Palnatoke, Bue, and the other
quasi-heroic heads of this establishment are still remembered in the
northern parts. _Palnatoke_ is the title of a tragedy by
Oehlenschlager, which had its run of immortality in Copenhagen some
sixty or seventy years ago.
I judge the institution to have been in its floweriest state, probably
now in Hakon Jarl's time. Hakon Jarl and these pirates, robbing
Hakon's subjects and merchants that frequented him, were naturally in
quarrel; and frequent fightings had fallen out, not generally to the
profit of the Jomsburgers, who at last determined on revenge, and the
rooting out of this obstructive Hakon Jarl. They assembled in force
at the Cape of Stad,--in the Firda Fylke; and the fight was dreadful
in the extreme, noise of it filling all the north for long afterwards.
Hakon, fighting like a lion, could scarcely hold his own,--Death or
Victory, the word on both sides; when suddenly, the heavens grew
black, and there broke out a terrific storm of thunder and hail,
appalling to the human mind,--universe swallowed wholly in black
night; only the momentary forked-blazes, the thunder-pealing as of
Ragnarok, and the battering hail-torrents, hailstones about the size
of an egg.
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