Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/78

 68 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. of many Norse individuals, against this glorious and victorious, but peremptory and terrible king of tbeirs. Tryggveson, I fancy, did not much regard all that ; a man of joy ful, cheery temper, habitually contemptuous of danger. Another trivial misfortune that befell in these conversion operations, and became important to him, he did not even know of, and would have much de- spised if he had. It was this : Sigrid, queen dowager of Sweden, thought to be amongst the most shining women of the world, was also known for one of the most imperious, revengeful, and relentless, and had got for herself the name of Sigrid the Proud. In her high widowhood she had naturally many wooers ; but treated them in a manner unexampled. Two of her suitors, a simultaneous Two, were. King Harald Oraenske (a cousin of King Tryggveson's, and kind of king in some district, by sufferance of the late Hakon's), — this luckless Graenske and the then Rus- sian Sovereign as well, name not worth mentioning, were zealous suitors of Queen Dowager Sigrid, and were perversely slow to accept the negative, which in her heart was inexorable for both, though the expression of it could not be quite so emphatic. By ill-luck for