With the same stern and sanguinary idolatry, the same love of plunder and devastation, the same unsparing cruelty, and savage indifference to human slaughter, and with the same aspiration to be the subject of Scaldic song, Hrolfr, Rollo, or Rou, and his associates, left the Baltic, at the end of the ninth century, to seek homes or booty elsewhere.  Son of the favourite Jarl of Harald Harfagre, and long distinguished for his piratical expeditions, he happened to pillage a district, which Harald had added to his kingdom, and on which he had interdicted piracy.  Not even friendship for his father could appease the wrath of the king of Norway, for the practice of an evil custom, which he was resolved to extirpate in his own dominions.  Hrolfr the great-walker was banished.  His mother in vain solicited his recal.  The fair-haired Harald was inexorable.
     In Snorre's Haralld-Saga, he is called Gangu Hrolfr, or Hrolfr the Walker, because he was so large and tall that no horse could carry him (c. 14. p. 100).  His name is Rollo in the Latin works of the Romans, and Roul, and Rou, in their vernacular language. (The History of England During the Middle Ages, Turner, 1853)