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then disappeared from Irish annals until now. Ivar
the Crafty probably made light of the differences
between Black and White Gaill, when the chance
offered for pushing his fortunes ; and now, seeing the
conquest of England going forward, and affairs of his
cause in the North hanging in the balance by the
long siege of the Strathclyde capital, hastened to lend
his aid, bringing his army and English spoil.
The siege over, and after the winter on the Clyde,
he sailed for Dublin, and died there in peace two years
later. One MS. of the Annals makes the startling
statement "he slept in Christ." Is it possible, one
is tempted to ask, that the clearest-headed and the
thoughtfullest of all the Viking leaders found, before
his death, something unperceived before in the religion
he had persecuted ? It is not so entirely inconceivable,
for in Dublin the old king must have seen much of
Queen Aud, the wife of Olaf the White ; she was then
a woman of early middle age, for she died in 900,
advanced in years ; and she was known as one of the
Christian settlers in Iceland, and as one of the most
forceful characters in Old Northern history. But we
must not build on a word which, after all, may be a
clerical error.
When Ivar left the army in England it had all
the old enterprise and fire ; the scheme of conquest
was pursued, but no further decisive and permanent
successes were gained. What was afterwards the
Danelaw was now occupied ; nothing more was added
n spite of the strenuous warfare of the next seven
years : the master-mind was gone.
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