Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/50

 40 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. above all, in opulent anarchic England, wMcli, for forty years from about this time, was the pirates' Goshen ; and yielded, regularly every summer, slaves, danegelt, and miscellaneous plunder, like no other country Jomsburg or the viking-world had ever known. Palnatoke, Bue, and the other quasi-heroic heads of this establishment are still remembered in the northern parts. Palnatoke is the title of a tragedy by Oehlenschlager, which had its run of immortality in Copenhagen some sixty or seventy years ago. I judge the institution to have been in its floweriest state, probably now in Hakon JarFs time. Hakon Jarl and these pirates, robbing Hakon's subjects and merchants that frequented him, were naturally in quarrel ; and frequent fightings had fallen out, not generally to the profit of the Jomsburgers, who at last determined on revenge, and the rooting out of this obstructive Hakon Jarl. They assembled in force at the Cape of Stad, — in the Firda Fylke ; and the fight was dreadful in the extreme, noise of it filling all the north for long afterwards. Hakon, fighting like a lion, could scarcely hold his own, — Death or Victory, the word on both sides ; when suddenly, the heavens