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supposed to have been fought about 700 A.D., King
Harald Hilditönn is said (in Sögubrot) to have had
the help of Brat the Irishman and Orm the English.
There is no great absurdity in supposing that a stray
Westerner may have wandered into his service, but
when the Fornmanna-sögur tell us that he died at the
age of one hundred and eighty winters after owning a
kingdom in England, and this in the lifetime of Bede,
the mythical nature of the story is apparent. Sigurd
Hring, his kinsman and opponent at Brávöll,
"bethought him of the kingdom which Harald had
owned in England, and, before him, Ivar Widefathom,
then ruled by Ingjald, brother of Petr, Saxon king,"
or rather (not to make the story more absurd than it
need be) the "West Saxon king," for the ƿ, or Anglo-Saxon
w, has been misread. So Sigurd invaded
Northumbria, fought battles in which Ingjald and his
son Ubbi fell, won the realm and left it under a
tributary King Olaf, son of Kinrik, cousin of Ivar
Widefathom, who was ultimately driven out by Eava,
son of Ubbi (Eoppa). Munch (Norske Folks Historie,
I., i., p. 281) points out that there were real Saxon
kings to tally with the story; Ingild, brother of Ini of
Wessex, died 718: but the whole account seems to
be a garbled version of affairs in the middle of the
tenth century, when Eirík (sometimes called Hiring,
or Hring) and Olaf Cuaran were disputing the kingdom
of Northumbria.
Coming down to the threshold of history we have
the romantic figure of Ragnar Lodbrok, dragon-slayer,
and son-in-law of the great dragon-slayer Sigurd
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