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\title{Early Kings of Norway, by Thomas Carlyle}

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\title{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}


\author{Thomas Carlyle}

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This public-domain text was scanned and proofed by Ron Burkey. It
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Revision B differs from the prior revision in that {}``--'' is everywhere
replaced with {}``---'' and the formatting of the book has been
made consistent with Carlyle's \emph{Heroes and Hero Worship}.

\begin{center}Revision B\\
Date: 01/29/2008\end{center}

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The Icelanders, in their long winter, had a great habit of writing;
and were, and still are, excellent in penmanship, says Dahlmann. It
is to this fact, that any little history there is of the Norse Kings
and their old tragedies, crimes and heroisms, is almost all due. The
Icelanders, it seems, not only made beautiful letters on their paper
or parchment, but were laudably observant and desirous of accuracy;
and have left us such a collection of narratives (\textit{Sagas},
literally {}``Says'') as, for quantity and quality, is unexampled
among rude nations. Snorro Sturleson's History of the Norse Kings
is built out of these old Sagas; and has in it a great deal of poetic
fire, not a little faithful sagacity applied in sifting and adjusting
these old Sagas; and, in a word, deserves, were it once well edited,
furnished with accurate maps, chronological summaries, \&c., to be
reckoned among the great history-books of the world. It is from these
sources, greatly aided by accurate, learned and unwearied Dahlmann,%
\footnote{J.\  G.\  Dahlmann, \textit{Geschichte von Dannemark}, 3 vols.\ 
8vo. Hamburg, 1840-1843. %
} the German Professor, that the following rough notes of the early
Norway Kings are hastily thrown together. In Histories of England
(Rapin's excepted) next to nothing has been shown of the many and
strong threads of connection between English affairs and Norse.

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\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER I. \textit{\emph{Harald}} \textit{\emph{Haarfagr}}\emph{.}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER I. \textit{\emph{Harald}}
\textit{\emph{Haarfagr}}\emph{.}}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{\textit{\emph{CHAPTER I}}}

Till about the Year of Grace 860 there were no kings in Norway, nothing
but numerous jarls,---essentially kinglets, each presiding over a
kind of republican or parliamentary little territory; generally striving
each to be on some terms of human neighborhood with those about him,
but,---in spite of {}``\textit{Fylke Things}'' (Folk Things, little
parish parliaments), and small combinations of these, which had gradually
formed themselves,---often reduced to the unhappy state of quarrel
with them. Harald Haarfagr was the first to put an end to this state
of things, and become memorable and profitable to his country by uniting
it under one head and making a kingdom of it; which it has continued
to be ever since. His father, Halfdan the Black, had already begun
this rough but salutary process,---inspired by the cupidities and
instincts, by the faculties and opportunities, which the good genius
of this world, beneficent often enough under savage forms, and diligent
at all times to diminish anarchy as the world's worst savagery, usually
appoints in such cases,---conquest, hard fighting, followed by wise
guidance of the conquered;---but it was Harald the Fairhaired, his
son, who conspicuously carried it on and completed it. Harald's birth-year,
death-year, and chronology in general, are known only by inference
and computation; but, by the latest reckoning, he died about the year
933 of our era, a man of eighty-three.

The business of conquest lasted Harald about twelve years (A.D. 860-872?),
in which he subdued also the vikings of the out-islands, Orkneys,
Shetlands, Hebrides, and Man. Sixty more years were given him to consolidate
and regulate what he had conquered, which he did with great judgment,
industry and success. His reign altogether is counted to have been
of over seventy years.

The beginning of his great adventure was of a romantic character.---youthful
love for the beautiful Gyda, a then glorious and famous young lady
of those regions, whom the young Harald aspired to marry. Gyda answered
his embassy and prayer in a distant, lofty manner: {}``Her it would
not beseem to wed any Jarl or poor creature of that kind; let him
do as Gorm of Denmark, Eric of Sweden, Egbert of England, and others
had done,---subdue into peace and regulation the confused, contentious
bits of jarls round him, and become a king; then, perhaps, she might
think of his proposal: till then, not.'' Harald was struck with this
proud answer, which rendered Gyda tenfold more desirable to him. He
vowed to let his hair grow, never to cut or even to comb it till this
feat were done, and the peerless Gyda his own. He proceeded accordingly
to conquer, in fierce battle, a Jarl or two every year, and, at the
end of twelve years, had his unkempt (and almost unimaginable) head
of hair clipt off,---Jarl Rognwald (\textit{Reginald}) of More, the
most valued and valuable of all his subject-jarls, being promoted
to this sublime barber function;---after which King Harald, with head
thoroughly cleaned, and hair grown, or growing again to the luxuriant
beauty that had no equal in his day, brought home his Gyda, and made
her the brightest queen in all the north. He had after her, in succession,
or perhaps even simultaneously in some cases, at least six other wives;
and by Gyda herself one daughter and four sons.

Harald was not to be considered a strict-living man, and he had a
great deal of trouble, as we shall see, with the tumultuous ambition
of his sons; but he managed his government, aided by Jarl Rognwald
and others, in a large, quietly potent, and successful manner; and
it lasted in this royal form till his death, after sixty years of
it.

These were the times of Norse colonization; proud Norsemen flying
into other lands, to freer scenes,---to Iceland, to the Faroe Islands,
which were hitherto quite vacant (tenanted only by some mournful hermit,
Irish Christian \textit{fakir}, or so); still more copiously to the
Orkney and Shetland Isles, the Hebrides and other countries where
Norse squatters and settlers already were. Settlement of Iceland,
we say; settlement of the Faroe Islands, and, by far the notablest
of all, settlement of Normandy by Rolf the Ganger (A.D.\ 876?).%
\footnote{{}``Settlement,'' dated 912, by Munch, Henault, \&c. The Saxon Chronicle
says (anno 876): {}``In this year Rolf overran Normandy with his
army, and he reigned fifty winters.'' %
}

Rolf, son of Rognwald,%
\footnote{Dahlmann, ii.\ 87. %
} was lord of three little islets far north, near the Fjord of Folden,
called the Three Vigten Islands; but his chief means of living was
that of sea robbery; which, or at least Rolf's conduct in which, Harald
did not approve of. In the Court of Harald, sea-robbery was strictly
forbidden as between Harald's own countries, but as against foreign
countries it continued to be the one profession for a gentleman; thus,
I read, Harald's own chief son, King Eric that afterwards was, had
been at sea in such employments ever since his twelfth year. Rolf's
crime, however, was that in coming home from one of these expeditions,
his crew having fallen short of victual, Rolf landed with them on
the shore of Norway, and in his strait, drove in some cattle there
(a crime by law) and proceeded to kill and eat; which, in a little
while, he heard that King Harald was on foot to inquire into and punish;
whereupon Rolf the Ganger speedily got into his ships again, got to
the coast of France with his sea-robbers, got infeftment by the poor
King of France in the fruitful, shaggy desert which is since called
Normandy, land of the Northmen; and there, gradually felling the forests,
banking the rivers, tilling the fields, became, during the next two
centuries, Wilhelmus Conquaestor, the man famous to England, and momentous
at this day, not to England alone, but to all speakers of the English
tongue, now spread from side to side of the world in a wonderful degree.
Tancred of Hauteville and his Italian Normans, though important too,
in Italy, are not worth naming in comparison. This is a feracious
earth, and the grain of mustard-seed will grow to miraculous extent
in some cases.

Harald's chief helper, counsellor, and lieutenant was the above-mentioned
Jarl Rognwald of More, who had the honor to cut Harald's dreadful
head of hair. This Rognwald was father of Turf-Einar, who first invented
peat in the Orkneys, finding the wood all gone there; and is remembered
to this day. Einar, being come to these islands by King Harald's permission,
to see what he could do in them,---islands inhabited by what miscellany
of Picts, Scots, Norse squatters we do not know,---found the indispensable
fuel all wasted. Turf-Einar too may be regarded as a benefactor to
his kind. He was, it appears, a bastard; and got no coddling from
his father, who disliked him, partly perhaps, because {}``he was
ugly and blind of an eye,\char`\"{}---got no flattering even on
his conquest of the Orkneys and invention of peat. Here is the parting
speech his father made to him on fitting him out with a {}``long-ship''
(ship of war, {}``dragon-ship,'' ancient seventy-four), and sending
him forth to make a living for himself in the world: {}``It were
best if thou never camest back, for I have small hope that thy people
will have honor by thee; thy mother's kin throughout is slavish.''

Harald Haarfagr had a good many sons and daughters; the daughters
he married mostly to jarls of due merit who were loyal to him; with
the sons, as remarked above, he had a great deal of trouble. They
were ambitious, stirring fellows, and grudged at their finding so
little promotion from a father so kind to his jarls; sea-robbery by
no means an adequate career for the sons of a great king, two of them,
Halfdan Haaleg (Long-leg), and Gudrod Ljome (Gleam), jealous of the
favors won by the great Jarl Rognwald.\  surrounded him in his house
one night, and burnt him and sixty men to death there. That was the
end of Rognwald, the invaluable jarl, always true to Haarfagr; and
distinguished in world history by producing Rolf the Ganger, author
of the Norman Conquest of England, and Turf-Einar, who invented peat
in the Orkneys. Whether Rolf had left Norway at this time there is
no chronology to tell me. As to Rolf's surname, {}``Ganger,'' there
are various hypotheses; the likeliest, perhaps, that Rolf was so weighty
a man no horse (small Norwegian horses, big ponies rather) could carry
him, and that he usually walked, having a mighty stride withal, and
great velocity on foot.

One of these murderers of Jarl Rognwald quietly set himself in Rognwald's
place, the other making for Orkney to serve Turf-Einar in like fashion.
Turf-Einar, taken by surprise, fled to the mainland; but returned,
days or perhaps weeks after, ready for battle, fought with Halfdan,
put his party to flight, and at next morning's light searched the
island and slew all the men he found. As to Halfdan Long-leg himself,
in fierce memory of his own murdered father, Turf-Einar {}``cut an
eagle on his back,'' that is to say, hewed the ribs from each side
of the spine and turned them out like the wings of a spread-eagle:
a mode of Norse vengeance fashionable at that time in extremely aggravated
cases!

Harald Haarfagr, in the mean time, had descended upon the Rognwald
scene, not in mild mood towards the new jarl there; indignantly dismissed
said jarl, and appointed a brother of Rognwald (brother, notes Dahlmann),
though Rognwald had left other sons. Which done, Haarfagr sailed with
all speed to the Orkneys, there to avenge that cutting of an eagle
on the human back on Turf-Einar's part. Turf-Einar did not resist;
submissively met the angry Haarfagr, said he left it all, what had
been done, what provocation there had been, to Haarfagr's own equity
and greatness of mind. Magnanimous Haarfagr inflicted a fine of sixty
marks in gold, which was paid in ready money by Turf-Einar, and so
the matter ended.


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER II. \textit{\emph{Eric}} \textit{\emph{Blood}}\emph{-}\textit{\emph{axe}}
\textit{\emph{and}} \textit{\emph{Brothers}}\emph{.}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER II. \textit{\emph{Eric}} \textit{\emph{Blood}}\emph{-}\textit{\emph{axe}}
\textit{\emph{and}} \textit{\emph{Brothers}}}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{\textit{\emph{CHAPTER II}}}

In such violent courses Haarfagr's sons, I know not how many of them,
had come to an untimely end; only Eric, the accomplished sea-rover,
and three others remained to him. Among these four sons, rather impatient
for property and authority of their own, King Harald, in his old days,
tried to part his kingdom in some eligible and equitable way, and
retire from the constant press of business, now becoming burdensome
to him. To each of them he gave a kind of kingdom; Eric, his eldest
son, to be head king, and the others to be feudatory under him, and
pay a certain yearly contribution; an arrangement which did not answer
well at all. Head-King Eric insisted on his tribute; quarrels arose
as to the payment, considerable fighting and disturbance, bringing
fierce destruction from King Eric upon many valiant but too stubborn
Norse spirits, and among the rest upon all his three brothers, which
got him from the Norse populations the surname of \textit{Blod-axe},
{}``Eric Blood-axe,'' his title in history. One of his brothers
he had killed in battle before his old father's life ended; this brother
was Bjorn, a peaceable, improving, trading economic Under-king, whom
the others mockingly called {}``Bjorn the Chapman.'' The great-grandson
of this Bjorn became extremely distinguished by and by as \textit{Saint}
Olaf. Head-King Eric seems to have had a violent wife, too. She was
thought to have poisoned one of her other brothers-in-law. Eric Blood-axe
had by no means a gentle life of it in this world, trained to sea-robbery
on the coasts of England, Scotland, Ireland and France, since his
twelfth year.

Old King Fairhair, at the age of seventy, had another son, to whom
was given the name of Hakon. His mother was a slave in Fairhair's
house; slave by ill-luck of war, though nobly enough born. A strange
adventure connects this Hakon with England and King Athelstan, who
was then entering upon his great career there. Short while after this
Hakon came into the world, there entered Fairhair's palace, one evening
as Fairhair sat Feasting, an English ambassador or messenger, bearing
in his hand, as gift from King Athelstan, a magnificent sword, with
gold hilt and other fine trimmings, to the great Harald, King of Norway.
Harald took the sword, drew it, or was half drawing it, admiringly
from the scabbard, when the English excellency broke into a scornful
laugh, {}``Ha, ha; thou art now the feudatory of my English king;
thou hast accepted the sword from him, and art now his man!'' (acceptance
of a sword in that manner being the symbol of investiture in those
days.) Harald looked a trifle flurried, it is probable; but held in
his wrath, and did no damage to the tricksy Englishman. He kept the
matter in his mind, however, and next summer little Hakon, having
got his weaning done,---one of the prettiest, healthiest little creatures,---Harald
sent him off, under charge of {}``Hauk'' (Hawk so called), one of
his Principal, warriors, with order, {}``Take him to England,''
and instructions what to do with him there. And accordingly, one evening,
Hauk, with thirty men escorting, strode into Athelstan's high dwelling
(where situated, how built, whether with logs like Harald's, I cannot
specifically say), into Athelstan's high presence, and silently set
the wild little cherub upon Athelstan's knee. {}``What is this?''
asked Athelstan, looking at the little cherub. {}``This is King Harald's
son, whom a serving-maid bore to him, and whom he now gives thee as
foster-child!'' Indignant Athelstan drew his sword, as if to do the
gift a mischief; but Hauk said, {}``Thou hast taken him on thy knee
{[}common symbol of adoption{]}; thou canst kill him if thou wilt;
but thou dost not thereby kill all the sons of Harald.'' Athelstan
straightway took milder thoughts; brought up, and carefully educated
Hakon; from whom, and this singular adventure, came, before very long,
the first tidings of Christianity into Norway.

Harald Haarfagr, latterly withdrawn from all kinds of business, died
at the age of eighty-three---about A.D.\ 933, as is computed; nearly
contemporary in death with the first Danish King, Gorm the Old, who
had done a corresponding feat in reducing Denmark under one head.
Remarkable old men, these two first kings; and possessed of gifts
for bringing Chaos a little nearer to the form of Cosmos; possessed,
in fact, of loyalties to Cosmos, that is to say, of authentic virtues
in the savage state, such as have been needed in all societies at
their incipience in this world; a kind of {}``virtues'' hugely in
discredit at present, but not unlikely to be needed again, to the
astonishment of careless persons, before all is done!


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER III. \textit{\emph{Hakon}} \textit{\emph{the}}
\textit{\emph{Good}}\emph{.}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER III. \textit{\emph{Hakon}}
\textit{\emph{the}} \textit{\emph{Good}}}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{CHAPTER III}

Eric Blood-axe, whose practical reign is counted to have begun about
A.D.\ 930, had by this time, or within a year or so of this time,
pretty much extinguished all his brother kings, and crushed down recalcitrant
spirits, in his violent way; but had naturally become entirely unpopular
in Norway, and filled it with silent discontent and even rage against
him. Hakon Fairhair's last son, the little foster-child of Athelstan
in England, who had been baptized and carefully educated, was come
to his fourteenth or fifteenth year at his father's death; a very
shining youth, as Athelstan saw with just pleasure. So soon as the
few preliminary preparations had been settled, Hakon, furnished with
a ship or two by Athelstan, suddenly appeared in Norway got acknowledged
by the Peasant Thing in Trondhjem {}``the news of which flew over
Norway, like fire through dried grass,'' says an old chronicler.
So that Eric, with his Queen Gunhild, and seven small children, had
to run; no other shift for Eric. They went to the Orkneys first of
all, then to England, and he {}``got Northumberland as earldom,''
I vaguely hear, from Athelstan. But Eric soon died, and his queen,
with her children, went back to the Orkneys in search of refuge or
help; to little purpose there or elsewhere. From Orkney she went to
Denmark, where Harald Blue-tooth took her poor eldest boy as foster-child;
but I fear did not very faithfully keep that promise. The Danes had
been robbing extensively during the late tumults in Norway; this the
Christian Hakon, now established there, paid in kind, and the two
countries were at war; so that Gunhild's little boy was a welcome
card in the hand of Blue-tooth.

