SOURCE.WIKIPEDIA.org

One of the original Strikers. He is now world famous as a pirate. Ragnar was from Norway, the son of a bishop and the scion of one of Norway's most ancient, noble families. He attended Patrick Henry University and became friends with John Galt and Francisco d'Anconia, while studying under Hugh Akston and Robert Stadler. When he became a pirate, he was disowned and excommunicated. There is a price on his head in Norway, Portugal, Turkey.

Ragnar seizes relief ships that are being sent from the United States to Europe. As the novel progresses, Ragnar begins, for the first time, to become active in American waters, and is even spotted in Delaware Bay. Reportedly, his ship is better than any available in the fleets of the world's navies.

People assume that as a pirate he simply takes the seized goods to himself. However, while many other protagonists take pride in making a personal profit from the proceeds of their creativity, Danneskjöld's motivation is to restore to other creative people the money which was unjustly taken away from them - specifically, their income tax payments.

For that purpose, Danneskjöld maintains a network of informants in the US Internal Revenue Service (and possibly also those of other countries) who provide him with detailed copies of the tax receipts; among other talents, Danneskjöld is mentioned as being a skilled accountant. The proceeds from the goods he seizes (presumably minus his operating expenses) are deposited in accounts opened in Midas Mulligan's bank in the names of various industrialists, to the amounts of the income tax taken from them - which are handed to them (in gold) upon their joining the Strikers.

Kept in the background for much of the book, Danneskjöld makes a personal appearance when he risks his life to meet Hank Rearden in the night and hand him a bar of gold as an "advance payment", to encourage Rearden to persevere in his increasingly difficult situation.

>Unavoidable.. that the good and the bad challenge anytime overthrow each other ...

        Isn ' t It ?