Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/183

 MAGNUS THE GOOD AND OTHERS. 173 looks rather like a Saga, but may bo historical after all. Snorro's history of the battle is intelUgible only after you have premised to it, what he never hints at, that the scene was on the east side of the bridge and of the Derwent ; the great struggle for the bridge, one at last finds, was after the fall of Harald; and to the English Chroniclers, said struggle, which was abun- dantly severe, is all they know of the battle. Enraged at that breaking loose of his steel ring of infantry, Norse Harald blazed up into true Norse fury, all the old Yseringer and Berserkir rage awakening in him; sprang forth into the front of the fight, and mauled and cut and smashed down, on both hands of him, everything he met, irresistible by any horse or man, till an arrow cut him through the windpipe, and laid him low forever. That was the end of King Harald and of his workings in this world. The cir- cumstance that he was a Waring or Baring, and had smitten to pieces so many Oriental cohorts or crowds, and had made love- verses (kind of iron madrigals) to his Russian Princess, and caught the fancy of ques- tionable Greek queens, and had amassed such heaps of money, while poor nephew ^Magnus had only one