Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/198

 CHAPTER XIY. SVERRIR AND DESCENDANTS, TO HAKON THE OLD. The end of it was, or rather the first abatement, and heginning of the end, That, when all this had gone on ever worsening for some forty years or so, one Sverrir (a.d. 1177), at the head of an armed mob of poor people called Birkeheins, came upon the scene. A strange enough figure in History, this Sverrir and his Birkeheins ! At first a mere mockery and dismal laughing-stock to the enlightened Norway public. Nevertheless by unheard of fighting, hungering, exer- tion and endurance, Sverrir, after ten years of such a death- wrestle against men and things, got himself accepted as King ; and by wonderful expenditure of ingenuity, common cunning, unctuous Parliamentary Eloquence or almost Popular Preaching, and (it must be owned) general human faculty and valour (or value) in the overclouded and distorted state, did