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and Wessex stood for Hördaknút, and it was not
until the attempt of the ætheling Ælfred and the
atrocity which put an end to it—an atrocity, the
chroniclers say, worse than any charged to the Vikings
—that Harald was accepted as king over all England.
In this respect the story of Eadgar was repeated ; the
Danish north again gave a king to the south.
Harald Harefoot spent his time—Sundays included
—in hunting: he reduced the húskarl army, picked
no quarrels, and the land had rest, but for a little
border fighting, until he died in 1040. Hördaknút,
Emma’s son and king of Denmark was then elected,
King Stork after King Log. He began by disinterring
the body of his brother Harald and throwing it
into the town ditch ; the Londoners rescued the body
and buried it in St. Clement Danes, then a suburban
church, built, as its name implies, for the Scandinavian
population. That there were Danes buried within the
city also is shown by the monument now in the Guildhall
Museum and found in St. Paul’s churchyard, a
sculptured stone of the eleventh century, not without
some traces of Irish influence in its style, with runes
"[To the memory of some man unknown] his wife let
this stone be raised ; also Tuki." The subject of the
panel is the well-known emblem of the Hart and
Hound, symbolising, it is thought, the Christian in
persecution ; a strange epitaph, one would think, for
one of the "proud invaders," and yet very frequently
used. It is perhaps possible that the ancient emblem
of the Danish capital at Leira, the hart, lingered in
tradition, and fixed this particular form as a popular
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