Scandinavian-Britain

90 SCANDINAVIAN BRITAINthen disappeared from Irish annals until now. Ivarthe Crafty probably made light of the differencesbetween Black and White Gaill, when the chanceoffered for pushing his fortunes ;and now, seeing theconquest of England going forward, and affairs of hiscause in the North hanging in the balance by thelong siege of the Strathclyde capital, hastened to lendhis aid, bringing his army and English spoil.The siege over, and after the winter on the Clyde,he sailed for Dublin, and died there in peace two yearslater. One MS. of the Annals makes the startlingstatement " he slept in Christ." Is it possible, oneistempted to ask, that the clearest-headed and thethoughtfullest of all the Viking leaders found, beforehis death, something unperceived before in the religionhe had persecuted? It is not so entirely inconceivable,for in Dublin the old king must have seen much ofQueen Aud, the wife of Olaf the White ;she was thena woman of early middle age, for she died in 900,advanced in years ;and she was known as one of theChristian settlers in Iceland, and as one of the mostforceful characters in Old Northern history. But wemust not build on a word which, after all, may be aclerical error.When Ivar left the army in Englandit had allthe old enterprise and fire ;the scheme of conquestwas pursued, but no further decisive and permanentsuccesses were gained. What was afterwards theDanelaw was now occupied ; nothing more was addedn spite of the strenuous warfare of the next sevenyears : the master-mind was gone.