But during the latter years of Alfred’s reign and for many years after his death a great impetus was given to the settlements in the North of Scotland by the coming to the throne of Norway of the first king who reigned over the whole country, Harald Fairhair. He established a new form of rule which was very unpopular among his great lords and landowners, and the consequence of this was that a large number of his most powerful earls or “jarls” left the country with their families and possessions and betook themselves to Iceland, the Orkneys and Hebrides, and to Ireland. They did not go as marauders, as those who went before them had done, but they went to settle, and establish new homes for themselves where they would be free from what they considered to be Harald Fairhair’s oppressive laws. Before his time each of these jarls had been his own master, ruling his own district as an independent lord, but paying a loose allegiance to the prince who chanced at the time to prove the most powerful. From time to time some more ambitious prince arose, who tried to subdue to his authority the men of consequence in his own part of the country, but hitherto it had not come into the mind of any one of them to try to make himself king over the whole land. The idea of great kingdoms was not then a common one. In England up to this time no king had reigned over the whole country; there had been separate rulers for East Anglia, Wessex, Northumbria, etc., sometimes as many as seven kings reigning at the same time in different parts of the country, in what was called the “Heptarchy.” It was only when the need of a powerful and capable ruler was felt, and there chanced to be a man fitted to meet this need, as in Alfred’s time and that of his son, Edward the Elder, that the kingdoms drew together under one sovereign. But even then it was not supposed that things would remain permanently like this; under a weaker prince they might at any moment split up again into separate dynasties. In Ireland this system remained in force far longer, for centuries indeed, the country being broken up into independent and usually warring chiefdoms. Abroad, none of the Northern nations had united themselves into great kingdoms up to the time of Harald Fairhair, but about this date a desire began to show itself to consolidate the separate lordships under single dynasties, partly because it chanced that men of more than usual power and ambition happened to be found in them, and partly for protection from neighbouring States; in the case of Harald himself, his pride also led him to desire to take a place in the world as important as that of the neighbouring kings. In Sweden King Eirik and in Denmark King Gorm the Old were establishing themselves on the thrones of united kingdoms. The effort of Harald to accomplish the same task in Norway was so important in its effects, not only on the future history of his own country, but