Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/199

 SVERRIR AND DESCENDANTS, TO HAKON. 189 victoriously continue such. And founded a New Dynasty in Norway, which ended only with Norway's separate existence, after near three hundred years. This Sverrir called himself a Son of Harald Wry- Mouth ; but was in reality the son of ^a poor Comb- maker in some little town of Norway ; nothing heard of Sonship to Wry-Mouth till after good success otherwise. His Birkebeins (that is to say, Birchlegs ; the poor rebellious wretches having taken to the woods; and been obliged, besides their intolerable scarcity of food, to thatch their bodies from the cold with whatever covering could be got, and their legs especially with birch bark ; sad species of fleecy hosiery ; whence their nickname), — his Birkebeins I guess always to have been a kind of Norse Jacquerie : desperate rising of thralls and indigent people, driven mad by their unendurable sufferings and famishings, — theirs the deepest stratum of misery, and the densest and heaviest, in this the general misery of Norway, which had lasted towards the third genera- tion and looked as if it would last forever : — where- upon they had risen proclaiming, in this furious dumb manner, tfwintelligible except to Heaven, that the