Yet at the beginning of his reign there was little sign that the King would rise above the level of his father Sweyn’s mode of life. His mutilation of the young hostages was only one example of this. When he began to reign he divided the kingdom into four parts, retaining Wessex, and placing Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria each under a separate chief. Two of these chiefs, Eirik and Thorkill the Tall, are well known in Norse history. Earl Eirik, or Eric, as he is called in the English chronicles, had been, as we have read, fighting on the side of the Danish King, Sweyn, against his own sovereign, Olaf Trygveson, at the battle of Svold.[36] He was son of Earl Hakon, the most powerful lord in Norway and the ruler of Norway before Olaf came to the throne[37]; after his fall and Olaf’s succession Earl Eirik and his brother, with many valiant men who were of their family, had left the country and gone over to Denmark. Eirik entered Sweyn Fork-beard’s service and married his daughter in 996; he spent his time in cruising and harrying, until he joined Sweyn in his wars against Olaf; and after Olaf’s disappearance at the battle of Svold Earl Eirik became owner of his war-vessel the _Long Serpent_, and of great booty besides. He and Sweyn and the Swedish King divided Norway between them, and Eirik got a large share and the title of earl, and he allowed himself to be baptized. Earl Eirik had ruled peacefully over Norway for twelve years when a message came to him out of England from King Canute, who was his brother-in-law, that he should go to him in England and help him to subdue the kingdom. Eirik would not sleep upon the message of the King, but that very day he got his ships together and sailed out of Norway, leaving his son, another Hakon, who was but seventeen years of age, to rule in his stead. He met Canute in England, and was with him when he took the castle of London, and he himself had a battle in the same place, a little farther up the Thames. He remained in England for a year, fighting on Canute’s behalf at one place and another; and on the division of the kingdom by Canute he was made ruler of Northumbria. But no sooner had Canute bestowed these possessions on his followers than he seems to have regretted it and desired to get them back into his own keeping. There is no doubt that there was growing up in his mind a design of ruling over a united England from Northumbria to the English Channel. In later days he attempted to add Scotland also to his dominions.