Hakon proved a brilliant and successful king; regulated many things,
public law among others (\textit{Gule-Thing} Law, \textit{Frost-Thing}
Law: these are little codes of his accepted by their respective Things,
and had a salutary effect in their time); with prompt dexterity he
drove back the Blue-tooth foster-son invasions every time they came;
and on the whole gained for himself the name of Hakon the Good. These
Danish invasions were a frequent source of trouble to him, but his
greatest and continual trouble was that of extirpating heathen idolatry
from Norway, and introducing the Christian Evangel in its stead. His
transcendent anxiety to achieve this salutary enterprise was all along
his grand difficulty and stumbling-block; the heathen opposition to
it being also rooted and great. Bishops and priests from England Hakon
had, preaching and baptizing what they could, but making only slow
progress; much too slow for Hakon's zeal. On the other hand, every
Yule-tide, when the chief heathen were assembled in his own palace
on their grand sacrificial festival, there was great pressure put
upon Hakon, as to sprinkling with horse-blood, drinking Yule-beer,
eating horse-flesh, and the other distressing rites; the whole of
which Hakon abhorred, and with all his steadfastness strove to reject
utterly. Sigurd, Jarl of Lade (Trondhjem), a liberal heathen, not
openly a Christian, was ever a wise counsellor and conciliator in
such affairs; and proved of great help to Hakon. Once, for example,
there having risen at a Yule-feast, loud, almost stormful demand that
Hakon, like a true man and brother, should drink Yule-beer with them
in their sacred hightide, Sigurd persuaded him to comply, for peace's
sake, at least, in form. Hakon took the cup in his left hand (excellent
hot \textit{beer}), and with his right cut the sign of the cross above
it, then drank a draught. {}``Yes; but what is this with the king's
right hand?'' cried the company. {}``Don't you see?'' answered
shifty Sigurd; {}``he makes the sign of Thor's hammer before drinking!''
which quenched the matter for the time.

Horse-flesh, horse-broth, and the horse ingredient generally, Hakon
all but inexorably declined. By Sigurd's pressing exhortation and
entreaty, he did once take a kettle of horsebroth by the handle, with
a good deal of linen-quilt or towel interposed, and did open his lips
for what of steam could insinuate itself. At another time he consented
to a particle of horse-liver, intending privately, I guess, to keep
it outside the gullet, and smuggle it away without swallowing; but
farther than this not even Sigurd could persuade him to go. At the
Things held in regard to this matter Hakon's success was always incomplete;
now and then it was plain failure, and Hakon had to draw back till
a better time. Here is one specimen of the response he got on such
an occasion; curious specimen, withal, of antique parliamentary eloquence
from an Anti-Christian Thing.

At a Thing of all the Fylkes of Trondhjem, Thing held at Froste in
that region, King Hakon, with all the eloquence he had, signified
that it was imperatively necessary that all Bonders and sub-Bonders
should become Christians, and believe in one God, Christ the Son of
Mary; renouncing entirely blood sacrifices and heathen idols; should
keep every seventh day holy, abstain from labor that day, and even
from food, devoting the day to fasting and sacred meditation. Whereupon,
by way of universal answer, arose a confused universal murmur of entire
dissent. {}``Take away from us our old belief, and also our time
for labor!'' murmured they in angry astonishment; {}``how can even
the land be got tilled in that way?'' {}``We cannot work if we don't
get food,'' said the hand laborers and slaves. {}``It lies in King
Hakon's blood,'' remarked others; {}``his father and all his kindred
were apt to be stingy about food, though liberal enough with money.''
At length, one Osbjorn (or Bear of the Asen or Gods, what we now call
Osborne), one Osbjorn of Medalhusin Gulathal, stept forward, and said,
in a distinct manner, {}``We Bonders (peasant proprietors)thought,
King Hakon, when thou heldest thy first Thing-day here in Trondhjem,
and we took thee for our king, and received our hereditary lands from
thee again that we had got heaven itself. But now we know not how
it is, whether we have won freedom, or whether thou intendest anew
to make us slaves, with this wonderful proposal that we should renounce
our faith, which our fathers before us have held, and all our ancestors
as well, first in the age of burial by burning, and now in that of
earth burial; and yet these departed ones were much our superiors,
and their faith, too, has brought prosperity to us. Thee, at the same
time, we have loved so much that we raised thee to manage all the
laws of the land, and speak as their voice to us all. And even now
it is our will and the vote of all Bonders to keep that paction which
thou gavest us here on the Thing at Froste, and to maintain thee as
king so long as any of us Bonders who are here upon the Thing has
life left, provided thou, king, wilt go fairly to work, and demand
of us only such things as are not impossible. But if thou wilt fix
upon this thing with so great obstinacy, and employ force and power,
in that case, we Bonders have taken the resolution, all of us, to
fall away from thee, and to take for ourselves another head, who will
so behave that we may enjoy in freedom the belief which is agreeable
to us. Now shalt thou, king, choose one of these two courses before
the Thing disperse.'' {}``Whereupon,'' adds the Chronicle, {}``all
the Bonders raised a mighty shout, `Yes, we will have it so, as has
been said.''' So that Jarl Sigurd had to intervene, and King Hakon
to choose for the moment the milder branch of the alternative.%
\footnote{Dahlmann, ii.\ 93. %
} At other Things Hakon was more or less successful. All his days,
by such methods as there were, he kept pressing forward with this
great enterprise; and on the whole did thoroughly shake asunder the
old edifice of heathendom, and fairly introduce some foundation for
the new and better rule of faith and life among his people. Sigurd,
Jarl of Lade, his wise counsellor in all these matters, is also a
man worthy of notice.

Hakon's arrangements against the continual invasions of Eric's sons,
with Danish Blue-tooth backing them, were manifold, and for a long
time successful. He appointed, after consultation and consent in the
various Things, so many war-ships, fully manned and ready, to be furnished
instantly on the King's demand by each province or fjord; watch-fires,
on fit places, from hill to hill all along the coast, were to be carefully
set up, carefully maintained in readiness, and kindled on any alarm
of war. By such methods Blue-tooth and Co.'s invasions were for a
long while triumphantly, and even rapidly, one and all of them, beaten
back, till at length they seemed as if intending to cease altogether,
and leave Hakon alone of them. But such was not their issue after
all. The sons of Eric had only abated under constant discouragement,
had not finally left off from what seemed their one great feasibility
in life. Gunhild, their mother, was still with them: a most contriving,
fierce-minded, irreconcilable woman, diligent and urgent on them,
in season and out of season; and as for King Blue-tooth, he was at
all times ready to help, with his good-will at least.

That of the alarm-fires on Hakon's part was found troublesome by his
people; sometimes it was even hurtful and provoking (lighting your
alarm-fires and rousing the whole coast and population, when it was
nothing but some paltry viking with a couple of ships); in short,
the alarm-signal system fell into disuse, and good King Hakon himself,
in the first place, paid the penalty. It is counted, by the latest
commentators, to have been about A.D.\ 961, sixteenth or seventeenth
year of Hakon's pious, valiant, and worthy reign. Being at a feast
one day, with many guests, on the Island of Stord, sudden announcement
came to him that ships from the south were approaching in quantity,
and evidently ships of war. This was the biggest of all the Blue-tooth
foster-son invasions; and it was fatal to Hakon the Good that night.
Eyvind the Skaldaspillir (annihilator of all other Skalds), in his
famed \textit{Hakon's Song}, gives account, and, still more pertinently,
the always practical Snorro. Danes in great multitude, six to one,
as people afterwards computed, springing swiftly to land, and ranking
themselves; Hakon, nevertheless, at once deciding not to take to his
ships and run, but to fight there, one to six; fighting, accordingly,
in his most splendid manner, and at last gloriously prevailing; routing
and scattering back to their ships and flight homeward these six-to-one
Danes. {}``During the struggle of the fight,'' says Snorro, {}``he
was very conspicuous among other men; and while the sun shone, his
bright gilded helmet glanced, and thereby many weapons were directed
at him. One of his henchmen, Eyvind Finnson (\textit{i.e.} Skaldaspillir,
the poet), took a hat, and put it over the king's helmet. Now, among
the hostile first leaders were two uncles of the Ericsons, brothers
of Gunhild, great champions both; Skreya, the elder of them, on the
disappearance of the glittering helmet, shouted boastfully, 'Does
the king of the Norsemen hide himself, then, or has he fled? Where
now is the golden helmet?' And so saying, Skreya, and his brother
Alf with him, pushed on like fools or madmen. The king said, 'Come
on in that way, and you shall find the king of the Norsemen.''' And
in a short space of time braggart Skreya did come up, swinging his
sword, and made a cut at the king; but Thoralf the Strong, an Icelander,
who fought at the king's side, dashed his shield so hard against Skreya,
that he tottered with the shock. On the same instant the king takes
his sword {}``quernbiter'' (able to cut \textit{querns} or millstones)
with both hands, and hews Skreya through helm and head, cleaving him
down to the shoulders. Thoralf also slew Alf. That was what they got
by such over-hasty search for the king of the Norsemen.%
\footnote{\textit{\emph{Laing's}} \textit{Snorro}, i.\ 344. %
}

Snorro considers the fall of these two champion uncles as the crisis
of the fight; the Danish force being much disheartened by such a sight,
and King Hakon now pressing on so hard that all men gave way before
him, the battle on the Ericson part became a whirl of recoil; and
in a few minutes more a torrent of mere flight and haste to get on
board their ships, and put to sea again; in which operation many of
them were drowned, says Snorro; survivors making instant sail for
Denmark in that sad condition.

This seems to have been King Hakon's finest battle, and the most conspicuous
of his victories, due not a little to his own grand qualities shown
on the occasion. But, alas! it was his last also. He was still zealously
directing the chase of that mad Danish flight, or whirl of recoil
towards their ships, when an arrow, shot Most likely at a venture,
hit him under the left armpit; and this proved his death.

He was helped into his ship, and made sail for Alrekstad, where his
chief residence in those parts was; but had to stop at a smaller place
of his (which had been his mother's, and where he himself was born)---a
place called Hella (the Flat Rock), still known as {}``Hakon's Hella,''
faint from loss of blood, and crushed down as he had never before
felt. Having no son and only one daughter, he appointed these invasive
sons of Eric to be sent for, and if he died to become king; but to
{}``spare his friends and kindred.'' {}``If a longer life be granted
me,'' he said, {}``I will go out of this land to Christian men,
and do penance for what I have committed against God. But if I die
in the country of the heathen, let me have such burial as you yourselves
think fittest.'' These are his last recorded words. And in heathen
fashion he was buried, and besung by Eyvind and the Skalds, though
himself a zealously Christian king. Hakon the \textit{Good}; so one
still finds him worthy of being called. The sorrow on Hakon's death,
Snorro tells us, was so great and universal, {}``that he was lamented
both by friends and enemies; and they said that never again would
Norway see such a king.''


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER IV. \textit{\emph{Harald}} \textit{\emph{Greyfell}}
\textit{\emph{and}} \textit{\emph{Brothers}}\emph{.}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER IV. \textit{\emph{Harald}}
\textit{\emph{Greyfell}} \textit{\emph{and}} \textit{\emph{Brothers}}}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{CHAPTER IV}

Eric's sons, four or five of them, with a Harald at the top, now at
once got Norway in hand, all of it but Trondhjem, as king and under-kings;
and made a severe time of it for those who had been, or seemed to
be, their enemies. Excellent Jarl Sigurd, always so useful to Hakon
and his country, was killed by them; and they came to repent that
before very long. The slain Sigurd left a son, Hakon, as Jarl, who
became famous in the northern world by and by. This Hakon, and him
only, would the Trondhjemers accept as sovereign. {}``Death to him,
then,'' said the sons of Eric, but only in secret, till they had
got their hands free and were ready; which was not yet for some years.
Nay, Hakon, when actually attacked, made good resistance, and threatened
to cause trouble. Nor did he by any means get his death from these
sons of Eric at this time, or till long afterwards at all, from one
of their kin, as it chanced. On the contrary, he fled to Denmark now,
and by and by managed to come back, to their cost.

Among their other chief victims were two cousins of their own, Tryggve
and Gudrod, who had been honest under-kings to the late head-king,
Hakon the Good; but were now become suspect, and had to fight for
their lives, and lose them in a tragic manner. Tryggve had a son,
whom we shall hear of. Gudrod, son of worthy Bjorn the Chapman, was
grandfather of Saint Olaf, whom all men have heard of,---who has a
church in Southwark even, and another in Old Jewry, to this hour.
In all these violences, Gunhild, widow of the late king Eric, was
understood to have a principal hand. She had come back to Norway with
her sons; and naturally passed for the secret adviser and Maternal
President in whatever of violence went on; always reckoned a fell,
vehement, relentless personage where her own interests were concerned.
Probably as things settled, her influence on affairs grew less. At
least one hopes so; and, in the Sagas, hears less and less of her,
and before long nothing.

Harald, the head-king in this Eric fraternity, does not seem to have
been a bad man,---the contrary indeed; but his position was untowardly,
full of difficulty and contradictions. Whatever Harald could accomplish
for behoof of Christianity, or real benefit to Norway, in these cross
circumstances, he seems to have done in a modest and honest manner.
He got the name of \textit{Greyfell} from his people on a very trivial
account, but seemingly with perfect good humor on their part. Some
Iceland trader had brought a cargo of furs to Trondhjem (Lade) for
sale; sale being slacker than the Icelander wished, he presented a
chosen specimen, cloak, doublet, or whatever it was, to Harald; who
wore it with acceptance in public, and rapidly brought disposal of
the Icelander's stock, and the surname of \textit{Greyfell} to himself.
His under-kings and he were certainly not popular, though I almost
think Greyfell himself, in absence of his mother and the under-kings,
might have been so. But here they all were, and had wrought great
trouble in Norway. {}``Too many of them,'' said everybody; {}``too
many of these courts and court people, eating up any substance that
there is.'' For the seasons withal, two or three of them in succession,
were bad for grass, much more for grain; no \textit{herring} came
either; very cleanness of teeth was like to come in Eyvind Skaldaspillir's
opinion. This scarcity became at last their share of the great Famine
Of A.D.\ 975, which desolated Western Europe (see the poem in the
Saxon Chronicle). And all this by Eyvind Skaldaspillir, and the heathen
Norse in general, was ascribed to anger of the heathen gods. Discontent
in Norway, and especially in Eyvind Skaldaspillir, seems to have been
very great.

Whereupon exile Hakon, Jarl Sigurd's son, bestirs himself in Denmark,
backed by old King Blue-tooth, and begins invading and encroaching
in a miscellaneous way; especially intriguing and contriving plots
all round him. An unfathomably cunning kind of fellow, as well as
an audacious and strong-handed! Intriguing in Trondhjem, where he
gets the under-king, Greyfell's brother, fallen upon and murdered;
intriguing with Gold Harald, a distinguished cousin or nephew of King
Blue-tooth's, who had done fine viking work, and gained, such wealth
that he got the epithet of {}``Gold,'' and who now was infinitely
desirous of a share in Blue-tooth's kingdom as the proper finish to
these sea-rovings. He even ventured one day to make publicly a distinct
proposal that way to King Harald Blue-tooth himself; who flew into
thunder and lightning at the mere mention of it; so that none durst
speak to him for several days afterwards. Of both these Haralds Hakon
was confidential friend; and needed all his skill to walk without
immediate annihilation between such a pair of dragons, and work out
Norway for himself withal. In the end he found he must take solidly
to Blue-tooth's side of the question; and that they two must provide
a recipe for Gold Harald and Norway both at once.

{}``It is as much as your life is worth to speak again of sharing
this Danish kingdom,'' said Hakon very privately to Gold Harald;
{}``but could not you, my golden friend, be content with Norway for
a kingdom, if one helped you to it?''

{}``That could I well,'' answered Harald.

{}``Then keep me those nine war-ships you have just been rigging
for a new viking cruise; have these in readiness when I lift my finger!''

That was the recipe contrived for Gold Harald; recipe for King Greyfell
goes into the same vial, and is also ready.

Hitherto the Hakon-Blue-tooth disturbances in Norway had amounted
to but little. King Greyfell, a very active and valiant man, has constantly,
without much difficulty, repelled these sporadic bits of troubles;
but Greyfell, all the same, would willingly have peace with dangerous
old Blue-tooth (ever anxious to get his clutches over Norway on any
terms) if peace with him could be had. Blue-tooth, too, professes
every willingness; inveigles Greyfell, he and Hakon do; to have a
friendly meeting on the Danish borders, and not only settle all these
quarrels, but generously settle Greyfell in certain fiefs which he
claimed in Denmark itself; and so swear everlasting friendship. Greyfell
joyfully complies, punctually appears at the appointed day in Lymfjord
Sound, the appointed place. Whereupon Hakon gives signal to Gold Harald,
{}``To Lymfjord with these nine ships of yours, swift!'' Gold Harald
flies to Lymfjord with his ships, challenges King Harald Greyfell
to land and fight; which the undaunted Greyfell, though so far outnumbered,
does; and, fighting his very best, perishes there, he and almost all
his people. Which done, Jarl Hakon, who is in readiness, attacks Gold
Harald, the victorious but the wearied; easily beats Gold Harald,
takes him prisoner, and instantly hangs and ends him, to the huge
joy of King Blue-tooth and Hakon; who now make instant voyage to Norway;
drive all the brother under-kings into rapid flight to the Orkneys,
to any readiest shelter; and so, under the patronage of Blue-tooth,
Hakon, with the title of Jarl, becomes ruler of Norway. This foul
treachery done on the brave and honest Harald Greyfell is by some
dated about A.D.\ 969, by Munch, 965, by others, computing out of
Snorro only, A.D.\ 975. For there is always an uncertainty in these
Icelandic dates (say rather, rare and rude attempts at dating, without
even an {}``A.D.'' or other fixed {}``year one'' to go upon in
Iceland), though seldom, I think, so large a discrepancy as here.


