Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/80

 WORKiMEN AND HEROES ROLLO THE GANGER* BY HjALMAR HjORTH BOYESEN w .ff (860-932) HEN King Harold the Fair- haired, in 872 A.D., had united all the scattered earldoms of Nor- way under his own sway, he issued a stringent order forbidding pillag- ing within his kingdom under penalty of outlawry. The custom of sailing out into the world as a viking and plundering foreign lands, was held to be a most honorable one in those days ; and every chieftain who wished to give his sons the advantages of " a liberal education " and foreign travel, strained his resources in order to equip them for such an expedition. But the Norwegians of the ninth century had as yet no national feeling ; and they regarded King Harold's prohibition against plundering their own shores as absurd and arbitrary. Rollo or Rolf, the son of the king's best friend, Ragnvald, Earl of More, undertook to disregard the order. Coming home from a cruise in the Baltic and being short of provisions, he landed in the south of Norway and made havoc among the coast dwellers. The king, determined to make an end of the nefarious practice, kept his word and outlawed him. Rollo, being unequal to a struggle with the king, betook himself to the Heb- rides, where a number of other Norse chieftains had sought a refuge from similar persecutions. His great strength and sagacity, no less than his distinguished birth, secured him a favorable reception and much influence. He was so tall that no Norwegian horse could carry him, for which reason he was compelled always to walk, and was surnamed Rollo the Ganger, or Walker. Though not formally recognized as chieftain, he seems gradually, by dint of his eminence, to have assumed command over the Norse exiles ; and it was probably at his advice that they resolved to abandon the bleak and barren Hebrides, and seek a more congenial home in a sunnier clime. At all events a large expedition was fitted out and set sail for the south, early in the tenth century. It landed first in Hol- land, but finding that all-too-accessible country already devastated by other vikings, they proceeded to the coast of France and entered the mouth of the river Seine. Charles the Simple, a feeble, foolish, and good-natured man, was then king of France, but utterly unequal to the task of defending his territory against foreign invaders or domestic pretenders. The empire of Charlemagne had been broken up and divided among his grandsons ; and the fraction which was to be France, was then confined between the Loire and the Meuse.
 * Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.