Was he, the Jutish king, or Sigurd and Ragnar, who appear to have reigned in Zealand, the true sovereign of the Danes? Was one subject to the other, or were both independent? This question no man can answer. The passage, however, of Ado, confirmed as it is by that in Olaf Trygveson’s Saga, explains the confusion which we find at every step in the Danish history prior to the latter part of the tenth century. We may add that, according to the same authority, Godfrey being slain by his own subjects on his return from a successful expedition to Frisia, Hemming, his brother or nephew, succeeded. Now these facts are confirmed by Saxo; and where both Icelandic and Danish authorities concur, and are confirmed by the Frank historians (and Hemming’s accession, no less than Godfrey’s death, is mentioned by several), we see no ground for scepticism. These princes, then, must be admitted; and for the reasons already given they may be admitted, without excluding Sigurd Ring, or Ragnar Lodbrog, or Sigurd Snogoje.[91] The age of _Ragnar_ ought to be an historic age; but his reign is so pervaded by fable, that we can make nothing of it. Many have been the attempts to reconcile his chronology, at least as found in northern writers, with that of the Frankish and Anglo-Saxon historians; but neither it, nor the actions recorded of him by both, can possibly be reconciled. Critics, therefore, have been driven to the inference that there were two Ragnars,—one of the eighth, the other of the ninth century; and, probably, this conjecture is the true one. In the latter century, indeed, we read of a Jutland chief named Ragenfred, or Regnier, who, being exiled by the reigning king of Denmark, became a pirate, and committed dreadful depredations on the coasts of Britain and Ireland. Very probably the actions of both—and both, no doubt, were extraordinary men—have been confounded together, and enabled Saxo to incorporate, into one relation, the romantic incidents which tradition had preserved of both. As we have indulged so largely in the romantic, we will not, on this occasion, translate that venerable authority. And it is scarcely necessary to allude to this hero’s death, which, as everybody knows, happened in Northumberland. Defeated by Ella, the Saxon king of the province, and thrown into a dungeon full of serpents, he expired, insensible of his torments. It is said, indeed, that he composed a lay enumerating his former exploits, and his conviction that his sons would revenge his death; but the story, and the ode itself, are so improbable, that they must be consigned to the domain of poetic invention, and no longer be allowed to grow in that of history. Whether there be much truth in the subsequent part of this story, viz., that the sons of Ragnar did hasten to revenge him, that they disembarked on the Northumbrian coast, defeated the Anglo-Saxons near York, and transformed the province from a Saxon into a Danish state, we are unable to decide