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER V. \textit{\emph{Hakon}} \textit{\emph{Jarl}}\emph{.}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER V. \textit{\emph{Hakon}} \textit{\emph{Jarl}}\emph{.}}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{CHAPTER V}

Hakon Jarl, such the style he took, had engaged to pay some kind of
tribute to King Blue-tooth, {}``if he could;'' but he never did
pay any, pleading always the necessity of his own affairs; with which
excuse, joined to Hakon's readiness in things less important, King
Blue-tooth managed to content himself, Hakon being always his good
neighbor, at least, and the two mutually dependent. In Norway, Hakon,
without the title of king, did in a strong-handed, steadfast, and
at length, successful way, the office of one; governed Norway (some
count) for above twenty years; and, both at home and abroad, had much
consideration through most of that time; specially amongst the heathen
orthodox, for Hakon Jarl himself was a zealous heathen, fixed in his
mind against these chimerical Christian innovations and unsalutary
changes of creed, and would have gladly trampled out all traces of
what the last two kings (for Greyfell, also, was an English Christian
after his sort) had done in this respect. But he wisely discerned
that it was not possible, and that, for peace's sake, he must not
even attempt it, but must strike preferably into {}``perfect toleration,''
and that of {}``every one getting to heaven or even to the other
goal in his own way.'' He himself, it is well known, repaired many
heathen temples (a great {}``church builder'' in his way!), manufactured
many splendid idols, with much gilding and such artistic ornament
as there was,---in particular, one huge image of Thor, not forgetting
the hammer and appendages, and such a collar (supposed of solid gold,
which it was not quite, as we shall hear in time) round the neck of
him as was never seen in all the North. How he did his own Yule festivals,
with what magnificent solemnity, the horse-eatings, blood-sprinklings,
and other sacred rites, need not be told. Something of a {}``Ritualist,''
one may perceive; perhaps had Scandinavian Puseyisms in him, and other
desperate heathen notions. He was universally believed to have gone
into magic, for one thing, and to have dangerous potencies derived
from the Devil himself. The dark heathen mind of him struggling vehemently
in that strange element, not altogether so unlike our own in some
points.

For the rest, he was evidently, in practical matters, a man of sharp,
clear insight, of steadfast resolution, diligence, promptitude; and
managed his secular matters uncommonly well. Had sixteen Jarls under
him, though himself only Hakon Jarl by title; and got obedience from
them stricter than any king since Haarfagr had done. Add to which
that the country had years excellent for grass and crop, and that
the herrings came in exuberance; tokens, to the thinking mind, that
Hakon Jarl was a favorite of Heaven.

His fight with the far-famed Jomsvikings was his grandest exploit
in public rumor. Jomsburg, a locality not now known, except that it
was near the mouth of the River Oder, denoted in those ages the impregnable
castle of a certain hotly corporate, or {}``Sea Robbery Association
(limited),'' which, for some generations, held the Baltic in terror,
and plundered far beyond the Belt,---in the ocean itself, in Flanders
and the opulent trading havens there,---above all, in opulent anarchic
England, which, for forty years from about this time, was the pirates'
Goshen; and yielded, regularly every summer, slaves, Danegelt, and
miscellaneous plunder, like no other country Jomsburg or the viking-world
had ever known. Palnatoke, Bue, and the other quasi-heroic heads of
this establishment are still remembered in the northern parts.\ 
\textit{Palnatoke} is the title of a tragedy by Oehlenschlager, which
had its run of immortality in Copenhagen some sixty or seventy years
ago.

I judge the institution to have been in its floweriest state, probably
now in Hakon Jarl's time. Hakon Jarl and these pirates, robbing Hakon's
subjects and merchants that frequented him, were naturally in quarrel;
and frequent fightings had fallen out, not generally to the profit
of the Jomsburgers, who at last determined on revenge, and the rooting
out of this obstructive Hakon Jarl. They assembled in force at the
Cape of Stad,---in the Firda Fylke; and the fight was dreadful in
the extreme, noise of it filling all the north for long afterwards.
Hakon, fighting like a lion, could scarcely hold his own,---Death
or Victory, the word on both sides; when suddenly, the heavens grew
black, and there broke out a terrific storm of thunder and hail, appalling
to the human mind,---universe swallowed wholly in black night; only
the momentary forked-blazes, the thunder-pealing as of Ragnarok, and
the battering hail-torrents, hailstones about the size of an egg.
Thor with his hammer evidently acting; but in behalf of whom? The
Jomsburgers in the hideous darkness, broken only by flashing thunder-bolts,
had a dismal apprehension that it was probably not on their behalf
(Thor having a sense of justice in him); and before the storm ended,
thirty-five of their seventy ships sheered away, leaving gallant Bue,
with the other thirty-five, to follow as they liked, who reproachfully
hailed these fugitives, and continued the now hopeless battle. Bue's
nose and lips were smashed or cut away; Bue managed, half-articulately,
to exclaim, {}``Ha! the maids ('mays') of Funen will never kiss me
more. Overboard, all ye Bue's men!'' And taking his two sea-chests,
with all the gold he had gained in such life-struggle from of old,
sprang overboard accordingly, and finished the affair. Hakon Jarl's
renown rose naturally to the transcendent pitch after this exploit.
His people, I suppose chiefly the Christian part of them, whispered
one to another, with a shudder, {}``That in the blackest of the thunder-storm,
he had taken his youngest little boy, and made away with him; sacrificed
him to Thor or some devil, and gained his victory by art-magic, or
something worse.'' Jarl Eric, Hakon's eldest son, without suspicion
of art-magic, but already a distinguished viking, became thrice distinguished
by his style of sea-fighting in this battle; and awakened great expectations
in the viking public; of him we shall hear again.

The Jomsburgers, one might fancy, after this sad clap went visibly
down in the world; but the fact is not altogether so. Old King Blue-tooth
was now dead, died of a wound got in battle with his unnatural (so-called
{}``natural'') son and successor, Otto Svein of the Forked Beard,
afterwards king and conqueror of England for a little while; and seldom,
perhaps never, had vikingism been in such flower as now. This man's
name is Sven in Swedish, Svend in German, and means boy or lad,---the
English {}``swain.'' It was at old {}``Father Bluetooth's funeral-ale''
(drunken burial-feast), that Svein, carousing with his Jomsburg chiefs
and other choice spirits, generally of the robber class, all risen
into height of highest robber enthusiasm, pledged the vow to one another;
Svein that he would conquer England (which, in a sense, he, after
long struggling, did); and the Jomsburgers that they would ruin and
root out Hakon Jarl (which, as we have just seen, they could by no
means do), and other guests other foolish things which proved equally
unfeasible. Sea-robber volunteers so especially abounding in that
time, one perceives how easily the Jomsburgers could recruit themselves,
build or refit new robber fleets, man them with the pick of crews,
and steer for opulent, fruitful England; where, under Ethelred the
Unready, was such a field for profitable enterprise as the viking
public never had before or since.

An idle question sometimes rises on me,---idle enough, for it never
can be answered in the affirmative or the negative, Whether it was
not these same refitted Jomsburgers who appeared some while after
this at Red Head Point, on the shore of Angus, and sustained a new
severe beating, in what the Scotch still faintly remember as their
{}``Battle of Loncarty''? Beyond doubt a powerful Norse-pirate armament
dropt anchor at the Red Head, to the alarm of peaceable mortals, about
that time. It was thought and hoped to be on its way for England,
but it visibly hung on for several days, deliberating (as was thought)
whether they would do this poorer coast the honor to land on it before
going farther. Did land, and vigorously plunder and burn south-westward
as far as Perth; laid siege to Perth; but brought out King Kenneth
on them, and produced that {}``Battle of Loncarty'' which still
dwells in vague memory among the Scots. Perhaps it might be the Jomsburgers;
perhaps also not; for there were many pirate associations, lasting
not from century to century like the Jomsburgers, but only for very
limited periods, or from year to year; indeed, it was mainly by such
that the splendid thief-harvest of England was reaped in this disastrous
time. No Scottish chronicler gives the least of exact date to their
famed victory of Loncarty, only that it was achieved by Kenneth III.,
which will mean some time between A.D.\ 975 and 994; and, by the
order they put it in, probably soon after A.D.\ 975, or the beginning
of this Kenneth's reign. Buchanan's narrative, carefully distilled
from all the ancient Scottish sources, is of admirable quality for
style and otherwise quiet, brief, with perfect clearness, perfect
credibility even, except that semi-miraculous appendage of the Ploughmen,
Hay and Sons, always hanging to the tail of it; the grain of possible
truth in which can now never be extracted by man's art!%
\footnote{G.\ Buchanani \textit{Opera Omnia}, i.\ 103, 104 (Curante Ruddimano,
Edinburgi, 1715). %
} In brief, what we know is, fragments of ancient human bones and armor
have occasionally been ploughed up in this locality, proof positive
of ancient fighting here; and the fight fell out not long after Hakon's
beating of the Jomsburgers at the Cape of Stad. And in such dim glimmer
of wavering twilight, the question whether these of Loncarty were
refitted Jomsburgers or not, must be left hanging. Loncarty is now
the biggest bleach-field in Queen Victoria's dominions; no village
or hamlet there, only the huge bleaching-house and a beautiful field,
some six or seven miles northwest of Perth, bordered by the beautiful
Tay river on the one side, and by its beautiful tributary Almond on
the other; a Loncarty fitted either for bleaching linen, or for a
bit of fair duel between nations, in those simple times.

Whether our refitted Jomsburgers had the least thing to do with it
is only matter of fancy, but if it were they who here again got a
good beating, fancy would be glad to find herself fact. The old piratical
kings of Denmark had been at the founding of Jomsburg, and to Svein
of the Forked Beard it was still vitally important, but not so to
the great Knut, or any king that followed; all of whom had better
business than mere thieving; and it was Magnus the Good, of Norway,
a man of still higher anti-anarchic qualities, that annihilated it,
about a century later.

Hakon Jarl, his chief labors in the world being over, is said to have
become very dissolute in his elder days, especially in the matter
of women; the wretched old fool, led away by idleness and fulness
of bread, which to all of us are well said to be the parents of mischief.
Having absolute power, he got into the habit of openly plundering
men's pretty daughters and wives from them, and, after a few weeks,
sending them back; greatly to the rage of the fierce Norse heart,
had there been any means of resisting or revenging. It did, after
a little while, prove the ruin and destruction of Hakon the Rich,
as he was then called. It opened the door, namely, for entry of Olaf
Tryggveson upon the scene,---a very much grander man; in regard to
whom the wiles and traps of Hakon proved to be a recipe, not on Tryggveson,
but on the wily Hakon himself, as shall now be seen straightway.


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER VI. \textit{\emph{Olaf}} \textit{\emph{Tryggveson}}\emph{.}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER VI. \textit{\emph{Olaf}} \textit{\emph{Tryggveson}}\emph{.}}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{CHAPTER VI}

Hakon, in late times, had heard of a famous stirring person, victorious
in various lands and seas, latterly united in sea-robbery with Svein,
Prince Royal of Denmark, afterwards King Svein of the Double-beard
(\char`\"{}\textit{Zvae Skiaeg}'', \textit{Twa Shag}) or fork-beard,
both of whom had already done transcendent feats in the viking way
during this copartnery. The fame of Svein, and this stirring personage,
whose name was {}``Ole,'' and, recently, their stupendous feats
in plunder of England, siege of London, and other wonders and splendors
of viking glory and success, had gone over all the North, awakening
the attention of Hakon and everybody there. The name of {}``Ole''
was enigmatic, mysterious, and even dangerous-looking to Hakon Jarl;
who at length sent out a confidential spy to investigate this {}``Ole;''
a feat which the confidential spy did completely accomplish,---by
no means to Hakon's profit! The mysterious {}``Ole'' proved to be
no other than Olaf, son of Tryggve, destined to blow Hakon Jarl suddenly
into destruction, and become famous among the heroes of the Norse
world.

Of Olaf Tryggveson one always hopes there might, one day, some real
outline of a biography be written; fished from the abysses where (as
usual) it welters deep in foul neighborhood for the present. Farther
on we intend a few words more upon the matter. But in this place all
that concerns us in it limits itself to the two following facts first,
that Hakon's confidential spy {}``found Ole in Dublin;'' picked
acquaintance with him, got him to confess that he was actually Olaf,
son of Tryggve (the Tryggve, whom Blood-axe's fierce widow and her
sons had murdered); got him gradually to own that perhaps an expedition
into Norway might have its chances; and finally that, under such a
wise and loyal guidance as his (the confidential spy's, whose friendship
for Tryggveson was so indubitable), he (Tryggveson) would actually
try it upon Hakon Jarl, the dissolute old scoundrel. Fact second is,
that about the time they two set sail from Dublin on their Norway
expedition, Hakon Jarl removed to Trondhjem, then called Lade; intending
to pass some months there.

Now just about the time when Tryggveson, spy, and party had landed
in Norway, and were advancing upon Lade, with what support from the
public could be got, dissolute old Hakon Jarl had heard of one Gudrun,
a Bonder's wife, unparalleled in beauty, who was called in those parts,
{}``Sunbeam of the Grove'' (so inexpressibly lovely); and sent off
a couple of thralls to bring her to him. {}``Never,'' answered Gudrun;
{}``never,'' her indignant husband; in a tone dangerous and displeasing
to these Court thralls; who had to leave rapidly, but threatened to
return in better strength before long. Whereupon, instantly, the indignant
Bonder and his Sunbeam of the Grove sent out their war-arrow, rousing
all the country into angry promptitude, and more than one perhaps
into greedy hope of revenge for their own injuries. The rest of Hakon's
history now rushes on with extreme rapidity.

Sunbeam of the Grove, when next demanded of her Bonder, has the whole
neighborhood assembled in arms round her; rumor of Tryggveson is fast
making it the whole country. Hakon's insolent messengers are cut in
pieces; Hakon finds he cannot fly under cover too soon. With a single
slave he flies that same night;---but whitherward? Can think of no
safe place, except to some old mistress of his, who lives retired
in that neighborhood, and has some pity or regard for the wicked old
Hakon. Old mistress does receive him, pities him, will do all she
can to protect and hide him. But how, by what uttermost stretch of
female artifice hide him here; every one will search here first of
all! Old mistress, by the slave's help, extemporizes a cellar under
the floor of her pig-house; sticks Hakon and slave into that, as the
one safe seclusion she can contrive. Hakon and slave, begrunted by
the pigs above them, tortured by the devils within and about them,
passed two days in circumstances more and more horrible. For they
heard, through their light-slit and breathing-slit, the triumph of
Tryggveson proclaiming itself by Tryggveson's own lips, who had mounted
a big boulder near by and was victoriously speaking to the people,
winding up with a promise of honors and rewards to whoever should
bring him wicked old Hakon's head. Wretched Hakon, justly suspecting
his slave, tried to at least keep himself awake. Slave did keep himself
awake till Hakon dozed or slept, then swiftly cut off Hakon's head,
and plunged out with it to the presence of Tryggveson. Tryggveson,
detesting the traitor, useful as the treachery was, cut off the slave's
head too, had it hung up along with Hakon's on the pinnacle of the
Lade Gallows, where the populace pelted both heads with stones and
many curses, especially the more important of the two. {}``Hakon
the Bad'' ever henceforth, instead of Hakon the Rich.

This was the end of Hakon Jarl, the last support of heathenry in Norway,
among other characteristics he had: a stronghanded, hard-headed, very
relentless, greedy and wicked being. He is reckoned to have ruled
in Norway, or mainly ruled, either in the struggling or triumphant
state, for about thirty years (965-995?). He and his seemed to have
formed, by chance rather than design, the chief opposition which the
Haarfagr posterity throughout its whole course experienced in Norway.
Such the cost to them of killing good Jarl Sigurd, in Greyfell's time!
For {}``curses, like chickens,'' do sometimes visibly {}``come
home to feed,'' as they always, either visibly or else invisibly,
are punctually sure to do.

Hakon Jarl is considerably connected with the \textit{Faroer Saga}
often mentioned there, and comes out perfectly in character; an altogether
worldly-wise man of the roughest type, not without a turn for practicality
of kindness to those who would really be of use to him. His tendencies
to magic also are not forgotten.

Hakon left two sons, Eric and Svein, often also mentioned in this
Saga. On their father's death they fled to Sweden, to Denmark, and
were busy stirring up troubles in those countries against Olaf Tryggveson;
till at length, by a favorable combination, under their auspices chiefly,
they got his brief and noble reign put an end to. Nay, furthermore,
Jarl Eric left sons, especially an elder son, named also Eric, who
proved a sore affliction, and a continual stone of stumbling to a
new generation of Haarfagrs, and so continued the curse of Sigurd's
murder upon them.

Towards the end of this Hakon's reign it was that the discovery of
America took place (985). Actual discovery, it appears, by Eric the
Red, an Icelander; concerning which there has been abundant investigation
and discussion in our time.\  \textit{Ginnungagap} (Roaring Abyss)
is thought to be the mouth of Behring's Straits in Baffin's Bay; \textit{Big
Helloland}, the coast from Cape Walsingham to near Newfoundland; \textit{Little
Helloland}, Newfoundland itself.\  \textit{Markland} was Lower Canada,
New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Southward thence to Chesapeake Bay
was called \textit{Wine Land} (wild grapes still grow in Rhode Island,
and more luxuriantly further south).\  \textit{White Man's Land},
called also \textit{Great Ireland}, is supposed to mean the two Carolinas,
down to the Southern Cape of Florida. In Dahlmann's opinion, the Irish
themselves might even pretend to have probably been the first discoverers
of America; they had evidently got to Iceland itself before the Norse
exiles found it out. It appears to be certain that, from the end of
the tenth century to the early part of the fourteenth, there was a
dim knowledge of those distant shores extant in the Norse mind, and
even some straggling series of visits thither by roving Norsemen;
though, as only danger, difficulty, and no profit resulted, the visits
ceased, and the whole matter sank into oblivion, and, but for the
Icelandic talent of writing in the long winter nights, would never
have been heard of by posterity at all.


