Note 2 — Chapter IX · How the Sea-kings sailed for East Anglia

This legend of the death of Regner Lodbrok is the one most common in his histories. But there is another, and more probable, story, which tells how he, having been received by Edmund, afterwards known as the martyr king of East Anglia, was murdered by the King's huntsman, and hidden in a wood. The body was found by Regner's dog, who scraped the leaves away and revealed the crime. For this the huntsman was placed in a boat which was unseaworthy and cast adrift; and the boat, surviving the tempests, drifted to Denmark, where the guilty man, to save himself, put the crime at Edmund's door. As it was East Anglia which was first invaded by Hungwar and Hubba, and not Northumbria, this story seems the more probable; and especially so in view of the fact that Hungwar and Hubba put their royal captive Edmund to death in the most barbarous fashion afterwards.