Hugh the Brave

Hugh the Brave is one of the two Norman earls (with Hugh the Stout) who meet Magnus Barefoot at the Sound of Anglesey — and the man felled by the saga's most famous arrow. When Magnus's fleet comes against Wales on his great western expedition, the two Hughs lead the defending army, and in the sea-fight Hugh the Brave is armoured head to foot with nothing left bare. Magnus, drawing his bow, sends an arrow (or another man's beside his) into the one gap, beside the eye, and drops him — and with his fall the Norse take Anglesey, the farthest south the kings of Norway ever extended their rule. Hugh the Brave is the saga's image of the well-armoured foe undone by the single chink — the Norman earl encased in mail save for one small gap, killed by the one arrow that finds it, his death marking the high-water mark of the whole viking expansion at the edge of Wales.