When Harald the Fairhaired was nearly seventy years old, he begat a son by Thora Moster-stang (Moster-pole). She was so called because she was tall, and her family came from the island of Moster. She was very handsome, and was descended from good people, but was called the king's servant-girl, for at that time, as the Saga says, "many were subject to service to the king who were of good birth, both men and women." Sigurd Ladejarl, or Earl of Lade (near Throndhjem), was a friend of Thora's family, and when she was about to be confined he brought her in his ship from Moster northward to Sæheim, where King Harald was then living. They spent the night at the shore south of the Alv-island, and here Thora bore her child, on a stone near the ship's gangway. It was a male child, and Earl Sigurd baptized him in heathen fashion, and called him Haakon after his own father. The boy soon grew handsome, large in size, and very like his father King Harald. When the king felt that he was not going to live much longer, he sent Haakon over to England to be brought up by the English king, Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred the Great. King Athelstan had Haakon baptized and brought up in the Christian faith, and in good habits and all sorts of exercises, and it is said he loved Haakon above all his relations. He gave him a sword, of which the hilt and handle were gold; but the blade was still better, for with it Haakon cut a millstone to the centre eye. The sword was thereafter called Kvernbite (millstone cutter), and Haakon carried it to his dying day. As stated, Erik was proclaimed king by his father in 930. Erik had early gone out on viking expeditions, and his daring enterprises had given him the surname Blood-Axe. He was handsome and manly-looking, but morally weak. He was hated during his father's lifetime, because he had killed his brother Biorn the Merchant; but still more hated was his cruel and treacherous queen, Gunhild. She enticed him into killing several of his brothers, and it began to be the common belief that Gunhild and Erik were going to remove all his brothers, in order to secure the whole of the kingdom for themselves and their children. This plan, however, was frustrated by Haakon, the youngest son of Harald.