About the present period, Harold Harfagr, or the fair-haired, one of the petty sovereigns or vikingr of Norway, began to subjugate the other chieftains of the country under his paramount authority, and was so successful as to establish the Norwegian monarchy in 875. Gorm, likewise, about the same time, united the petty states of Jutland and the Danish islands into one kingdom, as Ingiald Illrode had done long before in Sweden. Such independent spirits as found themselves dissatisfied with this new order of affairs, found a sure asylum in Iceland; and the emigrations to this new country became so numerous, that Harold at length deemed it expedient to impose a tax of half a mark of silver, equal to five pounds of our modern money, on every one of his subjects who were desirous of going to settle in that island.
[1] Fragm. Vet. Islandic. ap. Langebeck, II. 31.--Forster, Hist. of Voy. and Disc. in the North, p. 50.
_Voyages of Ohthere to the White Sea and the Baltic, in the Ninth Century._[1]
Some of the Norwegian chieftains, who were dissatisfied with the usurpation of supreme authority by Harold, took refuge in England, where Alfred had recently settled many of the vanquished Danes and Nordmen in the northern part of his dominions, which had been almost entirely depopulated and laid waste, by their long-continued and destructive ravages. Among these was one Ohthere, who had made himself famous by his voyages to unknown parts of the north, and who was invited to court by Alfred, to give an account of the discoveries and observations he had made during his unusual expeditions. This person had been a chief of some note in his own country, and dwelt at a place which he called Halgoland, supposed by some to have been in Numadalen, while others say in Nordland, the most northerly p province of Norway proper. In the succeeding paragraph, he is said to have dwelt opposite to the _West Sea,_ and as Alfred only uses the word sea to denote a confined expanse or narrow channel, while he calls the ocean Garsecg, it seems highly probable, that, by the West Sea, the _west ford_ was intended,--a channel or strait which divides the Luffoden islands from the coast of Nordland, which would clearly place the residence of Ohthere in this northern province. The account which he gave of his voyages to his royal patron, is as follows.