But a good time passed before Sweyn was able fully to carry out his threat. In the meantime he was occupied with wars in Norway, where King Olaf Trygveson had come to the throne. The first thing he did was to marry Sigrid the Haughty, whom Olaf had once intended to marry, but with whom he had quarrelled because she would not be baptized, and who had never forgiven Olaf for striking her in the face with his glove. Now she saw a chance of revenge, and she continually urged King Sweyn to give battle to Olaf. In the end he consented to do this, and he sent messengers to his kinsman the King of Sweden, and to Earl Eirik of Norway, and together they made the formidable coalition which met Olaf Trygveson at the great sea-fight of Svold in A.D. 1000, where Olaf disappeared, as we have already related. We must inquire what causes so much incensed Sweyn against England that he determined above all other things to go to that country and avenge himself there. The thirty-seven years of Ethelred’s reign had been miserable for English and Danes alike. An old historian says that his life was “cruel in the beginning, wretched in the middle, and disgraceful in the end.” Just at a time when a strong leader was most needed this idle and frivolous King gave himself up to indolence and every kind of wickedness. Instead of organizing his armies he shut himself up in London, careless of what became of his kingdom and people so long as he himself was safe. He was cruel to his wife, Emma, daughter of Duke Richard of Normandy, a lady of high rank, and cowardly before his enemies. Indeed, his only idea of freeing the country from war was by paying large sums of money to the Danes to keep them quiet. At one time he paid them twenty-four thousand pounds to go away, at others sixteen and thirty thousand; but the only result of his gifts was to bring them back in greater numbers. The English people were in a pitiable condition, forced to raise these large sums to pay their enemies, who at the same time were pillaging and robbing them all over the country.