Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/376

 Earl Hakon, towards harvest, sailed into the Bothnian Gulph to Helsingialand, drew his ships np there on the beach, and took the land-ways through Helsingialand and Jemteland, and so eastwards round the dividing ridge (the Kiol, or keel of the country), and down into the Drontheim district. Many people streamed towards him, and he fitted out ships. When the sons of Gunhild heard of this, they got on board their ships, and sailed out of the Fiord; and Earl Hakon came to his seat at Lade, and remained there all winter. The sons of Gunhild, on the other hand, occupied Möre; and they and the earl attacked each other in turns, killing each other's people. Earl Hakon kept his dominions of Drontheim, and was there generally in the winter; but in summer he sometimes went to Helsingialand, where he went on board of his ships and sailed with them down into the Baltic, and plundered there; and sometimes he remained in Drontheim, and kept an army on foot, so that Gunhild's sons could get no hold northwards of Stad.

One summer Harald Grey skin with his troops went north to Biarmeland, where he forayed, and fought a great battle with the inhabitants on the banks of the Dwina. King Harald gained the victory, killed many people, plundered and wasted and burned far and wide in the land, and made enormous booty. Glum Geirason tells of it thus: —