Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/35

 HAKON THE GOOD. Zo gent and urgent on them, in season and out of season ; and as for King Blue-tooth, he was at all times ready to help, with his good- will at least. That of the alarm-fires on Hakon's part was found troublesome by his people ; sometimes it was even hurtful and provoking (lighting your alarm-fires and rousing the whole coast and population, when it was nothing but some paltry viking with a couple of ships) ; in short, the alarm-signal system fell into disuse, and good King Hakon himself, in the first place, paid the penalty. It is counted, by the latest commentators, to have been about a.d. 961, sixteenth or seventeenth year of Hakon' s pious, valiant, and worthy reign. Being at a feast one day, with many guests, on the Island of Stord, sudden announcement came to him that ships from the south were approach- ing in quantity, and evidently ships of war. This was the biggest of all the "Blue-tooth forster-son invasions ; and it was fatal to Hakon the Good that night. Eyvind the Skaldaspillir (annihilator of all other Skalds), in his famed Hakon s Song, gives account, and, still more pertinently, the always practical Snorro. Danes in great multitude, six to