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of Harald Hardrádi, followed by the tragic last scene
in which William the Norman put an end to the power
of the old Viking colony.
Southern England had been free from war and
piracy for eighty years. Æthelred the "Ill-advised"
had recently been crowned, a boy of ten or eleven ;
Dunstan had retired from the government, but the
old times of viking raids appeared to be past, and the
horizon was as unclouded as ever it is on the day
before a storm. In 980 a small party of Danes
attacked Southampton, and then Thanet; Cheshire
also was raided. In 981 the same Danes ravaged
Devon and Cornwall. In 982 they harried Portland.
The leader in these new attacks must have been
Svein Tjúguskeggi ("with the forked beard"), son of
Harald Blátönn, king of Denmark. He had been
forcibly baptised when Otto the Great invaded
Denmark, but in earlier years made no pretence of
Christianity nor of filial devotion, and went viking
with his friend Pálnatóki (of Wales, and later of
Jómsborg) until the death of Harald in 986.
In 985 the Mercian ealdorman Ælfric, being
banished, fled to Denmark. To Normandy English
refugees had already betaken themselves, and in 991
Duke Richard I. and Æthelred made a treaty by
which they agreed not to harbour fugitives across
the Channel ; but this proved of no more effect than
to show that the respective governments had some
idea of common action in the matter of outlaws
turned vikings. That an English nobleman should
take refuge in Denmark shows new relations between
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