beauty and winning ways appealed to friends and foes alike, while on the other hand, the love of the Birchlegs was his best guard, because it convinced his ill-wishers that disaster would swiftly overwhelm any one who should venture to harm him. Of the many small victories and defeats, sieges and surrenders, flights and pursuits, which filled the years 1206 and 1207, without according any decisive advantage to either party, it is not necessary to speak at length. They were a series of barren futilities, resulting in loss of life, and waste of the resources of the land, without lastingly benefiting any one. Under these circumstances, it is not strange that both Birchlegs and Baglers began to long for a reconciliation. Even to so bitter a partisan as Bishop Nicholas, it became evident that a continuance of the war would mean mutual destruction, and that the prize of victory would be a devastated land and a barbarized people. King Inge, too, was heartily tired of the aimless hostilities, and even his pugnacious brother, Haakon Galen, was not disinclined to listen to proposals of peace. The new archbishop, Thore, acted as mediator between the parties and used his influence and his eloquence to extort from both the necessary concessions. At last, when the conditions were well understood on both sides, a meeting of the Birchleg and Bagler chiefs was held at Hvitingsöe (1208), at which Philip Simonsson, the king of the Baglers, swore allegiance to Inge, and became his earl. In return he received Viken and the Oplands in fief, and was wedded to Sverre's daughter, Christina. The restoration of peace was not hailed as an unmixed boon by many of those who had lost their property by the war, and could only hope to enrich themselves by the same means. Others had carried arms so long, as to have lost all inclination for peaceful industry. A great number of these, irrespective of parties, started on an old-fashioned Viking expedition to the Orkneys, Hebrides, and Man, ravaged and plundered, and compelled the earls of those isles, once more, to acknowledge the supremacy of the crown of Norway. In spite of this service which they had done to the king, they were severely censured on their return, and forced by the bishops to surrender their booty to the Church.