Chapter CV.
Earl Rognvald sends messengers to King Olaf.
The winter after King Olaf had baptized Halogaland, he and Queen Thyri were in Nidaros; and the summer before Queen Thyri had brought King Olaf a boy-child, which was both stout and promising, and was called Harald, after its mother's father. The king and queen loved the infant exceedingly, and rejoiced in the hope that it would grow up and inherit after its father; but it lived barely a year after its birth, which both took much to heart. In that winter were many Icelanders and other clever men in King Olaf's house, as before related. His sister Ingeborg, Tryggve's daughter, was also at the court at that time. She was beautiful in appearance, modest and frank with the people, had a steady manly judgment, and was beloved of all. She was very fond of the Icelanders who were there, but most of Kiartan Olafsson, for he had been longer than the others in the king's house; and he found it always amusing to converse with her, for she had both understanding and cleverness in talk. The king was always gay and full of mirth in his intercourse with the people; and often asked about the manners of the great men and chiefs in the neighbouring countries, when strangers from Denmark or Sweden came to see him. The summer before Halfred Vandrsedaskald had come from Gotland, where he had been with Earl Rognvald, Ulf's son, who had lately come to the government of Wester Gotland. Ulf, Rognvald's father, was a brother of Sigrid the Haughty; so that King Olaf the Swede and Earl Rognvald were brother and sister's children. Halfred told Olaf many things about the earl: he said he was an able chief, excellently fitted for governing, generous with money, brave, and
work, and of the internal evidences of its general truth_, which will not have escaped the reader's notice. The eight chapters are given in the Appendix.
