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Events happened, as will be seen, to prevent this taking place and to combine all Scandinavia under one great queen. This is how it came about. King Magnus made a visit to Denmark, where it was arranged to marry Prince Haakon to Margaret, daughter and heir of the Danish king, Valdemar.
This made him open to believe in visions, and when in a dream he saw the former King Olaf, who bade him to go back to Norway and conquer it or die, he did not hesitate. Word had been brought him that Earl Haakon was dead and Norway with no immediate ruler, and against the advice of Jaroslov he set out for his late kingdom, leaving his son Magnus at the Russian court.
Haakon ruled Norway as a vassal of Harald Bluetooth, king of Denmark, to whom he agreed to pay tribute. He also consented to be baptized as a Christian and to introduce the Christian faith into Norway. But a heathen at heart and a Norseman in spirit, he did not intend to keep this promise.
Thus as the death of King Birger had left the crowns of Sweden and Norway to a boy of three, the deaths here named left these crowns and that of Denmark also to another child, the son of Haakon and Margaret. This little fellow, Olaf by name, too young to appreciate how great he had become, did not live to enjoy his greatness.
After the death of Haakon the Good, the sons of Gunhild became the masters of Norway, where they ruled like tyrants, murdering Sigurd, whom they most feared. This made the young Earl Haakon their bitter foe. A young man then, of twenty-five, handsome, able in mind and body, kindly in disposition, and a daring warrior, he was just the man to contend with the tyrant murderers.
The rise of the tide was about five feet, and at spring tide the water must have reached almost to the edge of the tussock-grass. The completion of this job removed our immediate anxieties, and we were free to examine our surroundings and plan the next move. The day was bright and clear. King Haakon Bay is an eight-mile sound penetrating the coast of South Georgia in an easterly direction.
Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark was hostile both to Burislav and Olaf and the king of Sweden was leagued with the Danish king. To detain Olaf while they gathered their fleets, these kings employed Sigvalde, the cowardly chief of the Jomsvikings, who had fled from the battle with Earl Haakon, to visit and lure him into blind confidence. The treacherous viking succeeded.
During the Folkung Dynasty, in the fourteenth century, the royal houses of Sweden and Norway became united through the marriage of Duke Eric, of Sweden, and Ingeborg, only child of King Haakon, of Norway; and Duke Valdemar to the king's niece of the same name.
This marriage took place in due time, and not very long afterwards both King Magnus and Prince Haakon died and Prince Erik was poisoned by his mother, who was a wicked woman and was angry because he opposed her in one of her base schemes.
The little prince was named Haakon, after his father, but he was born in the midst of the Baglers, his father's foes, and the priest who baptized him bade Inga to keep his birth a strict secret, letting none outside her own family know that a new prince had come to the land.
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