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BOOK I.
CHAP. IX.
Aulafs Irish
connexions.
7o THE SCANDINAVIANS, AND
abroad, no author making any mention of him after
Edred's last expedition into the North." 1 But if the
historian of York had referred to Irish annals, he
would have ascertained that, after Eric's death,
Aulaf returned to Ireland, where his matrimonial
alliances with native royalty had secured to him a
safe asylum. To some of these alliances we have
already referred, but they deserve more distinct
notice, as furnishing a curious illustration of the
manners of the times, and of the cause of many of
the confederacies and wars between the Ostmen and
the Irish.
In the eleventh century Lanfranc, Archbishop of
Canterbury, wrote to Turlough O'Brien, King of
Ireland, that it was reported to him that within
Turlough's dominions "there, are men who take to
themselves wives too near akin, both by consan-
guinity and affinity ;
others who forsake at will and
pleasure such as are lawfully joined to them in holy
matrimony, and some who give their wives to others
in matrimony, and receive the wives of such in return
by an abominable exchange." 2
If such were the practices in the eleventh century
they do not appear to have been very different in
the tenth.
Divorces fre- Among the Scandinavians repudiation and polygamy
VferQ royal privileges. Polygamy continued
in Norway down to the thirteenth century, and
Harald Harfagre put away nine wives when ho
1 " Eboracum, or Hist, and
Antiq. of York, by
F. Drake:
I. 'in. I., 1736, p. 81. According to
Chron. Mailros, p. 148
" Ericuiu
filium Harold qui fuit ultimus
Rex, &c.
1 Ware's Bishops p. 307.