Norway -- History -- 1030-1397; Norway -- History -- To 1030; Norway -- King and rulers
One general result of these successful operations was the discontent,
to all manner of degrees, on the part of many Norse individuals, against
this glorious and victorious, but peremptory and terrible king of
theirs. Tryggveson, I fancy, did not much regard all that; a man of
joyful, cheery temper, habitually contemptuous of danger. Another
trivial misfortune that befell in these conversion operations, and
became important to him, he did not even know of, and would have much
despised if he had. It was this: Sigrid, queen dowager of Sweden,
thought to be amongst the most shining women of the world, was also
known for one of the most imperious, revengeful, and relentless, and had
got for herself the name of Sigrid the Proud. In her high widowhood she
had naturally many wooers; but treated them in a manner unexampled. Two
of her suitors, a simultaneous Two, were, King Harald Graenske (a cousin
of King Tryggveson's, and kind of king in some district, by sufferance
of the late Hakon's),--this luckless Graenske and the then Russian
Sovereign as well, name not worth mentioning, were zealous suitors of
Queen Dowager Sigrid, and were perversely slow to accept the negative,
which in her heart was inexorable for both, though the expression of
it could not be quite so emphatic. By ill-luck for them they came
once,--from the far West, Graenske; from the far East, the Russian;--and
arrived both together at Sigrid's court, to prosecute their importunate,
and to her odious and tiresome suit; much, how very much, to her
impatience and disdain. She lodged them both in some old mansion, which
she had contiguous, and got compendiously furnished for them; and there,
I know not whether on the first or on the second, or on what following
night, this unparalleled Queen Sigrid had the house surrounded, set on
fire, and the two suitors and their people burnt to ashes! No more of
bother from these two at least! This appears to be a fact; and it could
not be unknown to Tryggveson.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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