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER VII. Reign \textit{\emph{of}} \textit{\emph{Olaf}}
\textit{\emph{Tryggveson}}\emph{.}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER VII. Reign \textit{\emph{of}}
\textit{\emph{Olaf}} \textit{\emph{Tryggveson}}}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{CHAPTER VII}

Olaf Tryggveson (A.D.\ 995-1000) also makes a great figure in the
\textit{Faroer Saga}, and recounts there his early troubles, which
were strange and many. He is still reckoned a grand hero of the North,
though his \textit{vates} now is only Snorro Sturleson of Iceland.
Tryggveson had indeed many adventures in the world. His poor mother,
Astrid, was obliged to fly, on murder of her husband by Gunhild,---to
fly for life, three months before he, her little Olaf, was born. She
lay concealed in reedy islands, fled through trackless forests; reached
her father's with the little baby in her arms, and lay deep-hidden
there, tended only by her father himself; Gunhild's pursuit being
so incessant, and keen as with sleuth-hounds. Poor Astrid had to fly
again, deviously to Sweden, to Esthland (Esthonia), to Russia. In
Esthland she was sold as a slave, quite parted from her boy,---who
also was sold, and again sold; but did at last fall in with a kinsman
high in the Russian service; did from him find redemption and help,
and so rose, in a distinguished manner, to manhood, victorious self-help,
and recovery of his kingdom at last. He even met his mother again,
he as king of Norway, she as one wonderfully lifted out of darkness
into new life and happiness still in store.

Grown to manhood, Tryggveson,---now become acquainted with his birth,
and with his, alas, hopeless claims,---left Russia for the one profession
open to him, that of sea-robbery; and did feats without number in
that questionable line in many seas and scenes,---in England latterly,
and most conspicuously of all. In one of his courses thither, after
long labors in the Hebrides, Man, Wales, and down the western shores
to the very Land's End and farther, he paused at the Scilly Islands
for a little while. He was told of a wonderful Christian hermit living
strangely in these sea-solitudes; had the curiosity to seek him out,
examine, question, and discourse with him; and, after some reflection,
accepted Christian baptism from the venerable man. In Snorro the story
is involved in miracle, rumor, and fable; but the fact itself seems
certain, and is very interesting; the great, wild, noble soul of fierce
Olaf opening to this wonderful gospel of tidings from beyond the world,
tidings which infinitely transcended all else he had ever heard or
dreamt of! It seems certain he was baptized here; date not fixable;
shortly before poor heart-broken Dunstan's death, or shortly after;
most English churches, monasteries especially, lying burnt, under
continual visitation of the Danes. Olaf such baptism notwithstanding,
did not quit his viking profession; indeed, what other was there for
him in the world as yet?

We mentioned his occasional copartneries with Svein of the Double-beard,
now become King of Denmark, but the greatest of these, and the alone
interesting at this time, is their joint invasion of England, and
Tryggveson's exploits and fortunes there some years after that adventure
of baptism in the Scilly Isles. Svein and he {}``were above a year
in England together,'' this time: they steered up the Thames with
three hundred ships and many fighters; siege, or at least furious
assault, of London was their first or main enterprise, but it did
not succeed. The Saxon Chronicle gives date to it, A.D.\ 994, and
names expressly, as Svein's co-partner, {}``Olaus, king of Norway,\char`\"{}---which
he was as yet far from being; but in regard to the Year of Grace the
Saxon Chronicle is to be held indisputable, and, indeed, has the field
to itself in this matter. Famed Olaf Tryggveson, seen visibly at the
siege of London, year 994, it throws a kind of momentary light to
us over that disastrous whirlpool of miseries and confusions, all
dark and painful to the fancy otherwise! This big voyage and furious
siege of London is Svein Double-beard's first real attempt to fulfil
that vow of his at Father Blue-tooth's {}``funeral ale,'' and conquer
England,---which it is a pity he could not yet do. Had London now
fallen to him, it is pretty evident all England must have followed,
and poor England, with Svein as king over it, been delivered from
immeasurable woes, which had to last some two-and-twenty years farther,
before this result could be arrived at. But finding London impregnable
for the moment (no ship able to get athwart the bridge, and many Danes
perishing in the attempt to do it by swimming), Svein and Olaf turned
to other enterprises; all England in a manner lying open to them,
turn which way they liked. They burnt and plundered over Kent, over
Hampshire, Sussex; they stormed far and wide; world lying all before
them where to choose. Wretched Ethelred, as the one invention he could
fall upon, offered them Danegelt (16,000 pounds of silver this year,
but it rose in other years as high as 48,000 pounds); the desperate
Ethelred, a clear method of quenching fire by pouring oil on it! Svein
and Olaf accepted; withdrew to Southampton,---Olaf at least did,---till
the money was got ready. Strange to think of, fierce Svein of the
Double-beard, and conquest of England by him; this had at last become
the one salutary result which remained for that distracted, down-trodden,
now utterly chaotic and anarchic country. A conquering Svein, followed
by an ably and earnestly administrative, as well as conquering, Knut
(whom Dahlmann compares to Charlemagne), were thus by the mysterious
destinies appointed the effective saviors of England.

Tryggveson, on this occasion, was a good while at Southampton; and
roamed extensively about, easily victorious over everything, if resistance
were attempted, but finding little or none; and acting now in a peaceable
or even friendly capacity. In the Southampton country he came in contact
with the then Bishop of Winchester, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury,
excellent Elphegus, still dimly decipherable to us as a man of great
natural discernment, piety, and inborn veracity; a hero-soul, probably
of real brotherhood with Olaf's own. He even made court visits to
King Ethelred; one visit to him at Andover of a very serious nature.
By Elphegus, as we can discover, he was introduced into the real depths
of the Christian faith. Elphegus, with due solemnity of apparatus,
in presence of the king, at Andover, baptized Olaf anew, and to him
Olaf engaged that he would never plunder in England any more; which
promise, too, he kept. In fact, not long after, Svein's conquest of
England being in an evidently forward state, Tryggveson (having made,
withal, a great English or Irish marriage,---a dowager Princess, who
had voluntarily fallen in love with him,---see Snorro for this fine
romantic fact!) mainly resided in our island for two or three years,
or else in Dublin, in the precincts of the Danish Court there in the
Sister Isle. Accordingly it was in Dublin, as above noted, that Hakon's
spy found him; and from the Liffey that his squadron sailed, through
the Hebrides, through the Orkneys, plundering and baptizing in their
strange way, towards such success as we have seen.

Tryggveson made a stout, and, in effect, victorious and glorious struggle
for himself as king. Daily and hourly vigilant to do so, often enough
by soft and even merry methods, for he was a witty, jocund man, and
had a fine ringing laugh in him, and clear pregnant words ever ready,---or
if soft methods would not serve, then by hard and even hardest he
put down a great deal of miscellaneous anarchy in Norway; was especially
busy against heathenism (devil-worship and its rites): this, indeed,
may be called the focus and heart of all his royal endeavor in Norway,
and of all the troubles he now had with his people there. For this
was a serious, vital, all-comprehending matter; devil-worship, a thing
not to be tolerated one moment longer than you could by any method
help! Olaf's success was intermittent, of varying complexion; but
his effort, swift or slow, was strong and continual; and on the whole
he did succeed. Take a sample or two of that wonderful conversion
process:---

At one of his first Things he found the Bonders all assembled in arms;
resolute to the death seemingly, against his proposal and him. Tryggveson
said little; waited impassive, {}``What your reasons are, good men?''
One zealous Bonder started up in passionate parliamentary eloquence;
but after a sentence or two, broke down; one, and then another, and
still another, and remained all three staring in open-mouthed silence
there! The peasant-proprietors accepted the phenomenon as ludicrous,
perhaps partly as miraculous withal, and consented to baptism this
time.

On another occasion of a Thing, which had assembled near some heathen
temple to meet him,---temple where Hakon Jarl had done much repairing,
and set up many idol figures and sumptuous ornaments, regardless of
expense, especially a very big and splendid Thor, with massive gold
collar round the neck of him, not the like of it in Norway,---King
Olaf Tryggveson was clamorously invited by the Bonders to step in
there, enlighten his eyes, and partake of the sacred rites. Instead
of which he rushed into the temple with his armed men; smashed down,
with his own battle-axe, the god Thor, prostrate on the ground at
one stroke, to set an example; and, in a few minutes, had the whole
Hakon Pantheon wrecked; packing up meanwhile all the gold and preciosities
accumulated there (not forgetting Thor's illustrious gold collar,
of which we shall hear again), and victoriously took the plunder home
with him for his own royal uses and behoof of the state. In other
cases, though a friend to strong measures, he had to hold in, and
await the favorable moment. Thus once, in beginning a parliamentary
address, so soon as he came to touch upon Christianity, the Bonders
rose in murmurs, in vociferations and jingling of arms, which quite
drowned the royal voice; declared, they had taken arms against king
Hakon the Good to compel him to desist from his Christian proposals;
and they did not think King Olaf a higher man than him (Hakon the
Good). The king then said, {}``He purposed coming to them next Yule
to their great sacrificial feast, to see for himself what their customs
were,'' which pacified the Bonders for this time. The appointed place
of meeting was again a Hakon-Jarl Temple, not yet done to ruin; chief
shrine in those Trondhjem parts, I believe : there should Tryggveson
appear at Yule. Well, but before Yule came, Tryggveson made a great
banquet in his palace at Trondhjem, and invited far and wide, all
manner of important persons out of the district as guests there. Banquet
hardly done, Tryggveson gave some slight signal, upon which armed
men strode in, seized eleven of these principal persons, and the king
said: {}``Since he himself was to become a heathen again, and do
sacrifice, it was his purpose to do it in the highest form, namely,
that of Human Sacrifice; and this time not of slaves and malefactors,
but of the best men in the country!'' In which stringent circumstances
the eleven seized persons, and company at large, gave unanimous consent
to baptism; straightway received the same, and abjured their idols;
but were not permitted to go home till they had left, in sons, brothers,
and other precious relatives, sufficient hostages in the king's hands.

By unwearied industry of this and better kinds, Tryggveson had trampled
down idolatry, so far as form went,---how far in substance may be
greatly doubted. But it is to be remembered withal, that always on
the back of these compulsory adventures there followed English bishops,
priests and preachers; whereby to the open-minded, conviction, to
all degrees of it, was attainable, while silence and passivity became
the duty or necessity of the unconvinced party.

In about two years Norway was all gone over with a rough harrow of
conversion. Heathenism at least constrained to be silent and outwardly
conformable. Tryggveson, next turned his attention to Iceland, sent
one Thangbrand, priest from Saxony, of wonderful qualities, military
as well as theological, to try and convert Iceland. Thangbrand made
a few converts; for Olaf had already many estimable Iceland friends,
whom he liked much, and was much liked by; and conversion was the
ready road to his favor. Thangbrand, I find, lodged with Hall of Sida
(familiar acquaintance of {}``Burnt Njal,'' whose Saga has its admirers
among us even now). Thangbrand converted Hall and one or two other
leading men,; but in general he was reckoned quarrelsome and blusterous
rather than eloquent and piously convincing. Two skalds of repute
made biting lampoons upon Thangbrand, whom Thangbrand, by two opportunities
that offered, cut down and did to death because of their skaldic quality.
Another he killed with his own hand, I know not for what reason. In
brief, after about a year, Thangbrand returned to Norway and king
Olaf; declaring the Icelanders to be a perverse, satirical, and inconvertible
people, having himself, the record says, {}``been the death of three
men there.'' King Olaf was in high rage at this result; but was persuaded
by the Icelanders about him to try farther, and by a wilder instrument.
He accordingly chose one Thormod, a pious, patient, and kindly man,
who, within the next year or so, did actually accomplish the matter;
namely, get Christianity, by open vote, declared at Thingvalla by
the general Thing of Iceland there; the roar of a big thunder-clap
at the right moment rather helping the conclusion, if I recollect.
Whereupon Olaf's joy was no doubt great.

One general result of these successful operations was the discontent,
to all manner of degrees, on the part of many Norse individuals, against
this glorious and victorious, but peremptory and terrible king of
theirs. Tryggveson, I fancy, did not much regard all that; a man of
joyful, cheery temper, habitually contemptuous of danger. Another
trivial misfortune that befell in these conversion operations, and
became important to him, he did not even know of, and would have much
despised if he had. It was this: Sigrid, queen dowager of Sweden,
thought to be amongst the most shining women of the world, was also
known for one of the most imperious, revengeful, and relentless, and
had got for herself the name of Sigrid the Proud. In her high widowhood
she had naturally many wooers; but treated them in a manner unexampled.
Two of her suitors, a simultaneous Two, were, King Harald Graenske
(a cousin of King Tryggveson's, and kind of king in some district,
by sufferance of the late Hakon's),---this luckless Graenske and the
then Russian Sovereign as well, name not worth mentioning, were zealous
suitors of Queen Dowager Sigrid, and were perversely slow to accept
the negative, which in her heart was inexorable for both, though the
expression of it could not be quite so emphatic. By ill-luck for them
they came once,---from the far West, Graenske; from the far East,
the Russian;---and arrived both together at Sigrid's court, to prosecute
their importunate, and to her odious and tiresome suit; much, how
very much, to her impatience and disdain. She lodged them both in
some old mansion, which she had contiguous, and got compendiously
furnished for them; and there, I know not whether on the first or
on the second, or on what following night, this unparalleled Queen
Sigrid had the house surrounded, set on fire, and the two suitors
and their people burnt to ashes! No more of bother from these two
at least! This appears to be a fact; and it could not be unknown to
Tryggveson.

In spite of which, however, there went from Tryggveson, who was now
a widower, some incipient marriage proposals to this proud widow;
by whom they were favorably received; as from the brightest man in
all the world, they might seem worth being. Now, in one of these anti-heathen
onslaughts of King Olaf's on the idol temples of Hakon---(I think
it was that case where Olaf's own battle-axe struck down the monstrous
refulgent Thor, and conquered an immense gold ring from the neck of
him, or from the door of his temple),---a huge gold ring, at any rate,
had come into Olaf's hands; and this he bethought him might be a pretty
present to Queen Sigrid, the now favorable, though the proud. Sigrid
received the ring with joy; fancied what a collar it would make for
her own fair neck; but noticed that her two goldsmiths, weighing it
on their fingers, exchanged a glance. {}``What is that?'' exclaimed
Queen Sigrid. {}``Nothing,'' answered they, or endeavored to answer,
dreading mischief. But Sigrid compelled them to break open the ring;
and there was found, all along the inside of it, an occult ring of
copper, not a heart of gold at all! {}``Ha,'' said the proud Queen,
flinging it away, {}``he that could deceive in this matter can deceive
in many others!'' And was in hot wrath with Olaf; though, by degrees,
again she took milder thoughts.

Milder thoughts, we say; and consented to a meeting next autumn, at
some half-way station, where their great business might be brought
to a happy settlement and betrothment. Both Olaf Tryggveson and the
high dowager appear to have been tolerably of willing mind at this
meeting; but Olaf interposed, what was always one condition with him,
{}``Thou must consent to baptism, and give up thy idol-gods.'' {}``They
are the gods of all my forefathers,'' answered the lady, {}``choose
thou what gods thou pleasest, but leave me mine.'' Whereupon an altercation;
and Tryggveson, as was his wont, towered up into shining wrath, and
exclaimed at last, {}``Why should I care about thee then, old faded
heathen creature?'' And impatiently wagging his glove, hit her, or
slightly switched her, on the face with it, and contemptuously turning
away, walked out of the adventure. {}``This is a feat that may cost
thee dear one day,'' said Sigrid. And in the end it came to do so,
little as the magnificent Olaf deigned to think of it at the moment.

One of the last scuffles I remember of Olaf's having with his refractory
heathens, was at a Thing in Hordaland or Rogaland, far in the North,
where the chief opposition hero was one Jaernskaegg (\char`\"{}ironbeard'')
Scottice (\char`\"{}Airn-shag,'' as it were!). Here again was a
grand heathen temple, Hakon Jarl's building, with a splendid Thor
in it and much idol furniture. The king stated what was his constant
wish here as elsewhere, but had no sooner entered upon the subject
of Christianity than universal murmur, rising into clangor and violent
dissent, interrupted him, and Ironbeard took up the discourse in reply.
Ironbeard did not break down; on the contrary, he, with great brevity,
emphasis, and clearness, signified {}``that the proposal to reject
their old gods was in the highest degree unacceptable to this Thing;
that it was contrary to bargain, withal; so that if it were insisted
on, they would have to fight with the king about it; and in fact were
now ready to do so.'' In reply to this, Olaf, without word uttered,
but merely with some signal to the trusty armed men he had with him,
rushed off to the temple close at hand; burst into it, shutting the
door behind him; smashed Thor and Co.\ to destruction; then reappearing
victorious, found much confusion outside, and, in particular, what
was a most important item, the rugged Ironbeard done to death by Olaf's
men in the interim. Which entirely disheartened the Thing from fighting
at that moment; having now no leader who dared to head them in so
dangerous an enterprise. So that every one departed to digest his
rage in silence as he could.

Matters having cooled for a week or two, there was another Thing held;
in which King Olaf testified regret for the quarrel that had fallen
out, readiness to pay what \textit{mulct} was due by law for that
unlucky homicide of Ironbeard by his people; and, withal, to take
the fair daughter of Ironbeard to wife, if all would comply and be
friends with him in other matters; which was the course resolved on
as most convenient: accept baptism, we; marry Jaernskaegg's daughter,
you. This bargain held on both sides. The wedding, too, was celebrated,
but that took rather a strange turn. On the morning of the bride-night,
Olaf, who had not been sleeping, though his fair partner thought he
had, opened his eyes, and saw, with astonishment, the fair partner
aiming a long knife ready to strike home upon him! Which at once ended
their wedded life; poor Demoiselle Ironbeard immediately bundling
off with her attendants home again; King Olaf into the apartment of
his servants, mentioning there what had happened, and forbidding any
of them to follow her.

