Good evening. Welcome to the Just Sleep podcast. I'm Tasia, your host.

Every week, I will read you an old story to help you relax of the stressful day behind you and drift off to sleep.

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Tonight, I will be reading from Viking Tales by Jenny Hall.

So lie down, close your eyes, and let me read you a story. King Harold goes west overseas. Now many men hated King

Harold. Many a man said, why should he put himself up for king of all of us?

He is no better than I am. Am I not a king's son as well as he? And are not many of us king's sons.

I will not kneel before him and promise to be his man. I will not pay him taxes. I will not have his earl sitting over me.

The good old days have gone. This Norway has become a prison. I will go away and find some other place.

So hundreds of men sailed away. Some went to France and got land and lived there. Big Rolf Gawfoot and all his

men sailed up the great French river and won a battle against the French king himself. There was no way

to stop the flashing of his battle axes, but to give him what he wanted. So the king made Rolf a duke, gave him broad lands, and gave him

the king's own daughter for wife. Rolf called his country Normandy for old Norway. He ruled it

well and was a great lord, and his sons' sons after him were kings of England.

Other Norsemen went to Ireland and England and Scotland.

They drew up their boats on the riverbanks.

The people ran away before them and gathered into great armies that marched back to meet the Vikings in battle.

Sometimes the Norsemen lost,

but oftener they won, so that they got land and lived in those countries. Their houses sat in these strange lands like warriors camps, and the Norsemen went among their new neighbors

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