HARALD GREY-FELL AND BROTHERS. 33 the seasons withal, two or three of them in suc- cession, were bad for grass, much more for grain; no herring came either ; very cleanness of teeth was like to come in Eyvind Skaldaspillir's opinion. This scarcity became at last their share of the great Famine of a.d. 975, which desolated Western Europe (see the poem in the Saxon Chronicle). And all this by Eyvind Skaldaspillir, and the heathen Norso in general, was ascribed to anger of the heathen gods,^ Discontent in Norway, and especially in Eyvind Skaldaspillir, seems to have been very great. Whereupon exile Hakon, Jarl Sigurd's son, bestirs himself in Denmark, backed by old King Blue-tooth, and begins invading and encroaching in a miscel- laneous way ; especially intriguing and contriving plots all round him. An unfathomably cunning kind of fellow, as well as an audacious and strong-handed ! Intriguing in Trondhjem, where he gets the under- king, Greyfell's brother, fallen upon and murdered; intriguing with Gold Harald, a distinguished cousin or nephew of King Blue-tooth's, who had done fine viking work, and gained such wealth that he got the epithet of 'Gold,' and who now was infinitely
