Book Description

Excerpt from The Early Kings of Norway The beginning of his great adventure was of a romantic character - youthful love for the beautiful Gyda, a then glori ous and famous young lady of those regions, whom the young Harald aspired to marry. Gyda answered his embassy and prayer in a distant, lofty manner: Her it would not be seem to wed any J arl or poor creature of that kind let him do as Gorm Of Denmark, Eric of Sweden, Egbert of Eng land, and others had done, - subdue into peace and regula tion the confused, contentious bits of jarls around him, and become a king; then, perhaps, she might think of his pro posal till then, not.' Harald was struck with this proud answer, which rendered Gyda tenfold more desirable to him. He vowed to let his hair grow, never to cut or even to comb it till this feat were done, and the peerless Gyda his own. He proceeded accordingly to conquer, in fierce battle, a Jarl or two every year, and at the end of twelve years had his nu kempt (and almost unimaginable) head of hair clipt Off - Jarl rognwald (reginald) Of Mere, the most valued and valuable of all his subject-jarls, being promoted to this sublime bar ber function after which King Harald, with head thoroughly cleaned, and hair grown, or growing again to the luxuriant beauty that had no equal in his day, brought home his Gyda, and made her the brightest queen in all the North. He had after her, in succession, or perhaps even simultaneously in some cases, at least six other wives and by Gyda herself one daughter and four sons. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.