The figure of Ragnarr Loðbrók himself belongs to an earlier generation, and great as was his after-fame we unfortunately know very little of his actual career. He would seem to have been of Norwegian birth, closely connected with the south of Norway and the house of Guðröðr, but like that prince having extensive interests in Denmark. He probably visited Ireland in 831, for we read in Saxo of an expedition made by Ragnarr to Ireland when he slew king Melbricus and ravaged Dublin, an event which is pretty certainly to be identified with an attack made on the Conaille district (co. Louth) by foreigners in 831 when the king Maelbrighde was taken prisoner. He led the disastrous Seine expedition in 845 (_v. supra_, p. 21). The next glimpse of him which we have is probably that found in certain Irish annals where he is represented as exiled from his Norwegian patrimony and living with some of his sons in the Orkneys while others were absent on expeditions to the British Isles, Spain and Africa, and a runic inscription has been found at Maeshowe in the Orkneys confirming the connexion of the sons of Loðbrók and possibly of Loðbrók himself with those islands. The expeditions would be those mentioned above and the yet more famous one made to Spain, Africa and Italy by Björn Ironside in the years 859-62 (_v. infra_, pp. 46-7). Ragnarr Loðbrók's later history is uncertain. According to the Irish annals quoted above, his sons while on their expedition dreamed that their father had died in a land not his own and on their return found it to be true. This agrees with Scandinavian tradition according to which Ragnarr met his death at the hands of Aelle, king of Northumbria, by whom he was thrown into a snake-pit, while the capture of York by Ívarr the Boneless in 866-7 (_v. infra_) is represented as part of a great expedition of vengeance undertaken by the sons of Ragnarr. This tradition (apart from certain details) is probably historical, but we have no definite confirmatory evidence. With this note on the history of Denmark at this time and on the career of the most shadowy, if at the same time the most famous of the Viking leaders, we may turn once more to the history of events in England.