pagan, named Palnatoke, and from him he learnt to despise the faith which his old father King Harald had accepted. When the King found that Palnatoke was teaching Svend to hate all Christians, he wished to withdraw him from his care; but the youth would not leave his friend, and then Harald in his artful

E

way tried to ruin and destroy Palnatoke; and one of the means which he took to do this was the same as the device by which it is said the Austrian governor Gessler, more than four hundred years later, strove to injure the brave Swiss peasant William Tell.

The Danish writer of history, Saxo Grammaticus, who lived in the time of our kings Richard I. and John, tells us that one day, when Palnatoke was boasting before the King of his skill in archery, Harald told him that, for all his boasting, he knew there was one shot which he would not venture to try. The latter replied, that there was no shot which he would not venture to try, and on that the King ordered him to shoot an apple off the head of his eldest son, Aage. Palnatoke obeyed. The arrow entered the apple, and the boy escaped unhurt, but his father, enraged at this and other proofs of Harald's cruel hatred of him, became his sworn foe, and soon after withdrew to the little island of Wollin, in Pomerania. There he gathered round him a band of fierce pagan vikingar, and founded the brotherhood of Jomsborg, which for many years proved a frightful scourge to all the Christian lands on, and near the Baltic Sea. Harald, after a long reign, during which he more than once carried ships and men to Normandy to aid the young Duke Richard against the French king, died in 985 from the effects of a wound, which he received in a battle fought by him against his pagan son, Svend, and Palnatoke. It is said Svend himself slew his father on the battle-field, while Palnatoke stood by, but the old King's death, instead of bringing these men the good they had hoped from it, roused strife between them, and to the end of his days Svend, called Tveskæg or "Cleft beard," had no worse foes than Palnatoke and the men of Jomsborg.1

Svend Tveskæg, 985-1014.-This Svend Tveskæg, was the "Sweyn" who invaded England in the time of Ethelred the Unready, and who, after having driven Ethelred out of the country and made himself master of great part of England,

Under Palnatoke's successor, Sigvald, the pagan republic of Jomsborg began to decay, and after a great battle fought with the Norwegians under Hakon Jarl in 994, this much-dreaded confraternity was subdued and 'broken up.

died suddenly at Gainsborough, in the year 1014, leaving his son Knud, then a boy of fourteen, but afterwards known to Englishmen as Canute the Great, to complete the conquest of the English throne and impose upon the nation a short-lived line of Danish rulers.

PART II.

KNUD AND HIS SONS.

Knud the Great, 1018-35.-The reign of Knud the Great belongs more to the history of England than to that of Denmark; and as all that refers to these times is fully described in the "Old English History," we need not here attempt to follow the progress of the Danes in England under Knud and his sons. When the Danish king Svend, or Sweyn, died at Gainsborough in the year 1014, he left another son, Harald, who was younger than Knud, and was chosen to be king by the Danes as soon as they heard of Svend's death. Knud wanted his brother to give him some share in the government of the kingdom of Denmark; but Harald refused, telling him if he wished to be a king he must go back and gain England for himself, in which case, he should have a few ships and men to help him; and as we all know he returned to England and became a much greater king than his brother.

Harald died in 1018, and then the Danes chose Knud for their king, which proved of great importance to Denmark; for, as he was a Christian, he caused the Christian religion to be made the faith of the nation, and the worship of Odin to be put down in all the Danish provinces. Knud was more partial to England than to any of his other dominions, and only stayed in Denmark long enough to settle the affairs of the Church by putting Englishmen as bishops over the Danish clergy, and to improve the state of the country by getting workmen in every trade from England to teach the Danes, and make them more like the people of Christian civilized countries. It thus happened that, although the English had been beaten by the

Danes, Denmark was made by its own king, Knud, to feel that England was superior to it in all great and useful arts.

Knud was a very devout Churchman, but he often let his passion get the better of him, and at such times he spared his friends as little as his foes, and would listen to no counsel, even from the clergy, to whom he in general paid great respect. As soon, however, as his anger had died out, he tried to make all the amends he could to the kindred of his victims, and showed himself ready to submit to any penance laid upon him by the Church. Thus, when he had killed one of his house-churls, or servants, for some slight offence, he made public confession of his crime, and afterwards paid the same blood-fine that would have been claimed from a man of lower rank. There was one act that caused Knud more remorse and grief than anything else he had ever done, and that was the murder of his old friend and brother-in-law Ulf Jarl, towards whom he had long borne illwill on account of his having proclaimed his son, the young prince Harthaknud, king of Denmark, while Knud himself was in England, and knew nothing of what was going on in his Danish states. At that time Ulf was ruling over Denmark for King Knud, and he had made himself so much beloved by the Danish people that they were ready to do anything he wished. This was well known to Queen Emma, and when she found that she could not persuade her husband, King Knud, to set their little son Harthaknud on the throne of Denmark, she made up her mind to get the crown for him without Knud's knowledge.' She therefore sent messengers with letters to Ulf, telling him that the King desired to see the young prince on the throne, but was anxious not to do anything the people might not like. Ulf, believing her story, had young Harthaknud crowned king, but when he learned the deceit that Queen Emma had been guilty of, he much feared the effect of Knud's anger, although the latter for a time treated him with the same

1 Queen Emma was the widow of Ethelred the Unready, the last AngloSaxon king of England, and daughter of Robert, the Fearless, Duke of Normandy. King Knud was only twenty-two years of age when he married her in 1017, but she must have been very much older, and her marriage with the man who had dethroned her former husband and driven her sons from their country and heritage does not give us a very high idea of her

character.