There was a man called Swein, who came into our country once upon a time, and built a house at Greenodd on the Leven. His father Biorn had been a landholder in Norway, ploughing his own acres, and living in health and wealth, until King Harald Fairhair fell upon the people, and fought with them and made himself lord and master. Then, it is well known, good men of the old sort, who could not abide to see new laws made and old laws undone, took to their ships and sailed away west. Some of them landed in Iceland; some went to Orkney, and others wandered about the coasts of the Irish Sea to find a home; and wherever they could get shelter and safety, there they settled.

Biorn, with his people and his young child Swein, came to the South Isles, as they called them then,—the Western Isles we call them nowadays. He lived as best he might, and died at last in battle, when Harald swept the vikings from out of the seas between Lewis and Man. But Swein found friends and plenty of work; for there was always farming to do in spring and fighting in summer; and in the end he wedded well, and sat down under Bardi Ottarson, who was then the chief among the Northmen in the Isle of Man. For by this time Ketel Flatnose and his folk were gone to Iceland, and the good King Orry was not yet come therefrom.

Unna was wife to Swein Biornson. She was the child of a viking akin to Olaf the White, the great King of Dublin, and her mother was Irish. Unna was a notable dame, and Swein was the sort of man who could serve his friends; so that they were both well thought of in the island, and hoped for a safe home there. But before long came Ragnwald the Dane, of the sons of Ivar, he that was king in Waterford for a little while afterwards; and he killed Bardi and most of his people in a sea-fight.

Then Swein fled out of the battle hastily, and took his wife and whatever he could lay hands on, and steered for the far-away blue fells that showed under the morning sun, over against the Manx fells. For he knew that some of his kinsfolk had already found lodging on the coasts of Galloway and Cumberland and Wales, where the land was no man’s land at that time; and creeks and firths among the hills gave them sheltered hiding places, well out of sight when great fleets swept the high seas and ravaged the open shore.

When Black Comb grew tall on the skyline, arose a stormy north-easter, and drove him down the Cumberland coast, until he made Furness, the great foreland in the bay of Morecambe. When the wind fell, the tide flowed, and carried him up a broad firth like a gate into the hills. Upward he drifted, spying on all sides for a good landing spot; and try as he might to the shoreward, he ran upon sand, and never came nigh the soil. But in a while he turned round a green point, high and rocky and covered with trees, standing out into the deep channel. Behind it was a green field, even with the water, snug and sheltered among hanging woods. A great beck flowed through the field to meet the broad firth. There were no people to be seen, nor smoke of houses, nor cattle about in the good lea-land. And the channel of the river at last came in-shore. So he stayed there, and called that green point in his language Græn Oddi, and Greenodd it is called to this day.