[Early Kings of Norway by Thomas Carlyle]@TWC D-Link book
Early Kings of Norway

CHAPTER V
3/7

Palnatoke, Bue, and the other quasi-heroic heads of this establishment are still remembered in the northern parts.

_Palnatoke_ is the title of a tragedy by Oehlenschlager, which had its run of immortality in Copenhagen some sixty or seventy years ago.
I judge the institution to have been in its floweriest state, probably now in Hakon Jarl's time.

Hakon Jarl and these pirates, robbing Hakon's subjects and merchants that frequented him, were naturally in quarrel; and frequent fightings had fallen out, not generally to the profit of the Jomsburgers, who at last determined on revenge, and the rooting out of this obstructive Hakon Jarl.

They assembled in force at the Cape of Stad,--in the Firda Fylke; and the fight was dreadful in the extreme, noise of it filling all the north for long afterwards.

Hakon, fighting like a lion, could scarcely hold his own,--Death or Victory, the word on both sides; when suddenly, the heavens grew black, and there broke out a terrific storm of thunder and hail, appalling to the human mind,--universe swallowed wholly in black night; only the momentary forked-blazes, the thunder-pealing as of Ragnarok, and the battering hail-torrents, hailstones about the size of an egg.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books