18 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY.
- which flew over IN'orway, like fire through dried
' grass,' says an old chronicler. So that Eric, with his Queen Gunhild, and seven small children, had to run ; no other shift for Eric. They went to the Orkneys first of all, then to England, and he ' got Northum- berland as earldom,' I vaguely hear, from Athelstan. But Eric soon died, and his queen, with her children, went back to the Orkneys in search of refuge or help ; to little purpose there or elsewhere. From Orkney she went to Denmark, where Harald Blue-tooth took her poor eldest boy as foster-child ; but I fear did not very faithfully keep that promise. The Danes had been robbing extensively during the late tumults in !Norway ; this the Christian Hakon, now established there, paid in kind, and the two countries were at war ; so that Gunhild's little boy was a welcome card in the hand of Blue-tooth. Hakon proved a brilliant and successful king ; re- gulated many things, public law among others {Gule- Thing Law, Froste- Thing Law : these are little codes of his accepted by their respective Things, and had a salutary effect in their time) ; with prompt dexterity he drove back the Blue-tooth foster-son invasions