Olaf Tryggveson, though his kingdom was the smallest of the Norse
Three, had risen to a renown over all the Norse world, which neither
he of Denmark nor he of Sweden could pretend to rival. A magnificent,
far-shining man; more expert in all {}``bodily exercises'' as the
Norse call them, than any man had ever been before him, or after was.
Could keep five daggers in the air, always catching the proper fifth
by its handle, and sending it aloft again; could shoot supremely,
throw a javelin with either hand; and, in fact, in battle usually
throw two together. These, with swimming, climbing, leaping, were
the then admirable Fine Arts of the North; in all which Tryggveson
appears to have been the Raphael and the Michael Angelo at once. Essentially
definable, too, if we look well into him, as a wild bit of real heroism,
in such rude guise and environment; a high, true, and great human
soul. A jovial burst of laughter in him, withal; a bright, airy, wise
way of speech; dressed beautifully and with care; a man admired and
loved exceedingly by those he liked; dreaded as death by those he
did not like. {}``Hardly any king,'' says Snorro, {}``was ever
so well obeyed; by one class out of zeal and love, by the rest out
of dread.'' His glorious course, however, was not to last long.

King Svein of the Double-Beard had not yet completed his conquest
of England,---by no means yet, some thirteen horrid years of that
still before him!---when, over in Denmark, he found that complaints
against him and intricacies had arisen, on the part principally of
one Burislav, King of the Wends (far up the Baltic), and in a less
degree with the King of Sweden and other minor individuals. Svein
earnestly applied himself to settle these, and have his hands free.
Burislav, an aged heathen gentleman, proved reasonable and conciliatory;
so, too, the King of Sweden, and Dowager Queen Sigrid, his managing
mother. Bargain in both these cases got sealed and crowned by marriage.
Svein, who had become a widower lately, now wedded Sigrid; and might
think, possibly enough, he had got a proud bargain, though a heathen
one. Burislav also insisted on marriage with Princess Thyri, the Double-Beard's
sister. Thyri, inexpressibly disinclined to wed an aged heathen of
that stamp, pleaded hard with her brother; but the Double-Bearded
was inexorable; Thyri's wailings and entreaties went for nothing.
With some guardian foster-brother, and a serving-maid or two, she
had to go on this hated journey. Old Burislav, at sight of her, blazed
out into marriage-feast of supreme magnificence, and was charmed to
see her; but Thyri would not join the marriage party; refused to eat
with it or sit with it at all. Day after day, for six days, flatly
refused; and after nightfall of the sixth, glided out with her foster-brother
into the woods, into by-paths and inconceivable wanderings; and, in
effect, got home to Denmark. Brother Svein was not for the moment
there; probably enough gone to England again. But Thyri knew too well
he would not allow her to stay here, or anywhere that he could help,
except with the old heathen she had just fled from.

Thyri, looking round the world, saw no likely road for her, but to
Olaf Tryggveson in Norway; to beg protection from the most heroic
man she knew of in the world. Olaf, except by renown, was not known
to her; but by renown he well was. Olaf, at sight of her, promised
protection and asylum against all mortals. Nay, in discoursing with
Thyri Olaf perceived more and more clearly what a fine handsome being,
soul and body, Thyri was; and in a short space of time winded up by
proposing marriage to Thyri; who, humbly, and we may fancy with what
secret joy, consented to say yes, and become Queen of Norway. In the
due months they had a little son, Harald; who, it is credibly recorded,
was the joy of both his parents; but who, to their inexpressible sorrow,
in about a year died, and vanished from them. This, and one other
fact now to be mentioned, is all the wedded history we have of Thyri.

The other fact is, that Thyri had, by inheritance or covenant, not
depending on her marriage with old Burislav, considerable properties
in Wendland; which, she often reflected, might be not a little behooveful
to her here in Norway, where her civil-list was probably but straitened.
She spoke of this to her husband; but her husband would take no hold,
merely made her gifts, and said, {}``Pooh, pooh, can't we live without
old Burislav and his Wendland properties?'' So that the lady sank
into ever deeper anxiety and eagerness about this Wendland object;
took to weeping; sat weeping whole days; and when Olaf asked, {}``What
ails thee, then?'' would answer, or did answer once, {}``What a
different man my father Harald Gormson was {[}vulgarly called Blue-tooth{]},
compared with some that are now kings! For no King Svein in the world
would Harald Gormson have given up his own or his wife's just rights!''
Whereupon Tryggveson started up, exclaiming in some heat, {}``Of
thy brother Svein I never was afraid; if Svein and I meet in contest,
it will not be Svein, I believe, that conquers;'' and went off in
a towering fume. Consented, however, at last, had to consent, to get
his fine fleet equipped and armed, and decide to sail with it to Wendland
to have speech and settlement with King Burislav.

Tryggveson had already ships and navies that were the wonder of the
North. Especially in building war ships, the Crane, the Serpent, last
of all the Long Serpent,%
\footnote{His Long Serpent, judged by some to be of the size of a frigate of
forty-five guns (Laing). %
}---he had, for size, for outward beauty, and inward perfection of
equipment, transcended all example.

This new sea expedition became an object of attention to all neighbors;
especially Queen Sigrid the Proud and Svein Double-Beard, her now
king, were attentive to it.

{}``This insolent Tryggveson,'' Queen Sigrid would often say, and
had long been saying, to her Svein, {}``to marry thy sister without
leave had or asked of thee; and now flaunting forth his war navies,
as if he, king only of paltry Norway, were the big hero of the North!
Why do you suffer it, you kings really great?''

By such persuasions and reiterations, King Svein of Denmark, King
Olaf of Sweden, and Jarl Eric, now a great man there, grown rich by
prosperous sea robbery and other good management, were brought to
take the matter up, and combine strenuously for destruction of King
Olaf Tryggveson on this grand Wendland expedition of his. Fleets and
forces were with best diligence got ready; and, withal, a certain
Jarl Sigwald, of Jomsburg, chieftain of the Jomsvikings, a powerful,
plausible, and cunning man, was appointed to find means of joining
himself to Tryggveson's grand voyage, of getting into Tryggveson's
confidence, and keeping Svein Double-Beard, Eric, and the Swedish
King aware of all his movements.

King Olaf Tryggveson, unacquainted with all this, sailed away in summer,
with his splendid fleet; went through the Belts with prosperous winds,
under bright skies, to the admiration of both shores. Such a fleet,
with its shining Serpents, long and short, and perfection of equipment
and appearance, the Baltic never saw before. Jarl Sigwald joined with
new ships by the way: {}``Had,'' he too, {}``a visit to King Burislav
to pay; how could he ever do it in better company?'' and studiously
and skilfully ingratiated himself with King Olaf. Old Burislav, when
they arrived, proved altogether courteous, handsome, and amenable;
agreed at once to Olaf's claims for his now queen, did the rites of
hospitality with a generous plenitude to Olaf; who cheerily renewed
acquaintance with that country, known to him in early days (the cradle
of his fortunes in the viking line), and found old friends there still
surviving, joyful to meet him again. Jarl Sigwald encouraged these
delays, King Svein and Co.\ not being yet quite ready. {}``Get ready!''
Sigwald directed them, and they diligently did. Olaf's men, their
business now done, were impatient to be home; and grudged every day
of loitering there; but, till Sigwald pleased, such his power of flattering
and cajoling Tryggveson, they could not get away.

At length, Sigwald's secret messengers reporting all ready on the
part of Svein and Co., Olaf took farewell of Burislav and Wendland,
and all gladly sailed away. Svein, Eric, and the Swedish king, with
their combined fleets, lay in wait behind some cape in a safe little
bay of some island, then called Svolde, but not in our time to be
found; the Baltic tumults in the fourteenth century having swallowed
it, as some think, and leaving us uncertain whether it was in the
neighborhood of Rugen Island or in the Sound of Elsinore. There lay
Svein, Eric, and Co.\ waiting till Tryggveson and his fleet came
up, Sigwald's spy messengers daily reporting what progress he and
it had made. At length, one bright summer morning, the fleet made
appearance, sailing in loose order, Sigwald, as one acquainted with
the shoal places, steering ahead, and showing them the way.

Snorro rises into one of his pictorial fits, seized with enthusiasm
at the thought of such a fleet, and reports to us largely in what
order Tryggveson's winged Coursers of the Deep, in long series, for
perhaps an hour or more, came on, and what the three potentates, from
their knoll of vantage, said of each as it hove in sight, Svein thrice
over guessed this and the other noble vessel to be the Long Serpent;
Eric, always correcting him, {}``No, that is not the Long Serpent
yet'' (and aside always), {}``Nor shall you be lord of it, king,
when it does come.'' The Long Serpent itself did make appearance.
Eric, Svein, and the Swedish king hurried on board, and pushed out
of their hiding-place into the open sea. Treacherous Sigwald, at the
beginning of all this, had suddenly doubled that cape of theirs, and
struck into the bay out of sight, leaving the foremost Tryggveson
ships astonished, and uncertain what to do, if it were not simply
to strike sail and wait till Olaf himself with the Long Serpent arrived.

Olaf's chief captains, seeing the enemy's huge fleet come out, and
how the matter lay, strongly advised King Olaf to elude this stroke
of treachery, and, with all sail, hold on his course, fight being
now on so unequal terms. Snorro says, the king, high on the quarter-deck
where he stood, replied, {}``Strike the sails; never shall men of
mine think of flight. I never fled from battle. Let God dispose of
my life; but flight I will never take.'' And so the battle arrangements
immediately began, and the battle with all fury went loose; and lasted
hour after hour, till almost sunset, if I well recollect. {}``Olaf
stood on the Serpent's quarter-deck,'' says Snorro, {}``high over
the others. He had a gilt shield and a helmet inlaid with gold; over
his armor he had a short red coat, and was easily distinguished from
other men.'' Snorro's account of the battle is altogether animated,
graphic, and so minute that antiquaries gather from it, if so disposed
(which we but little are), what the methods of Norse sea-fighting
were; their shooting of arrows, casting of javelins, pitching of big
stones, ultimately boarding, and mutual clashing and smashing, which
it would not avail us to speak of here. Olaf stood conspicuous all
day, throwing javelins, of deadly aim, with both hands at once; encouraging,
fighting and commanding like a highest sea-king.

The Danish fleet, the Swedish fleet, were, both of them, quickly dealt
with, and successively withdrew out of shot-range. And then Jarl Eric
came up, and fiercely grappled with the Long Serpent, or, rather,
with her surrounding comrades; and gradually, as they were beaten
empty of men, with the Long Serpent herself. The fight grew ever fiercer,
more furious. Eric was supplied with new men from the Swedes and Danes;
Olaf had no such resource, except from the crews of his own beaten
ships, and at length this also failed him; all his ships, except the
Long Serpent, being beaten and emptied. Olaf fought on unyielding.
Eric twice boarded him, was twice repulsed. Olaf kept his quarterdeck;
unconquerable, though left now more and more hopeless, fatally short
of help. A tall young man, called Einar Tamberskelver, very celebrated
and important afterwards in Norway, and already the best archer known,
kept busy with his bow. Twice he nearly shot Jarl Eric in his ship.
{}``Shoot me that man,'' said Jarl Eric to a bowman near him; and,
just as Tamberskelver was drawing his bow the third time, an arrow
hit it in the middle and broke it in two. {}``What is this that has
broken?'' asked King Olaf. {}``Norway from thy hand, king,'' answered
Tamberskelver. Tryggveson's men, he observed with surprise, were striking
violently on Eric's; but to no purpose: nobody fell. {}``How is this?''
asked Tryggveson. {}``Our swords are notched and blunted, king; they
do not cut.'' Olaf stept down to his arm-chest; delivered out new
swords; and it was observed as he did it, blood ran trickling from
his wrist; but none knew where the wound was. Eric boarded a third
time. Olaf, left with hardly more than one man, sprang overboard (one
sees that red coat of his still glancing in the evening sun), and
sank in the deep waters to his long rest.

Rumor ran among his people that he still was not dead; grounding on
some movement by the ships of that traitorous Sigwald, they fancied
Olaf had dived beneath the keels of his enemies, and got away with
Sigwald, as Sigwald himself evidently did. {}``Much was hoped, supposed,
spoken,'' says one old mourning Skald; {}``but the truth was, Olaf
Tryggveson was never seen in Norseland more.'' Strangely he remains
still a shining figure to us; the wildly beautifulest man, in body
and in soul, that one has ever heard of in the North.


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER VIII. \textit{\emph{Jarls}} \textit{\emph{Eric}}
\textit{\emph{and}} \textit{\emph{Svein}}\emph{.}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER VIII. \textit{\emph{Jarls}}
\textit{\emph{Eric}} \textit{\emph{and}} \textit{\emph{Svein}}}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{CHAPTER VIII}

Jarl Eric, splendent with this victory, not to speak of that over
the Jomsburgers with his father long ago, was now made Governor of
Norway: Governor or quasi-sovereign, with his brother, Jarl. Svein,
as partner, who, however, took but little hand in governing;---and,
under the patronage of Svein Double-Beard and the then Swedish king
(Olaf his name, Sigrid the Proud, his mother's), administered it,
they say, with skill and prudence for above fourteen years. Tryggveson's
death is understood and laboriously computed to have happened in the
year 1000; but there is no exact chronology in these things, but a
continual uncertain guessing after such; so that one eye in History
as regards them is as if put out;---neither indeed have I yet had
the luck to find any decipherable and intelligible map of Norway:
so that the other eye of History is much blinded withal, and her path
through those wild regions and epochs is an extremely dim and chaotic
one. An evil that much demands remedying, and especially wants some
first attempt at remedying, by inquirers into English History; the
whole period from Egbert, the first Saxon King of England, on to Edward
the Confessor, the last, being everywhere completely interwoven with
that of their mysterious, continually invasive {}``Danes,'' as they
call them, and inextricably unintelligible till these also get to
be a little understood, and cease to be utterly dark, hideous, and
mythical to us as they now are.

King Olaf Tryggveson is the first Norseman who is expressly mentioned
to have been in England by our English History books, new or old;
and of him it is merely said that he had an interview with King Ethelred
\textit{ii}.\ at Andover, of a pacific and friendly nature,---though
it is absurdly added that the noble Olaf was converted to Christianity
by that extremely stupid Royal Person. Greater contrast in an interview
than in this at Andover, between heroic Olaf Tryggveson and Ethelred
the forever Unready, was not perhaps seen in the terrestrial Planet
that day. Olaf or {}``Olaus,'' or {}``Anlaf,'' as they name him,
did {}``engage on oath to Ethelred not to invade England any more,''
and kept his promise, they farther say. Essentially a truth, as we
already know, though the circumstances were all different; and the
promise was to a devout High Priest, not to a crowned Blockhead and
cowardly Do-nothing. One other {}``Olaus'' I find mentioned in our
Books, two or three centuries before, at a time when there existed
no such individual; not to speak of several Anlafs, who sometimes
seem to mean Olaf and still oftener to mean nobody possible. Which
occasions not a little obscurity in our early History, says the learned
Selden. A thing remediable, too, in which, if any Englishman of due
genius (or even capacity for standing labor), who understood the Icelandic
and Anglo-Saxon languages, would engage in it, he might do a great
deal of good, and bring the matter into a comparatively lucid state.
Vain aspirations,---or perhaps not altogether vain.

