Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/18

 $ EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. by the poor King of France in the fruitful, shaggy desert which is since called Normandy, land of the Northmen ; and there, gradually felling the forests, banking the rivers, tilling the fields, became, during the next two centuries, Wilhelmus Conquestor, the man famous to England, and momentous at this day, not to England alone, but to all speakers of the English tongue, now spread from side to side of the world in a wonderful degree. Tancred of Hauteville and his Italian Normans, though important too, in Italy, are not worth naming in comparison. This is a feracious earth, and the grain of mustard-seed will grow to miraculous extent in some cases. Harald's chief helper, counsellor, and lieutenant was the above-mentioned Jarl Eognwald of More, who had the honour to cut Harald's dreadful head of hair. This Eognwald was father of Turf-Einar, who first invented peat in the Orkneys, finding the wood all gone there ; and is remembered to this day. Einar, being come to these islands by King Harald's permis- sion, to see what he could do in them, — ^islands inhabited by what miscellany of Picts, Scots, Norse squatters we do not know, — found the indispensable