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Updated: June 14, 2025
Broke his oath to said sovereign, declared himself, Svein Estrithson, to be real King of Denmark; and, after much preliminary trouble, and many beatings and disastrous flights to and fro, became in effect such, to the wonder of mankind; for he had not had one victory to cheer him on, or any good luck or merit that one sees, except that of surviving longer than some others.
Day after day, for six days, flatly refused; and after nightfall of the sixth, glided out with her foster-brother into the woods, into by-paths and inconceivable wanderings; and, in effect, got home to Denmark. Brother Svein was not for the moment there; probably enough gone to England again.
The enterprise itself was reserved to the patient, gay, and prudent Uncle Harald; and to him it did prove fatal, and merely paved the way for Another, luckier, not likelier! Svein Estrithson, always beaten during Magnus's life, by and by got an agreement from the prudent Harald to be King of Denmark, then; and end these wearisome and ineffectual brabbles; Harald having other work to do.
He had a shield, and gilt helmet, and was easily recognized. He wore a red silk kirtle over his ring-armor. When he saw that the ships of his foes began to separate, and that the standards were raised in front of each chief, he asked: "Who is the chief of that standard which is opposite us?" He was told that it was King Svein of Denmark with the Danish ships.
We mentioned his occasional copartneries with Svein of the Double-beard, now become King of Denmark, but the greatest of these, and the alone interesting at this time, is their joint invasion of England, and Tryggveson's exploits and fortunes there some years after that adventure of baptism in the Scilly Isles.
Svein and he "were above a year in England together," this time: they steered up the Thames with three hundred ships and many fighters; siege, or at least furious assault, of London was their first or main enterprise, but it did not succeed.
One victorious naval battle with Jarl Svein, Hakon's uncle, and his adherents, who fled to Sweden, after his beating, battle not difficult to a skilful, hard-hitting king, was pretty much all the actual fighting Olaf had to do in this enterprise.
Issued, namely, in redoubled fury on the Danish part; new fiercer invasion by Svein's Jarl Thorkel; then by Svein himself; which latter drove the miserable Ethelred, with wife and family, into Normandy, to wife's brother, the then Duke there; and ended that miserable struggle by Svein's becoming King of England himself.
Svein and Olaf accepted; withdrew to Southampton, Olaf at least did, till the money was got ready. Strange to think of, fierce Svein of the Double-beard, and conquest of England by him; this had at last become the one salutary result which remained for that distracted, down-trodden, now utterly chaotic and anarchic country.
Svein, Eric, and the Swedish king, with their combined fleets, lay in wait behind some cape in a safe little bay of some island, then called Svolde, but not in our time to be found: the Baltic tumults in the fourteenth century having swallowed it, as some think, and leaving us uncertain whether it was in the neighborhood of Rugen Island or in the Sound of Elsinore.
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