At the time of Olaf Tryggveson's death, and indeed long before, King
Svein Double-Beard had always for chief enterprise the Conquest of
England, and followed it by fits with extreme violence and impetus;
often advancing largely towards a successful conclusion; but never,
for thirteen years yet, getting it concluded. He possessed long since
all England north of Watling Street. That is to say, Northumberland,
East Anglia (naturally full of Danish settlers by this time), were
fixedly his; Mercia, his oftener than not; Wessex itself, with all
the coasts, he was free to visit, and to burn and rob in at discretion.
There or elsewhere, Ethelred the Unready had no battle in him whatever;
and, for a forty years after the beginning of his reign, England excelled
in anarchic stupidity, murderous devastation, utter misery, platitude,
and sluggish contemptibility, all the countries one has read of. Apparently
a very opulent country, too; a ready skill in such arts and fine arts
as there were; Svein's very ships, they say, had their gold dragons,
top-mast pennons, and other metallic splendors generally wrought for
them in England. {}``Unexampled prosperity'' in the manufacture
way not unknown there, it would seem! But co-existing with such spiritual
bankruptcy as was also unexampled, one would hope. Read Lupus (Wulfstan),
Archbishop of York's amazing \textit{Sermon} on the subject,%
\footnote{This sermon was printed by Hearne; and is given also by Langebek in
his excellent Collection, \textit{Rerum Danicarum Scriptores Medii
Æri.} Hafniae.\  1772-1834. %
} addressed to contemporary audiences; setting forth such a state of
things,---sons selling their fathers, mothers, and sisters as Slaves
to the Danish robber; themselves living in debauchery, blusterous
gluttony, and depravity; the details of which are well-nigh incredible,
though clearly stated as things generally known,---the humor of these
poor wretches sunk to a state of what we may call greasy desperation,
{}``Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'' The manner in
which they treated their own English nuns, if young, good-looking,
and captive to the Danes; buying them on a kind of brutish or subter-brutish
{}``Greatest Happiness Principle'' (for the moment), and by a Joint-Stock
arrangement, far transcends all human speech or imagination, and awakens
in one the momentary red-hot thought, The Danes have served you right,
ye accursed! The so-called soldiers, one finds, made not the least
fight anywhere; could make none, led and guided as they were, and
the {}``Generals'' often enough traitors, always ignorant, and blockheads,
were in the habit, when expressly commanded to fight, of taking physic,
and declaring that nature was incapable of castor-oil and battle both
at once. This ought to be explained a little to the modern English
and their War-Secretaries, who undertake the conduct of armies. The
undeniable fact is, defeat on defeat was the constant fate of the
English; during these forty years not one battle in which they were
not beaten. No gleam of victory or real resistance till the noble
Edmund Ironside (whom it is always strange to me how such an Ethelred
could produce for son) made his appearance and ran his brief course,
like a great and far-seen meteor, soon extinguished without result.
No remedy for England in that base time, but yearly asking the victorious,
plundering, burning and murdering Danes, {}``How much money will
you take to go away?'' Thirty thousand pounds in silver, which the
annual \textit{Danegelt} soon rose to, continued to be about the average
yearly sum, though generally on the increasing hand; in the last year
I think it had risen to seventy-two thousand pounds in silver, raised
yearly by a tax (Income-tax of its kind, rudely levied), the worst
of all remedies, good for the day only. Nay, there was one remedy
still worse, which the miserable Ethelred once tried: that of massacring
{}``all the Danes settled in England'' (practically, of a few thousands
or hundreds of them), by treachery and a kind of Sicilian Vespers.
Which issued, as such things usually do, in terrible monition to you
not to try the like again! Issued, namely, in redoubled fury on the
Danish part; new fiercer invasion by Svein's Jarl Thorkel; then by
Svein himself; which latter drove the miserable Ethelred, with wife
and family, into Normandy, to wife's brother, the then Duke there;
and ended that miserable struggle by Svein's becoming King of England
himself. Of this disgraceful massacre, which it would appear has been
immensely exaggerated in the English books, we can happily give the
exact date (A.D.\ 1002); and also of Svein's victorious accession
(A.D. 1013),%
\footnote{Kennet, i.\ 67; Rapin, i.\ 119, 121 (from the \textit{Saxon Chronicle}
both). %
}---pretty much the only benefit one gets out of contemplating such
a set of objects.

King Svein's first act was to levy a terribly increased Income-Tax
for the payment of his army. Svein was levying it with a stronghanded
diligence, but had not yet done levying it, when, at Gainsborough
one night, he suddenly died; smitten dead, once used to be said, by
St. Edmund, whilom murdered King of the East Angles; who could not
bear to see his shrine and monastery of St.\ Edmundsbury plundered
by the Tyrant's tax-collectors, as they were on the point of being.
In all ways impossible, however,---Edmund's own death did not occur
till two years after Svein's. Svein's death, by whatever cause, befell
1014; his fleet, then lying in the Humber; and only Knut,%
\footnote{Knut born A.D.\ 988 according to Munch's calculation (ii. 126). %
} his eldest son (hardly yet eighteen, count some), in charge of it;
who, on short counsel, and arrangement about this questionable kingdom
of his, lifted anchor; made for Sandwich, a safer station at the moment;
{}``cut off the feet and noses'' (one shudders, and hopes not, there
being some discrepancy about it!) of his numerous hostages that had
been delivered to King Svein; set them ashore;---and made for Denmark,
his natural storehouse and stronghold, as the hopefulest first thing
he could do.

Knut soon returned from Denmark, with increase of force sufficient
for the English problem; which latter he now ended in a victorious,
and essentially, for himself and chaotic England, beneficent manner.
Became widely known by and by, there and elsewhere, as Knut the Great;
and is thought by judges of our day to have really merited that title.
A most nimble, sharp-striking, clear-thinking, prudent and effective
man, who regulated this dismembered and distracted England in its
Church matters, in its State matters, like a real King. Had a Standing
Army (\textit{House Carles}), who were well paid, well drilled and
disciplined, capable of instantly quenching insurrection or breakage
of the peace; and piously endeavored (with a signal earnestness, and
even devoutness, if we look well) to do justice to all men, and to
make all men rest satisfied with justice. In a word, he successfully
strapped up, by every true method and regulation, this miserable,
dislocated, and dissevered mass of bleeding Anarchy into something
worthy to be called an England again;---only that he died too soon,
and a second {}``Conqueror'' of us, still weightier of structure,
and under improved auspices, became possible, and was needed here!
To appearance, Knut himself was capable of being a Charlemagne of
England and the North (as has been already said or quoted), had he
only lived twice as long as he did. But his whole sum of years seems
not to have exceeded forty. His father Svein of the Forkbeard is reckoned
to have been fifty to sixty when St.\ Edmund finished him at Gainsborough.
We now return to Norway, ashamed of this long circuit which has been
a truancy more or less.


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER IX. \textit{\emph{King}} \textit{\emph{Olaf}}
\textit{\emph{the}} \textit{\emph{Thick}}-set's \textit{\emph{Viking}}
\textit{\emph{Days.}}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER IX. \textit{\emph{King}} \textit{\emph{Olaf}}
\textit{\emph{the}} \textit{\emph{Thick}}-set's \textit{\emph{Viking}}
\textit{\emph{Days}}}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{CHAPTER IX}

King Harald Graenske, who, with another from Russia accidentally lodging
beside him, got burned to death in Sweden, courting that unspeakable
Sigrid the Proud,---was third cousin or so to Tryggve, father of our
heroic Olaf. Accurately counted, he is great-grandson of Bjorn the
Chapman, first of Haarfagr's sons whom Eric Bloodaxe made away with.
His little {}``kingdom,'' as he called it, was a district named
the Greenland (\textit{Graeneland}); he himself was one of those little
Haarfagr kinglets whom Hakon Jarl, much more Olaf Tryggveson, was
content to leave reigning, since they would keep the peace with him.
Harald had a loving wife of his own, Aasta the name of her, soon expecting
the birth of her and his pretty babe, named Olaf,---at the time he
went on that deplorable Swedish adventure, the foolish, fated creature,
and ended self and kingdom altogether. Aasta was greatly shocked;
composed herself however; married a new husband, Sigurd Syr, a kinglet,
and a great-grandson of Harald Fairhair, a man of great wealth, prudence,
and influence in those countries; in whose house, as favorite and
well-beloved stepson, little Olaf was wholesomely and skilfully brought
up. In Sigurd's house he had, withal, a special tutor entertained
for him, one Rane, known as Rane the Far-travelled, by whom he could
be trained, from the earliest basis, in Norse accomplishments and
arts. New children came, one or two; but Olaf, from his mother, seems
always to have known that he was the distinguished and royal article
there. One day his Foster-father, hurrying to leave home on business,
hastily bade Olaf, no other being by, saddle his horse for him. Olaf
went out with the saddle, chose the biggest he-goat about, saddled
that, and brought it to the door by way of horse. Old Sigurd, a most
grave man, grinned sardonically at the sight. {}``Hah, I see thou
hast no mind to take commands from me; thou art of too high a humor
to take commands.'' To which, says Snorro, Boy Olaf answered little
except by laughing, till Sigurd saddled for himself, and rode away.
His mother Aasta appears to have been a thoughtful, prudent woman,
though always with a fierce royalism at the bottom of her memory,
and a secret implacability on that head.

At the age of twelve Olaf went to sea; furnished with a little fleet,
and skilful sea-counsellor, expert old Rane, by his Foster-father,
and set out to push his fortune in the world. Rane was a steersman
and counsellor in these incipient times; but the crew always called
Olaf {}``King,'' though at first, as Snorro thinks, except it were
in the hour of battle, he merely pulled an oar. He cruised and fought
in this capacity on many seas and shores; passed several years, perhaps
till the age of nineteen or twenty, in this wild element and way of
life; fighting always in a glorious and distinguished manner. In the
hour of battle, diligent enough {}``to amass property,'' as the
Vikings termed it; and in the long days and nights of sailing, given
over, it is likely, to his own thoughts and the unfathomable dialogue
with the ever-moaning Sea; not the worst High School a man could have,
and indeed infinitely preferable to the most that are going even now,
for a high and deep young soul.

His first distinguished expedition was to Sweden: natural to go thither
first, to avenge his poor father's death, were it nothing more. Which
he did, the Skalds say, in a distinguished manner; making victorious
and handsome battle for himself, in entering Maelare Lake; and in
getting out of it again, after being frozen there all winter, showing
still more surprising, almost miraculous contrivance and dexterity.
This was the first of his glorious victories, of which the Skalds
reckon up some fourteen or thirteen very glorious indeed, mostly in
the Western and Southern countries, most of all in England; till the
name of Olaf Haraldson became quite famous in the Viking and strategic
world. He seems really to have learned the secrets of his trade, and
to have been, then and afterwards, for vigilance, contrivance, valor,
and promptitude of execution, a superior fighter. Several exploits
recorded of him betoken, in simple forms, what may be called a military
genius.

The principal, and to us the alone interesting, of his exploits seem
to have lain in England, and, what is further notable, always on the
anti-Svein side. English books do not mention him at all that I can
find; but it is fairly credible that, as the Norse records report,
in the end of Ethelred's reign, he was the ally or hired general of
Ethelred, and did a great deal of sea-fighting, watching, sailing,
and sieging for this miserable king and Edmund Ironside, his son.
Snorro says expressly, London, the impregnable city, had to be besieged
again for Ethelred's behoof (in the interval between Svein's death
and young Knut's getting back from Denmark), and that our Olaf Haraldson
was the great engineer and victorious captor of London on that singular
occasion,---London captured for the first time. The Bridge, as usual,
Snorro says, offered almost insuperable obstacles. But the engineering
genius of Olaf contrived huge {}``platforms of wainscoting {[}old
walls of wooden houses, in fact{]}, bound together by withes;'' these,
carried steadily aloft above the ships, will (thinks Olaf) considerably
secure them and us from the destructive missiles, big boulder stones,
and other, mischief profusely showered down on us, till we get under
the Bridge with axes and cables, and do some good upon it. Olaf's
plan was tried; most of the other ships, in spite of their wainscoting
and withes, recoiled on reaching the Bridge, so destructive were the
boulder and other missile showers. But Olaf's ships and self got actually
under the Bridge; fixed all manner of cables there; and then, with
the river current in their favor, and the frightened ships rallying
to help in this safer part of the enterprise, tore out the important
piles and props, and fairly broke the poor Bridge, wholly or partly,
down into the river, and its Danish defenders into immediate surrender.
That is Snorro's account.

On a previous occasion, Olaf had been deep in a hopeful combination
with Ethelred's two younger sons, Alfred and Edward, afterwards King
Edward the Confessor: That they two should sally out from Normandy
in strong force, unite with Olaf in ditto, and, landing on the Thames,
do something effectual for themselves. But impediments, bad weather
or the like, disheartened the poor Princes, and it came to nothing.
Olaf was much in Normandy, what they then called Walland; a man held
in honor by those Norman Dukes.

What amount of {}``property'' he had amassed I do not know, but
could prove, were it necessary, that he had acquired some tactical
or even strategic faculty and real talent for war. At Lymfjord, in
Jutland, but some years after this (A.D.\ 1027), he had a sea-battle
with the great Knut himself,---ships combined with flood-gates, with
roaring, artificial deluges; right well managed by King Olaf; which
were within a hair's-breadth of destroying Knut, now become a King
and Great; and did in effect send him instantly running. But of this
more particularly by and by.

What still more surprises me is the mystery, where Olaf, in this wandering,
fighting, sea-roving life, acquired his deeply religious feeling,
his intense adherence to the Christian Faith. I suppose it had been
in England, where many pious persons, priestly and other, were still
to be met with, that Olaf had gathered these doctrines; and that in
those his unfathomable dialogues with the ever-moaning Ocean, they
had struck root downwards in the soul of him, and borne fruit upwards
to the degree so conspicuous afterwards. It is certain he became a
deeply pious man during these long Viking cruises; and directed all
his strength, when strength and authority were lent him, to establishing
the Christian religion in his country, and suppressing and abolishing
Vikingism there; both of which objects, and their respective worth
and unworth, he, must himself have long known so well.

It was well on in A.D.\ 1016 that Knut gained his last victory, at
Ashdon, in Essex, where the earth pyramids and antique church near
by still testify the thankful piety of Knut,---or, at lowest his joy
at having \textit{won} instead of lost and perished, as he was near
doing there. And it was still this same year when the noble Edmund
Ironside, after forced partition-treaty {}``in the Isle of Alney,''
got scandalously murdered, and Knut became indisputable sole King
of England, and decisively settled himself to his work of governing
there. In the year before either of which events, while all still
hung uncertain for Knut, and even Eric Jarl of Norway had to be summoned
in aid of him, in that year 1015, as one might naturally guess and
as all Icelandic hints and indications lead us to date the thing,
Olaf had decided to give up Vikingism in all its forms; to return
to Norway, and try whether he could not assert the place and career
that belonged to him there. Jarl Eric had vanished with all his war
forces towards England, leaving only a boy, Hakon, as successor, and
Svein, his own brother,---a quiet man, who had always avoided war.
Olaf landed in Norway without obstacle; but decided to be quiet till
he had himself examined and consulted friends.

His reception by his mother Aasta was of the kindest and proudest,
and is lovingly described by Snorro. A pretty idyllic, or epic piece,
of \textit{Norse} Homeric type: How Aasta, hearing of her son's advent,
set all her maids and menials to work at the top of their speed; despatched
a runner to the harvest-field, where her husband Sigurd was, to warn
him to come home and dress. How Sigurd was standing among his harvest
folk, reapers and binders; and what he had on,---broad slouch hat,
with veil (against the midges), blue kirtle, hose of I forget what
color, with laced boots; and in his hand a stick with silver head
and ditto ring upon it;---a personable old gentleman, of the eleventh
century, in those parts. Sigurd was cautious, prudentially cunctatory,
though heartily friendly in his counsel to Olaf as to the King question.
Aasta had a Spartan tone in her wild maternal heart; and assures Olaf
that she, with a half-reproachful glance at Sigurd, will stand by
him to the death in this his just and noble enterprise. Sigurd promises
to consult farther in his neighborhood, and to correspond by messages;
the result is, Olaf resolutely pushing forward himself, resolves to
call a Thing, and openly claim his kingship there. The Thing itself
was willing enough: opposition parties do here and there bestir themselves;
but Olaf is always swifter than they. Five kinglets somewhere in the
Uplands,%
\footnote{Snorro, Laing's Translation, ii.\ p.\ 31 et seq., will minutely
specify. %
}---all descendants of Haarfagr; but averse to break the peace, which
Jarl Eric and Hakon Jarl both have always willingly allowed to peaceable
people,---seem to be the main opposition party. These five take the
field against Olaf with what force they have; Olaf, one night, by
beautiful celerity and strategic practice which a Friedrich or a Turenne
might have approved, surrounds these Five; and when morning breaks,
there is nothing for them but either death, or else instant surrender,
and swearing of fealty to King Olaf. Which latter branch of the alternative
they gladly accept, the whole five of them, and go home again.

This was a beautiful bit of war-practice by King Olaf on land. By
another stroke still more compendious at sea, he had already settled
poor young Hakon, and made him peaceable for a long while. Olaf by
diligent quest and spy-messaging, had ascertained that Hakon, just
returning from Denmark and farewell to Papa and Knut, both now under
way for England, was coasting north towards Trondhjem; and intended
on or about such a day to land in such and such a fjord towards the
end of this Trondhjem voyage. Olaf at once mans two big ships, steers
through the narrow mouth of the said fjord, moors one ship on the
north shore, another on the south; fixes a strong cable, well sunk
under water, to the capstans of these two; and in all quietness waits
for Hakon. Before many hours, Hakon's royal or quasi-royal barge steers
gaily into this fjord; is a little surprised, perhaps, to see within
the jaws of it two big ships at anchor, but steers gallantly along,
nothing doubting. Olaf with a signal of {}``All hands,'' works his
two capstans; has the cable up high enough at the right moment, catches
with it the keel of poor Hakon's barge, upsets it, empties it wholly
into the sea. Wholly into the sea; saves Hakon, however, and his people
from drowning, and brings them on board. His dialogue with poor young
Hakon, especially poor young Hakon's responses, is very pretty. Shall
I give it, out of Snorro, and let the reader take it for as authentic
as he can? It is at least the true image of it in authentic Snorro's
head, little more than two centuries later.

{}``Jarl Hakon was led up to the king's ship. He was the handsomest
man that could be seen. He had long hair as fine as silk, bound about
his head with a gold ornament. When he sat down in the forehold the
king said to him:

\textit{King.} {}``'It is not false, what is said of your family,
that ye are handsome people to look at; but now your luck has deserted
you.'

\textit{Hakon.} {}``'It has always been the case that success is
changeable; and there is no luck in the matter. It has gone with your
family as with mine to have by turns the better lot. I am little beyond
childhood in years; and at any rate we could not have defended ourselves,
as we did not expect any attack on the way. It may turn out better
with us another time.'

\textit{King.} {}``'Dost thou not apprehend that thou art in such
a condition that, hereafter, there can be neither victory nor defeat
for thee?'

\textit{Hakon.} {}``'That is what only thou canst determine, King,
according to thy pleasure.'

\textit{King.} {}``'What wilt thou give me, Jarl, if, for this time,
I let thee go, whole and unhurt?'

\textit{Hakon.} {}```What wilt thou take, King?'

