NORWAY was the second of the European countries to be integrated into one kingdom—the first was Denmark. In A.D. 872 King Harold Fairhair defeated a coalition of the princes and kinglets of Norway and made himself master of the whole realm. He partly undid his own work when he made his numerous sons lords of different parts of Norway, with his eldest son the nominal overlord of them all. According to the old way of thinking, every male scion of the house of the Inglings, from which Fairhair was descended, had an equal right to become a ruler, because...

Karl, the Burner, so called because he burned down the woods in the place where he settled, and sowed rye in the ashes, raised crops, and bred cattle and horses. He lived so far away from the habitations of other human beings, that his son Vilmund grew up to manhood without ever having seen anybody besides his father and mother.

When Vilmund was about eighteen years of age he returned one night from his hunting. He went and sat at the feet of his mother, and said,

“Today I saw the loveliest animal of the woods. It was down by...