114 of the _Orkneyinga Saga_. "He sat through the
winter at home in Gairsay, and there he kept always about him eighty
men at his beck. He had so great a drinking-hall that there was not
another as great in all the Orkneys. Sweyn had in the spring hard
work, and made them lay down very much seed, and looked much after it
himself. But when that toil was ended, he fared away every spring on a
Viking-voyage, and harried about among the southern isles and Ireland,
and came home after midsummer. That he called spring-viking. Then he
was at home until the cornfields were reaped down, and the grain seen
to and stored. Then he fared away on a viking-voyage, and then he did
not come home till the winter was one month spent, and that he called
his autumn-viking." At last, in a cruise to Dublin, which he captured,
Sweyn was killed by stratagem on landing to receive payment of its
ransom from the town, and the boy Hakon probably fell there with him
in 1171. "And," the Saga adds, "it is the common saying of Sweyn that
he was the most masterful man in the western lands, both of yore and
now-a-days, among those men who had no higher rank than himself."
Sweyn was, in fact the greatest man of his time.
Pages:
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122