The Danish King Cnut, who ruled over all of the English Earldoms, was on a pilgrimage to Rome while his first wife Ealfgifu managed to wring profitable havoc from her banishment among the destitute of Norway.  Left with his own gang of ruffians and no minders at all, their younger son Harald - called Harefoot for his ability to escape on foot from any adversary - was scattering his newfound adolescent freedom with tyrannical abandon upon the villages and farmsteads of Northumbria and the Scottish kingdoms. 

Harefoot called himself a tax collector, but his accruals benefitted neither his father Cnut nor Malcolm II of Scotland, or even Earl Ealdred for that matter.  His pillage merely indulged the whims of a pack of teenage hooligans, and the Mormaers and Earls were willing to put up with little more of h...

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