CHAPTER I.
HARALD HAARFAGR.
Till about the Year of Grace 860 there were no kings in Norway,
nothing but numerous jarls,--essentially kinglets, each presiding over a
kind of republican or parliamentary little territory; generally striving each
to be on some terms of human neighborhood with those about him, but,--
in spite of "_Fylke Things_" (Folk Things, little parish parliaments), and
small combinations of these, which had gradually formed themselves,--
often reduced to the unhappy state of quarrel with them. Harald Haarfagr
was the first to put an end to this state of things, and become memorable
and profitable to his country by uniting it under one head and making a
kingdom of it; which it has continued to be ever since. His father, Halfdan
the Black, had already begun this rough but salutary process,--inspired by
the cupidities and instincts, by the faculties and opportunities, which the
good genius of this world, beneficent often enough under savage forms,
and diligent at all times to diminish anarchy as the world\'s worst savagery,
usually appoints in such cases,--conquest, hard fighting, followed by wise
guidance of the conquered;--but it was Harald the Fairhaired, his son, who
conspicuously carried it on and completed it. Harald\'s birth-year, deathyear,
and chronology in general, are known only by inference and
computation; but, by the latest reckoning, he died about the year 933 of
our era, a man of eighty-three.