"I've heard that, on the Eastland coast,
Great victories were won and lost.
The king, whose hand is ever graced
With gift to scald, his banner placed
On, and still on; while, midst the play
Of swords, sung sharp his good sword's sway.
As strong in arm as free of gold,
He thinn'd the ranks of warriors bold"
Then Eric's sons turned northwards with their troops to Yiken; hut King Tryggve kept troops on foot with which he met them, and they had many a battle, in which the victory was sometimes on one side, and sometimes on the other. Sometimes Eric's sons plundered in Yiken, and sometimes Tryggve in Sealand and Halland.
Chapter XI.
King Hakon's disposition and government.
As long as Hakon was king in Norway, there was good peace between the bonders and merchants; so that none did harm either to the life or goods of the other. Good seasons also there were, both by sea and land. King Hakon was of a remarkably cheerful disposition, clever in words, and very condescending. He was a man of great understanding also, and bestowed attention on lawgiving. He gave out the Gula Thing's laws on the advice of Thorlief the Wise; also the Froste Thing's laws on the advice of Earl Sigurd, and of other Drontheim men of wisdom. Eidsvold Thing laws were first established in the country by Halfdan the Black, the father of Harald Haarfager.[1]
Chapter XII.
The birth of Earl Hakon the Great.
King Hakon kept Yule at Drontheim, and Earl Sigurd had made a feast for him at Lade. The night of the first day of Yule the earl's wife, Bergliot, was brought to bed of a boy-child, which afterwards King Hakon poured water over, and gave him his own name. The boy grew up, and became in his day a mighty
- ↑ Owing to the different means of subsistence in so vast an extent of country, each of the five great Law Things appears to have had laws suitable for its own locality; and the District Things, with their lagman, to have administered these laws.
