Famous among the old Norse sea-rovers was Egil, son of Skallagrim. In the course of his many voyages, he visited all the lands between the White Sea and the Bay of Biscay, and when at last he settled down in his Iceland home, where he lived on till well past the age of eighty, he loved to gather his children and grandchildren around him by the fireside during the long Icelandic winter, and to tell the story of his adventures. He was a true Norseman, fond of the sea and the fight, fond of his wife and children, fond of song, at which he was highly skilled. His songs and his stories of adventure were listened to with eagerness, and they were repeated after him, and were at last written down, probably between one hundred and fifty and two hundred years after his death. Books were scarce in those days, and stories were treasured and faithfully re-told. So this story of Egil was probably written out very much in the simple, vigorous style in which the old warrior would have told it to his grandchildren, as they listened to him with wide-open, wondering eyes. And as the old man had taken part in an early battle between Saxon-English and Scots, upon the Border, we have here a fine picture of how fights were fought in the reign of King Athelstan. Egil was speaking to Icelandic children who knew little about England, so he began by telling how in the days when Harold Fairhair was king of Norway, Alfred the Great was the first supreme king over all England. When Alfred died he was succeeded by his son Edward, who was followed by Athelstan the Victorious. In Egil’s day Athelstan was young and had but just been made king, and many chieftains, who had kept quiet before, now thought that the time had come when they could do as they pleased again. But Athelstan meant to show them that he too could rule England strongly and wisely. These were the days of brute force, and the king had first to get an army together. Besides his own English folk, many roving Norsemen came to take his pay, and among the number were Egil and his elder brother Thorolf, with their men. They saw the king himself, who received them well. Athelstan was a good Christian, known as the Faithful, and he desired that Thorolf and Egil should submit to be marked with the Cross, that they might take their place by his Christian soldiers without quarrel. This they agreed to, and the king gave them command over three hundred men. Now Olaf the Red was king in Scotland. His father was a Scot, but his mother was a Dane of the family of Ragnar with-the-hairy-breeches, that savage old viking. Northumberland, which in those days extended to the Humber, and included York as its chief city, was half-full of Danes, and King Olaf wished to claim it for his own, and add it to Scotland.