Olaf, a Northman, breaks a barrow to take a necklace from a dead woman and is set on a road that carries him to Byzantium — to the Empress Irene, the Varangian guard, and a blinding. Haggard went to South Africa at nineteen and helped raise the Union Jack over the Transvaal; here he crosses his Norse register with his Egyptian one, and the Byzantine court is the coldest thing in it.