\textit{King.} {}``'Nothing, except that thou shalt leave the country;
give up thy kingdom; and take an oath that thou wilt never go into
battle against me.'\char`\"{}%
\footnote{Snorro, ii.\ pp.\ 24, 25. %
}

Jarl Hakon accepted the generous terms; went to England and King Knut,
and kept his bargain for a good few years; though he was at last driven,
by pressure of King Knut, to violate it,---little to his profit, as
we shall see. One victorious naval battle with Jarl Svein, Hakon's
uncle, and his adherents, who fled to Sweden, after his beating,---battle
not difficult to a skilful, hard-hitting king,---was pretty much all
the actual fighting Olaf had to do in this enterprise. He various
times met angry Bonders and refractory Things with arms in their hand;
but by skilful, firm management,---perfectly patient, but also perfectly
ready to be active,---he mostly managed without coming to strokes;
and was universally recognized by Norway as its real king. A promising
young man, and fit to be a king, thinks Snorro. Only of middle stature,
almost rather shortish; but firm-standing, and stout-built; so that
they got to call him Olaf the Thick (meaning Olaf the Thick-set, or
Stout-built), though his final epithet among them was infinitely higher.
For the rest, {}``a comely, earnest, prepossessing look; beautiful
yellow hair in quantity; broad, honest face, of a complexion pure
as snow and rose;'' and finally (or firstly) {}``the brightest eyes
in the world; such that, in his anger, no man could stand them.''
He had a heavy task ahead, and needed all his qualities and fine gifts
to get it done.


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER X. \textit{\emph{Reign of King}} \textit{\emph{Olaf}}
\textit{\emph{the}} \textit{\emph{Saint}}\emph{.}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER X. \textit{\emph{Reign of
King}} \textit{\emph{Olaf}} \textit{\emph{the}} \textit{\emph{Saint}}}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{CHAPTER X}

The late two Jarls, now gone about their business, had both been baptized,
and called themselves Christians. But during their government they
did nothing in the conversion way; left every man to choose his own
God or Gods; so that some had actually two, the Christian God by land,
and at sea Thor, whom they considered safer in that element. And in
effect the mass of the people had fallen back into a sluggish heathenism
or half-heathenism, the life-labor of Olaf Tryggveson lying ruinous
or almost quite overset. The new Olaf, son of Harald, set himself
with all his strength to mend such a state of matters; and stood by
his enterprise to the end, as the one highest interest, including
all others, for his People and him. His method was by no means soft;
on the contrary, it was hard, rapid, severe,---somewhat on the model
of Tryggveson's, though with more of \textit{bishoping} and preaching
superadded. Yet still there was a great deal of mauling, vigorous
punishing, and an entire intolerance of these two things: Heathenism
and Sea-robbery, at least of Sea-robbery in the old style; whether
in the style we moderns still practise, and call privateering, I do
not quite know. But Vikingism proper had to cease in Norway; still
more, Heathenism, under penalties too severe to he borne; death, mutilation
of limb, not to mention forfeiture and less rigorous coercion. Olaf
was inexorable against violation of the law. {}``Too severe,'' cried
many; to whom one answers, {}``Perhaps in part \textit{yes}, perhaps
also in great part \textit{no}; depends altogether on the previous
question, How far the law was the eternal one of God Almighty in the
universe, How far the law merely of Olaf (destitute of right inspiration)
left to his own passions and whims?''

Many were the jangles Olaf had with the refractory Heathen Things
and Ironbeards of a new generation: very curious to see. Scarcely
ever did it come to fighting between King and Thing, though often
enough near it; but the Thing discerning, as it usually did in time,
that the King was stronger in men, seemed to say unanimously to itself,
{}``We have lost, then; baptize us, we must burn our old gods and
conform.'' One new feature we do slightly discern: here and there
a touch of theological argument on the heathen side. At one wild Thing,
far up in the Dovrefjeld, of a very heathen temper, there was much
of that; not to be quenched by King Olaf at the moment; so that it
had to be adjourned till the morrow, and again till the next day.
Here are some traits of it, much abridged from Snorro (who gives a
highly punctual account), which vividly represent Olaf's posture and
manner of proceeding in such intricacies.

The chief Ironbeard on this occasion was one Gudbrand, a very rugged
peasant; who, says Snorro, was like a king in that district. Some
days before, King Olaf, intending a religious Thing in those deeply
heathen parts, with alternative of Christianity or conflagration,
is reported, on looking down into the valley and the beautiful village
of Loar standing there, to have said wistfully, {}``What a pity it
is that so beautiful a village should be burnt!'' Olaf sent out his
message-token all the, same, however, and met Gudbrand and an immense
assemblage, whose humor towards him was uncompliant to a high degree
indeed. Judge by this preliminary speech of Gudbrand to his Thing-people,
while Olaf was not yet arrived, but only advancing, hardly got to
Breeden on the other side of the hill: {}``A man has come to Loar
who is called Olaf,'' said Gudbrand, {}``and will force upon us
another faith than we had before, and will break in pieces all our
Gods. He says he has a much greater and more powerful God; and it
is wonderful that the earth does not burst asunder under him, or that
our God lets him go about unpunished when he dares to talk such things.
I know this for certain, that if we carry Thor, who has always stood
by us, out of our Temple that is standing upon this farm, Olaf's God
will melt away, and he and his men be made nothing as soon as Thor
looks upon them.'' Whereupon the Bonders all shouted as one man,
{}``Yea!''

Which tremendous message they even forwarded to Olaf, by Gudbrand's
younger son at the head of 700 armed men; but did not terrify Olaf
with it, who, on the contrary, drew up his troops, rode himself at
the head of them, and began a speech to the Bonders, in which he invited
them to adopt Christianity, as the one true faith for mortals.

Far from consenting to this, the Bonders raised a general shout, smiting
at the same time their shields with their weapons; but Olaf's men
advancing on them swiftly, and flinging spears, they turned and ran,
leaving Gudbrand's son behind, a prisoner, to whom Olaf gave his life:
{}``Go home now to thy father, and tell him I mean to be with him
soon.''

The son goes accordingly, and advises his father not to face Olaf;
but Gudbrand angrily replies: {}``Ha, coward! I see thou, too, art
taken by the folly that man is going about with;'' and is resolved
to fight. That night, however, Gudbrand has a most remarkable Dream,
or Vision: a Man surrounded by light, bringing great terror with him,
who warns Gudbrand against doing battle with Olaf. {}``If thou dost,
thou and all thy people will fall; wolves will drag away thee and
thine; ravens will tear thee in stripes!'' And lo, in telling this
to Thord Potbelly, a sturdy neighbor of his and henchman in the Thing,
it is found that to Thord also has come the self same terrible Apparition!
Better propose truce to Olaf (who seems to have these dreadful Ghostly
Powers on his side), and the holding of a Thing, to discuss matters
between us. Thing assembles, on a day of heavy rain. Being all seated,
uprises King Olaf, and informs them: {}``The people of Lesso, Loar,
and Vaage, have accepted Christianity, and broken down their idol-houses:
they believe now in the True God, who has made heaven and earth, and
knows all things;'' and sits down again without more words.

{}``Gudbrand replies, 'We know nothing about him of whom thou speakest.
Dost thou call him God, whom neither thou nor any one else can see?
But we have a God who can be seen every day, although he is not out
to-day because the weather is wet; and he will appear to thee terrible
and very grand; and I expect that fear will mix with thy very blood
when he comes into the Thing. But since thou sayest thy God is so
great, let him make it so that to-morrow we have a cloudy day, but
without rain, and then let us meet again.'

{}``The king accordingly returned home to his lodging, taking Gudbrand's
son as a hostage; but he gave them a man as hostage in exchange. In
the evening the king asked Gudbrand's son What their God was like?
He replied that he bore the likeness of Thor; had a hammer in his
hand; was of great size, but hollow within; and had a high stand,
upon which he stood when he was out. 'Neither gold nor silver are
wanting about him, and every day he receives four cakes of bread,
besides meat.' They then went to bed; but the king watched all night
in prayer. When day dawned the king went to mass; then to table, and
from thence to the Thing. The weather was such as Gudbrand desired.
Now the Bishop stood up in his choir-robes, with bishop's coif on
his head, and bishop's crosier in his hand. He spoke to the Bonders
of the true faith, told the many wonderful acts of God, and concluded
his speech well.

{}``Thord Potbelly replies, 'Many things we are told of by this learned
man with the staff in his hand, crooked at the top like a ram's horn.
But since you say, comrades, that your God is so powerful, and can
do so many wonders, tell him to make it clear sunshine to-morrow forenoon,
and then we shall meet here again, and do one of two things,---either
agree with you about this business, or fight you.' And they separated
for the day.''

Overnight the king instructed Kolbein the Strong, an immense fellow,
the same who killed Gunhild's two brothers, that he, Kolbein, must
stand next him to-morrow; people must go down to where the ships of
the Bonders lay, and punctually bore holes in every one of them; \textit{item},
to the farms where their horses wore, and punctually unhalter the
whole of them, and let them loose: all which was done. Snorro continues:---

{}``Now the king was in prayer all night, beseeching God of his goodness
and mercy to release him from evil. When mass was ended, and morning
was gray, the king went to the Thing. When he came thither, some Bonders
had already arrived, and they saw a great crowd coming along, and
bearing among them a huge man's image, glancing with gold and silver.
When the Bonders who were at the Thing saw it, they started up, and
bowed themselves down before the ugly idol. Thereupon it was set down
upon the Thing field; and on the one side of it sat the Bonders, and
on the other the King and his people.

{}``Then Dale Gudbrand stood up and said, 'Where now, king, is thy
God? I think he will now carry his head lower; and neither thou, nor
the man with the horn, sitting beside thee there, whom thou callest
Bishop, are so bold to-day as on the former days. For now our God,
who rules over all, is come, and looks on you with an angry eye; and
now I see well enough that you are terrified, and scarcely dare raise
your eyes. Throw away now all your opposition, and believe in the
God who has your fate wholly in his hands.'

{}``The king now whispers to Kolbein the Strong, without the Bonders
perceiving it, 'If it come so in the course of my speech that the
Bonders look another way than towards their idol, strike him as hard
as thou canst with thy club.'

{}``The king then stood up and spoke. 'Much hast thou talked to us
this morning, and greatly hast thou wondered that thou canst not see
our God; but we expect that he will soon come to us. Thou wouldst
frighten us with thy God, who is both blind and deaf, and cannot even
move about without being carried; but now I expect it will be but
a short time before he meets his fate: for turn your eyes towards
the east,---behold our God advancing in great light.'

{}``The sun was rising, and all turned to look. At that moment Kolbein
gave their God a stroke, so that he quite burst asunder; and there
ran out of him mice as big almost as cats, and reptiles and adders.
The Bonders were so terrified that some fled to their ships; but when
they sprang out upon them the ships filled with water, and could not
get away. Others ran to their horses, but could not find them. The
king then ordered the Bonders to be called together, saying he wanted
to speak with them; on which the Bonders came back, and the Thing
was again seated.

{}``The king rose up and said, 'I do not understand what your noise
and running mean. You yourselves see what your God can do,---the idol
you adorned with gold and silver, and brought meat and provisions
to. You see now that the protecting powers, who used and got good
of all that, were the mice and adders, the reptiles and lizards; and
surely they do ill who trust to such, and will not abandon this folly.
Take now your gold and ornaments that are lying strewed on the grass,
and give them to your wives and daughters, but never hang them hereafter
upon stocks and stones. Here are two conditions between us to choose
upon: either accept Christianity, or fight this very day, and the
victory be to them to whom the God we worship gives it.'

{}``Then Dale Gudbrand stood up and said, 'We have sustained great
damage upon our God; but since he will not help us, we will believe
in the God whom thou believest in.'

{}``Then all received Christianity. The Bishop baptized Gudbrand
and his son. King Olaf and Bishop Sigurd left behind them teachers;
and they who met as enemies parted as friends. And afterwards Gudbrand
built a church in the valley.\char`\"{}%
\footnote{Snorro, ii.\ pp.\ 156-161. %
}

Olaf was by no means an unmerciful man,---much the reverse where he
saw good cause. There was a wicked old King Raerik, for example, one
of those five kinglets whom, with their bits of armaments, Olaf by
stratagem had surrounded one night, and at once bagged and subjected
when morning rose, all of them consenting; all of them except this
Raerik, whom Olaf, as the readiest sure course, took home with him;
blinded, and kept in his own house; finding there was no alternative
but that or death to the obstinate old dog, who was a kind of distant
cousin withal, and could not conscientiously be killed. Stone-blind
old Raerik was not always in murderous humor. Indeed, for most part
he wore a placid, conciliatory aspect, and said shrewd amusing things;
but had thrice over tried, with amazing cunning of contrivance, though
stone-blind, to thrust a dagger into Olaf and the last time had all
but succeeded. So that, as Olaf still refused to have him killed,
it had become a problem what was to be done with him. Olaf's good
humor, as well as \textit{his} quiet, ready sense and practicality,
are manifested in his final settlement of this Raerik problem. Olaf's
laugh, I can perceive, was not so loud as Tryggveson's but equally
hearty, coming from the bright mind of him!

Besides blind Raerik, Olaf had in his household one Thorarin, an Icelander;
a remarkably ugly man, says Snorro, but a far-travelled, shrewdly
observant, loyal-minded, and good-humored person, whom Olaf liked
to talk with. {}``Remarkably ugly,'' says Snorro, {}``especially
in his hands and feet, which were large and ill-shaped to a degree.''
One morning Thorarin, who, with other trusted ones, slept in Olaf's
apartment, was lazily dozing and yawning, and had stretched one of
his feet out of the bed before the king awoke. The foot was still
there when Olaf did open his bright eyes, which instantly lighted
on this foot.

{}``Well, here is a foot,'' says Olaf, gayly, {}``which one seldom
sees the match of; I durst venture there is not another so ugly in
this city of Nidaros.''

{}``Hah, king!'' said Thorarin, {}``there are few things one cannot
match if one seek long and take pains. I would bet, with thy permission,
King, to find an uglier.''

{}``Done!'' cried Olaf. Upon which Thorarin stretched out the other
foot.

{}``A still uglier,'' cried he; {}``for it has lost the little
toe.''

{}``Ho, ho!'' said Olaf; {}``but it is I who have gained the bet.
The \textit{less} of an ugly thing the less ugly, not the more!''

Loyal Thorarin respectfully submitted.

{}``What is to be my penalty, then? The king it is that must decide.''

{}``To take me that wicked old Raerik to Leif Ericson in Greenland.''

Which the Icelander did; leaving two vacant seats henceforth at Olaf's
table. Leif Ericson, son of Eric discoverer of America, quietly managed
Raerik henceforth; sent him to Iceland,---I think to father Eric himself;
certainly to some safe hand there, in whose house, or in some still
quieter neighboring lodging, at his own choice, old Raerik spent the
last three years of his life in a perfectly quiescent manner.

Olaf's struggles in the matter of religion had actually settled that
question in Norway. By these rough methods of his, whatever we may
think of them, Heathenism had got itself smashed dead; and was no
more heard of in that country. Olaf himself was evidently a highly
devout and pious man;---whosoever is born with Olaf's temper now will
still find, as Olaf did, new and infinite field for it! Christianity
in Norway had the like fertility as in other countries; or even rose
to a higher, and what Dahlmann thinks, exuberant pitch, in the course
of the two centuries which followed that of Olaf. Him all testimony
represents to us as a most righteous no less than most religious king.
Continually vigilant, just, and rigorous was Olaf's administration
of the laws; repression of robbery, punishment of injustice, stern
repayment of evil-doers, wherever he could lay hold of them.

Among the Bonder or opulent class, and indeed everywhere, for the
poor too can be sinners and need punishment, Olaf had, by this course
of conduct, naturally made enemies. His severity so visible to all,
and the justice and infinite beneficence of it so invisible except
to a very few. But, at any rate, his reign for the first ten years
was victorious; and might have been so to the end, had it not been
intersected, and interfered with, by King Knut in his far bigger orbit
and current of affairs and interests. Knut's English affairs and Danish
being all settled to his mind, he seems, especially after that year
of pilgrimage to Rome, and association with the Pontiffs and Kaisers
of the world on that occasion, to have turned his more particular
attention upon Norway, and the claims he himself had there. Jarl Hakon,
too, sister's son of Knut, and always well seen by him, had long been
busy in this direction, much forgetful of that oath to Olaf when his
barge got canted over by the cable of two capstans, and his life was
given him, not without conditions altogether!

About the year 1026 there arrived two splendid persons out of England,
bearing King Knut the Great's letter and seal, with a message, likely
enough to be far from welcome to Olaf. For some days Olaf refused
to see them or their letter, shrewdly guessing what the purport would
be. Which indeed was couched in mild language, but of sharp meaning
enough: a notice to King Olaf namely, That Norway was properly, by
just heritage, Knut the Great's; and that Olaf must become the great
Knut's liegeman, and pay tribute to him, or worse would follow. King
Olaf listening to these two splendid persons and their letter, in
indignant silence till they quite ended, made answer: {}``I have
heard say, by old accounts there are, that King Gorm of Denmark {[}Blue-tooth's
father, Knut's great-grandfather{]} was considered but a small king;
having Denmark only and few people to rule over. But the kings who
succeeded him thought that insufficient for them; and it has since
come so far that King Knut rules over both Denmark and England, and
has conquered for himself a part of Scotland. And now he claims also
my paternal bit of heritage; cannot be contented without that too.
Does he wish to rule over all the countries of the North? Can he eat
up all the kale in England itself, this Knut the Great? He shall do
that, and reduce his England to a desert, before I lay my head in
his hands, or show him any other kind of vassalage. And so I bid you
tell him these my words: I will defend Norway with battle-axe and
sword as long as life is given me, and will pay tax to no man for
my kingdom.'' Words which naturally irritated Knut to a high degree.

