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13: Magnus the Blind, Harald Gylle, and Mutual Extinction of the Haarfagrs
<< 12: Olaf the Tranquil, Magnus Barefoot, and Sigurd the Crusader || 14: Sverrir and Descendants, to Hakon the Old >>
On Sigurd the Crusader's death, Magnus naturally came to the throne;
Gylle keeping silence and a cheerful face for the time. But it was
not long till claim arose on Gylle's part, till war and fight arose
between Magnus and him, till the skilful, popular, ever-active and
shifty Gylle had entirely beaten Magnus; put out his eyes, mutilated
the poor body of him in a horrid and unnamable manner, and shut him up
in a convent as out of the game henceforth. There in his dark misery
Magnus lived now as a monk; called "Magnus the Blind" by those Norse
populations; King Harald Gylle reigning victoriously in his stead.
But this also was only for a time. There arose avenging kinsfolk of
Magnus, who had no Irish accent in their Norse, and were themselves
eager enough to bear rule in their native country. By one of
these,—a terribly stronghanded, fighting, violent, and regardless
fellow, who also was a Bastard of Magnus Barefoot's, and had been made
a Priest, but liked it unbearably ill, and had broken loose from it
into the wildest courses at home and abroad; so that his current name
got to be "Slembi-diakn," Slim or Ill Deacon, under which he is much
noised of in Snorro and the Sagas: by this Slim-Deacon, Gylle was put
an end to (murdered by night, drunk in his sleep); and poor blind
Magnus was brought out, and again set to act as King, or King's Cloak,
in hopes Gylle's posterity would never rise to victory more. But
Gylle's posterity did, to victory and also to defeat, and were the
death of Magnus and of Slim-Deacon too, in a frightful way; and all
got their own death by and by in a ditto. In brief, these two
kindreds (reckoned to be authentic enough Haarfagr people, both kinds
of them) proved now to have become a veritable crop of dragon's teeth;
who mutually fought, plotted, struggled, as if it had been their
life's business; never ended fighting and seldom long intermitted it,
till they had exterminated one another, and did at last all rest in
death. One of these later Gylle temporary Kings I remember by the
name of Harald Herdebred, Harald of the Broad Shoulders. The very
last of them I think was Harald Mund (Harald of the Wry-Mouth), who
gave rise to two Impostors, pretending to be Sons of his, a good while
after the poor Wry-Mouth itself and all its troublesome belongings
were quietly underground. What Norway suffered during that sad
century may be imagined.
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