Scandinavian-Britain

SVEIN AND KNUT 151settlers in his pay and on lands granted by him hadoccupied The it. wild dales would not have affordedcomfortable quarters to men who had come for plunder,and no place-names record Jostein and Guthmund, asmight be expected, iftwo chiefs so noted had settledthere ;a " Godmond Hall " near Kendal is of muchlater origin. We shall see reasons for dating theCumbrian settlement much earlier, and OlaPs uncleJostein, according to the saga, accompanied him homeand stood by him to the end.In the year 1000 the troublesome host sailed toNormandy. ^Ethelred took advantage of their absencefor his expedition to Cumberland, where already theremust have been a colony which threatened the peaceof the north. Some Vikings, however, were still inthe English service, chief of whom was Pallig, thehusband of King Svein's sister Gunnhild. ^Kthelredappears to have entertained some idea of forming apermanent army, more efficient than the temporarylevies ;but the error lay in over-estimating the trustworthinessof mercenaries who were tempted byopportunities for plunder in the wealthy, easy-goingdistricts around them, and, as the sequel shows, weretreated with a want of confidence ending in theatrocious massacre of St. Brice. Pallig's men wereillkept in hand ;there was plundering and fighting ;the Saxons believed that they intended to kill theking and the Witan and to seize the kingdom. TheWitan met and commissioned Leofsige, ealdorman ofEssex, to treat with the turbulent strangers. Theyasked a subsidy of ,24,000 but; Leofsige himself, in