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It is a very old superstition. It occurs in Snorro's 'Heimskringla, where King Vauland complains of a Mare having ridden him in his sleep. There are several stories based on the superstition.
He is called Hakon the Old, though one finds his age was but fifty-nine, probably a longish life for a Norway King. Snorro's narrative ceases when Snorro himself was born; that is to say, at the threshold of King Sverrir; of whose exploits and doubtful birth it is guessed by some that Snorro willingly forbore to speak in the hearing of such a Hakon.
He needed more than seven feet of grave, say some; Laing, interpreting Snorro's measurements, makes Harald eight feet in stature, I do hope, with some error in excess! The new King Olaf, his brother Magnus having soon died, bore rule in Norway for some five-and-twenty years.
As for Snorro's own life, it was eventful and tragic enough. Unscrupulous, turbulent, greedy of money, he married two heiresses the one, however, becoming the COLLEAGUE, not the successor of the other. This arrangement naturally led to embarrassment. His wealth created envy, his excessive haughtiness disgusted his sturdy fellow-countrymen.
That is Snorro's account. On a previous occasion, Olaf had been deep in a hopeful combination with Ethelred's two younger sons, Alfred and Edward, afterwards King Edward the Confessor: That they two should sally out from Normandy in strong force, unite with Olaf in ditto, and, landing on the Thames, do something effectual for themselves.
Hakon gathered his wrecks together, and sorrowfully made for Orkney. But poor Hakon's heart was now broken. He went to Orkney; died there in the winter; never beholding Norway more. Hakon was a great Politician in his time; and succeeded in many things before he lost Largs. Snorro's death by murder had happened about twenty years before Hakon's by broken heart.
Snorro's history of the battle is intelligible only after you have premised to it, what he never hints at, that the scene was on the east side of the bridge and of the Derwent; the great struggle for the bridge, one at last finds, was after the fall of Harald; and to the English Chroniclers, said struggle, which was abundantly severe, is all they know of the battle.
Shall I give it, out of Snorro, and let the reader take it for as authentic as he can? It is at least the true image of it in authentic Snorro's head, little more than two centuries later. "Jarl Hakon was led up to the king's ship. He was the handsomest man that could be seen. He had long hair as fine as silk, bound about his head with a gold ornament.
It is true, Thomas of Ercildoune was a contemporary of Snorro's; but he is known to us more as a magician than as a man of letters; whereas histories, memoirs, romances, biographies, poetry, statistics, novels, calendars, specimens of almost every kind of composition, are to be found even among the meagre relics which have survived the literary decadence that supervened on the extinction of the republic.
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