Rumor ran among his people that he still was not dead; grounding on some movement by the ships of that traitorous Sigwald, they fancied Olaf had dived beneath the keels of his enemies, and got away with Sigwald, as Sigwald himself evidently did. “Much was hoped, supposed, spoken,” says one old mourning Skald; “but the truth was, Olaf Tryggveson was never seen in Norseland more.” Strangely he remains still a shining figure to us--the wildly beautifulest man in body and in soul that one has ever heard of in the North. CNUT OR CANUTE OF ENGLAND, ALSO KING OF DENMARK. BY JOHN RICHARD GREEN. [Date of birth uncertain, died 1035 or 1036. He succeeded to the command of the Danish invaders of England on the death of his father Svein, and on the death of Eadmund Ironsides, the Saxon king, he became the acknowledged King of England in 1017. His exercise of power was marked by great qualities of justice, ability, and devotion to the interests of his acquired kingdom; and his name has been transmitted in history as a worthy successor of the Great Alfred.] The first of our foreign masters was the Dane. The countries of Scandinavia which had so long been the mere starting points of the pirate bands who had ravaged England and Ireland had now settled down into comparative order. It was the aim of Svein to unite them in a great Scandinavian Empire, of which England should be the head; and this project, interrupted for a time by his death, was resumed with yet greater vigor by his son Cnut. Fear of the Dane was still great in the land, and Cnut had no sooner appeared off the English coast than Wessex, Mercia, and Northumberland joined in owning him for their lord, and in discarding again the rule of Æthelred, who had returned on the death of Svein. When Æthelred’s death in 1016 raised his son Eadmund Ironside to the throne, the loyalty of London enabled him to struggle bravely for a few months against the Danes; but a decisive victory at Assandun and the death of his rival left Cnut master of the realm. Conqueror as he was, the Dane was no foreigner in the sense that the Norman was a foreigner after him. His language differed little from the English tongue. He brought in no new system of tenure or government. Cnut ruled, in fact, not as a foreign conqueror but as a native king. The good-will and tranquillity of England were necessary for the success of his larger schemes in the north, where the arms of his English subjects aided him in later years in uniting Denmark and Norway beneath his sway.