ABOUT A.C. 70 TO A.D. 1030. NEW KINGDOM OF THE YNGLINGS IN VERMELAND.—KINGS FROM OLAF TRÆTELIA TO HALFDAN THE BLACK.—HALFDAN THE TRUE FOUNDER OF THE NORWEGIAN MONARCHY.—HARALD HARFAGER.—ERIC OF THE BLOODY AXE.—HAKO THE GOOD.—HARALD GRAAFELD.—HAKO THE JARL.—SURPRISING ADVENTURES OF OLAF TRYGVESON.—HIS EARLY PIRATICAL EXPLOITS.—HIS ROMANTIC FORTUNES.—HE BECOMES KING OF NORWAY.—HIS DESTRUCTION OF THE IDOLS.—HIS INTOLERANT BIGOTRY AND CRUEL PERSECUTIONS.—HIS TRAGICAL DEATH, OR, ACCORDING TO SOME WRITERS, HIS MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE FROM THE WORLD.—OLAF THE SAINT.—HIS ADVENTURES OF A PIRATE.—HIS ACCESSION TO THE CROWN OF NORWAY.—HIS PERSECUTING CHARACTER.—HIS QUARRELS AND SUBSEQUENT ALLIANCE WITH SWEDEN.—IS DRIVEN INTO EXILE BY CANUTE THE GREAT.—HE RETURNS, AND IS SLAIN.—HIS PRETENDED SANCTITY. THAT Norway had its chiefs with the regal title, if not prior to our Saviour’s birth, many centuries before the fall of the Ynglings in Sweden, is undoubted. We find allusions to them in Danish and Swedish history, and in chronicles which, though of a later period, were derived from sources now lost. The country was full of them. Most of them, as we have already observed[159], boasted of their descent from an old Finnish race, which, though half mythologic, had, in primeval times, produced many chiefs of illustrious name. But of their deeds we have no evidence beyond the little supplied by the uncertain voice of tradition; and that little is so exaggerated by fable as to be useless. We will not rescue their names from oblivion: our narrative must accompany the fates of the Ynglings from their first settlement in Vermeland in Sweden, to their conquest of Norway. In regard to the latter country, we shall only observe that when Olaf Trætelia laid the foundation of a new power, it had as many reguli as at any former period. To subjugate them in succession, and to incorporate their petty states into one great monarchy, was the constant aim of his successors.[160] [Sidenote: 630 to 640.]