Next year accordingly (year 1027), tenth or eleventh year of Olaf's
reign, there came bad rumors out of England: That Knut was equipping
an immense army,---land-army, and such a fleet as had never sailed
before; Knut's own ship in it,---a Gold Dragon with no fewer than
sixty benches of oars. Olaf and Onund King of Sweden, whose sister
he had married, well guessed whither this armament was bound. They
were friends withal, they recognized their common peril in this imminence;
and had, in repeated consultations, taken measures the best that their
united skill (which I find was mainly Olaf's but loyally accepted
by the other) could suggest. It was in this year that Olaf (with his
Swedish king assisting) did his grand feat upon Knut in Lymfjord of
Jutland, which was already spoken of. The special circumstances of
which were these:

Knut's big armament arriving on the Jutish coasts too late in the
season, and the coast country lying all plundered into temporary wreck
by the two Norse kings, who shrank away on sight of Knut, there was
nothing could be done upon them by Knut this year,---or, if anything,
what? Knut's ships ran into Lymfjord, the safe-sheltered frith, or
intricate long straggle of friths and straits, which almost cuts Jutland
in two in that region; and lay safe, idly rocking on the waters there,
uncertain what to do farther. At last he steered in his big ship and
some others, deeper into the interior of Lymfjord, deeper and deeper
onwards to the mouth of a big river called the Helge (\textit{Helge-aa},
the Holy River, not discoverable in my poor maps, but certainly enough
still existing and still flowing somewhere among those intricate straits
and friths), towards the bottom of which Helge river lay, in some
safe nook, the small combined Swedish and Norse fleet, under the charge
of Onund, the Swedish king, while at the top or source, which is a
biggish mountain lake, King Olaf had been doing considerable engineering
works, well suited to such an occasion, and was now ready at a moment's
notice. Knut's fleet having idly taken station here, notice from the
Swedish king was instantly sent; instantly Olaf's well-engineered
flood-gates were thrown open; from the swollen lake a huge deluge
of water was let loose; Olaf himself with all his people hastening
down to join his Swedish friend, and get on board in time; Helge river
all the while alongside of him, with ever-increasing roar, and wider-spreading
deluge, hastening down the steeps in the night-watches. So that, along
with Olaf or some way ahead of him, came immeasurable roaring waste
of waters upon Knut's negligent fleet; shattered, broke, and stranded
many of his ships, and was within a trifle of destroying the Golden
Dragon herself, with Knut on board. Olaf and Onund, we need not say,
were promptly there in person, doing their very best; the railings
of the Golden Dragon, however, were too high for their little ships;
and Jarl Ulf, husband of Knut's sister, at the top of his speed, courageously
intervening, spoiled their stratagem, and saved Knut from this very
dangerous pass.

Knut did nothing more this winter. The two Norse kings, quite unequal
to attack such an armament, except by ambush and engineering, sailed
away; again plundering at discretion on the Danish coast; carrying
into Sweden great booties and many prisoners; but obliged to lie fixed
all winter; and indeed to leave their fleets there for a series of
winters,---Knut's fleet, posted at Elsinore on both sides of the Sound,
rendering all egress from the Baltic impossible, except at his pleasure.
Ulf's opportune deliverance of his royal brother-in-law did not much
bestead poor Ulf himself. He had been in disfavor before, pardoned
with difficulty, by Queen Emma's intercession; an ambitious, officious,
pushing, stirring, and, both in England and Denmark, almost dangerous
man; and this conspicuous accidental merit only awoke new jealousy
in Knut. Knut, finding nothing pass the Sound worth much blockading,
went ashore; {}``and the day before Michaelmas,'' says Snorro, {}``rode
with a great retinue to Roeskilde.'' Snorro continues his tragic
narrative of what befell there:

{}``There Knut's brother-in-law, Jarl Ulf, had prepared a great feast
for him. The Jarl was the most agreeable of hosts; but the King was
silent and sullen. The Jarl talked to him in every way to make him
cheerful, and brought forward everything he could think of to amuse
him; but the King remained stern, and speaking little. At last the
Jarl proposed a game of chess, which he agreed to. A chess-board was
produced, and they played together. Jarl Ulf was hasty in temper,
stiff, and in nothing yielding; but everything he managed went on
well in his hands: and he was a great warrior, about whom there are
many stories. He was the most powerful man in Denmark next to the
King. Jarl Ulf's sister, Gyda, was married to Jarl Gudin (Godwin)
Ulfnadson; and their sons were, Harald King of England, and Jarl Tosti,
Jarl Walthiof, Jarl Mauro-Kaare, and Jarl Svein. Gyda was the name
of their daughter, who was married to the English King Edward, the
Good (whom we call the Confessor).

{}``When they had played a while, the King made a false move; on
which the Jarl took a knight from him; but the King set the piece
on the board again, and told the Jarl to make another move. But the
Jarl flew angry, tumbled the chess-board over, rose, and went away.
The King said, `Run thy ways, Ulf the Fearful.' The Jarl turned round
at the door and said, 'Thou wouldst have run farther at Helge river
hadst thou been left to battle there. Thou didst not call me Ulf the
Fearful when I hastened to thy help while the Swedes were beating
thee like a dog.' The Jarl then went out, and went to bed.

{}``The following morning, while the King was putting on his clothes,
he said to his footboy, `Go thou to Jarl Ulf and kill him.' The lad
went, was away a while, and then came back. The King said, 'Hast thou
killed the Jarl?' 'I did not kill him, for he was gone to St. Lucius's
church.' There was a man called Ivar the White, a Norwegian by birth,
who was the King's courtman and chamberlain. The King said to him,
`Go thou and kill the Jarl.' Ivar went to the church, and in at the
choir, and thrust his sword through the Jarl, who died on the spot.
Then Ivar went to the King, with the bloody sword in his hand.

{}``The King said, `Hast thou killed the Jarl?' `I have killed him,'
said he. `Thou hast done well,' answered the King.'' I

From a man who built so many churches (one on each battlefield where
he had fought, to say nothing of the others), and who had in him such
depths of real devotion and other fine cosmic quality, this does seem
rather strong! But it is characteristic, withal,---of the man, and
perhaps of the times still more.%
\footnote{Snorro, ii.\ pp.\  252, 253. %
} In any case, it is an event worth noting, the slain Jarl Ulf and
his connections being of importance in the history of Denmark and
of England also. Ulf's wife was Astrid, sister of Knut, and their
only child was Svein, styled afterwards {}``Svein Estrithson'' (\char`\"{}Astrid-son'')
when he became noted in the world,---at this time a beardless youth,
who, on the back of this tragedy, fled hastily to Sweden, where were
friends of Ulf. After some ten years' eclipse there, Knut and both
his sons being now dead, Svein reappeared in Denmark under a new and
eminent figure, {}``Jarl of Denmark,'' highest Liegeman to the then
sovereign there. Broke his oath to said sovereign, declared himself,
Svein Estrithson, to be real King of Denmark; and, after much preliminary
trouble, and many beatings and disastrous flights to and fro, became
in effect such,---to the wonder of mankind; for he had not had one
victory to cheer him on, or any good luck or merit that one sees,
except that of surviving longer than some others. Nevertheless he
came to be the Restorer, so called, of Danish independence; sole remaining
representative of Knut (or Knut's sister), of Fork-beard, Blue-tooth,
and Old Gorm; and ancestor of all the subsequent kings of Denmark
for some 400 years; himself coming, as we see, only by the Distaff
side, all of the Sword or male side having died so soon. Early death,
it has been observed, was the Great Knut's allotment, and all his
posterity's as well;---fatal limit (had there been no others, which
we see there were) to his becoming {}``Charlemagne of the North''
in any considerable degree! Jarl Ulf, as we have seen, had a sister,
Gyda by name, wife to Earl Godwin (\char`\"{}Gudin Ulfnadsson,''
as Snorro calls him) a very memorable Englishman, whose son and hers,
King Harald, \textit{Harold} in English books, is the memorablest
of all. These things ought to be better known to English antiquaries,
and will perhaps be alluded to again.

This pretty little victory or affront, gained over Knut in \textit{Lymfjord},
was among the last successes of Olaf against that mighty man. Olaf,
the skilful captain he was, need not have despaired to defend his
Norway against Knut and all the world. But he learned henceforth,
month by month ever more tragically, that his own people, seeing softer
prospects under Knut, and in particular the chiefs of them, industriously
bribed by Knut for years past, had fallen away from him; and that
his means of defence were gone. Next summer, Knut's grand fleet sailed,
unopposed, along the coast of Norway; Knut summoning a Thing every
here and there, and in all of them meeting nothing but sky-high acclamation
and acceptance. Olaf, with some twelve little ships, all he now had,
lay quiet in some safe fjord, near Lindenaes, what we now call the
Naze, behind some little solitary isles on the southeast of Norway
there; till triumphant Knut had streamed home again. Home to England
again {}``Sovereign of Norway'' now, with nephew Hakon appointed
Jarl and Vice-regent under him! This was the news Olaf met on venturing
out; and that his worst anticipations were not beyond the sad truth
all, or almost all, the chief Bonders and men of weight in Norway
had declared against him, and stood with triumphant Knut.

Olaf, with his twelve poor ships, steered vigorously along the coast
to collect money and force,---if such could now anywhere be had. He
himself was resolute to hold out, and try. {}``Sailing swiftly with
a fair wind, morning cloudy with some showers,'' he passed the coast
of Jedderen, which was Erling Skjalgson's country, when he got sure
notice of an endless multitude of ships, war-ships, armed merchant
ships, all kinds of shipping-craft, down to fishermen's boats, just
getting under way against him, under the command of Erling Skjalgson,---
the powerfulest of his subjects, once much a friend of Olaf's but
now gone against him to this length, thanks to Olaf's severity of
justice, and Knut's abundance in gold and promises for years back.
To that complexion had it come with Erling; sailing with this immense
assemblage of the naval people and populace of Norway to seize King
Olaf, and bring him to the great Knut dead or alive.

Erling had a grand new ship of his own, which far outsailed the general
miscellany of rebel ships, and was visibly fast gaining distance on
Olaf himself,---who well understood what Erling's puzzle was, between
the tail of his game (the miscellany of rebel ships, namely) that
could not come up, and the head or general prize of the game which
was crowding all sail to get away; and Olaf took advantage of the
same. {}``Lower your sails!'' said Olaf to his men (though we must
go slower).

{}``Ho you, we have lost sight of them!'' said Erling to his, and
put on all his speed; Olaf going, soon after this, altogether invisible,---behind
a little island that he knew of, whence into a certain fjord or bay
(Bay of Fungen on the maps), which he thought would suit him. {}``Halt
here, and get out your arms,'' said Olaf, and had not to wait long
till Erling came bounding in, past the rocky promontory, and with
astonishment beheld Olaf's fleet of twelve with their battle-axes
and their grappling-irons all in perfect readiness. These fell on
him, the unready Erling, simultaneous, like a cluster of angry bees;
and in a few minutes cleared his ship of men altogether, except Erling
himself. Nobody asked his life, nor probably would have got it if
he had. Only Erling still stood erect on a high place on the poop,
fiercely defensive, and very difficult to get at. {}``Could not be
reached at all,'' says Snorro, {}``except by spears or arrows, and
these he warded off with untiring dexterity; no man in Norway, it
was said, had ever defended himself so long alone against many,\char`\"{}---an
almost invincible Erling, had his cause been good. Olaf himself noticed
Erling's behavior, and said to him, from the foredeck below, {}``Thou
hast turned against me to-day, Erling.'' {}``The eagles fight breast
to breast,'' answers he. This was a speech of the king's to Erling
once long ago, while they stood fighting, not as now, but side by
side. The king, with some transient thought of possibility going through
his head, rejoins, {}``Wilt thou surrender, Erling?'' {}``That
will I,'' answered he; took the helmet off his head; laid down sword
and shield; and went forward to the forecastle deck. The king pricked,
I think not very harshly, into Erling's chin or beard with the point
of his battle-axe, saying, {}``I must mark thee as traitor to thy
Sovereign, though.'' Whereupon one of the bystanders, Aslak Fitiaskalle,
stupidly and fiercely burst up; smote Erling on the head with his
axe; so that it struck fast in his brain and was instantly the death
of Erling. {}``Ill-luck attend thee for that stroke; thou hast struck
Norway out of my hand by it!'' cried the king to Aslak; but forgave
the poor fellow, who had done it meaning well. The insurrectionary
Bonder fleet arriving soon after, as if for certain victory, was struck
with astonishment at this Erling catastrophe; and being now without
any leader of authority, made not the least attempt at battle; but,
full of discouragement and consternation, thankfully allowed Olaf
to sail away on his northward voyage, at discretion; and themselves
went off lamenting, with Erling's dead body.

This small victory was the last that Olaf had over his many enemies
at present. He sailed along, still northward, day after day; several
important people joined him; but the news from landward grew daily
more ominous: Bonders busily arming to rear of him; and ahead, Hakon
still more busily at Trondhjem, now near by, {}``---and he will end
thy days, King, if he have strength enough!'' Olaf paused; sent scouts
to a hill-top: {}``Hakon's armament visible enough, and under way
hitherward, about the Isle of Bjarno, yonder!'' Soon after, Olaf
himself saw the Bonder armament of twenty-five ships, from the southward,
sail past in the distance to join that of Hakon; and, worse still,
his own ships, one and another (seven in all), were slipping off on
a like errand! He made for the Fjord of Fodrar, mouth of the rugged
strath called Valdal,---which I think still knows Olaf and has now
an {}``Olaf's Highway,'' where, nine centuries ago, it scarcely
had a path. Olaf entered this fjord, had his land-tent set up, and
a cross beside it, on the small level green behind the promontory
there. Finding that his twelve poor ships were now reduced to five,
against a world all risen upon him, he could not but see and admit
to himself that there was no chance left; and that he must withdraw
across the mountains and wait for a better time.

His journey through that wild country, in these forlorn and straitened
circumstances, has a mournful dignity and homely pathos, as described
by Snorro: how he drew up his five poor ships upon the beach, packed
all their furniture away, and with his hundred or so of attendants
and their journey-baggage, under guidance of some friendly Bonder,
rode up into the desert and foot of the mountains; scaled, after three
days' effort (as if by miracle, thought his attendants and thought
Snorro), the well-nigh precipitous slope that led across, never without
miraculous aid from Heaven and Olaf could baggage-wagons have ascended
that path! In short, How he fared along, beset by difficulties and
the mournfulest thoughts; but patiently persisted, steadfastly trusted
in God; and was fixed to return, and by God's help try again. An evidently
very pious and devout man; a good man struggling with adversity, such
as the gods, we may still imagine with the ancients, do look down
upon as their noblest sight.

He got to Sweden, to the court of his brother-in-law; kindly and nobly
enough received there, though gradually, perhaps, ill-seen by the
now authorities of Norway. So that, before long, he quitted Sweden;
left his queen there with her only daughter, his and hers, the only
child they had; he himself had an only son, {}``by a bondwoman,''
Magnus by name, who came to great things afterwards; of whom, and
of which, by and by. With this bright little boy, and a selected escort
of attendants, he moved away to Russia, to King Jarroslav; where he
might wait secure against all risk of hurting kind friends by his
presence. He seems to have been an exile altogether some two years,---such
is one's vague notion; for there is no chronology in Snorro or his
Sagas, and one is reduced to guessing and inferring. He had reigned
over Norway, reckoning from the first days of his landing there to
those last of his leaving it across the Dovrefjeld, about fifteen
years, ten of them shiningly victorious.

The news from Norway were naturally agitating to King Olaf and, in
the fluctuation of events there, his purposes and prospects varied
much. He sometimes thought of pilgriming to Jerusalem, and a henceforth
exclusively religious life; but for most part his pious thoughts themselves
gravitated towards Norway, and a stroke for his old place and task
there, which he steadily considered to have been committed to him
by God. Norway, by the rumors, was evidently not at rest. Jarl Hakon,
under the high patronage of his uncle, had lasted there but a little
while. I know not that his government was especially unpopular, nor
whether he himself much remembered his broken oath. It appears, however,
he had left in England a beautiful bride; and considering farther
that in England only could bridal ornaments and other wedding outfit
of a sufficiently royal kind be found, he set sail thither, to fetch
her and them himself. One evening of wildish-looking weather he was
seen about the northeast corner of the Pentland Frith; the night rose
to be tempestuous; Hakon or any timber of his fleet was never seen
more. Had all gone down,---broken oaths, bridal hopes, and all else;
mouse and man,---into the roaring waters. There was no farther Opposition-line;
the like of which had lasted ever since old heathen Hakon Jarl, down
to this his grandson Hakon's \textit{finis} in the Pentland Frith.
With this Hakon's disappearance it now disappeared.

Indeed Knut himself, though of an empire suddenly so great, was but
a temporary phenomenon. Fate had decided that the grand and wise Knut
was to be short-lived; and to leave nothing as successors but an ineffectual
young Harald Harefoot, who soon perished, and a still stupider fiercely-drinking
Harda-Knut, who rushed down of apoplexy (here in London City, as I
guess), with the goblet at his mouth, drinking health and happiness
at a wedding-feast, also before long.

Hakon having vanished in this dark way, there ensued a pause, both
on Knut's part and on Norway's. Pause or interregnum of some months,
till it became certain, first, whether Hakon were actually dead, secondly,
till Norway, and especially till King Knut himself, could decide what
to do. Knut, to the deep disappointment, which had to keep itself
silent, of three or four chief Norway men, named none of these three
or four Jarl of Norway; but bethought him of a certain Svein, a bastard
son of his own,---who, and almost still more his English mother, much
desired a career in the world fitter for him, thought they indignantly,
than that of captain over Jomsburg, where alone the father had been
able to provide for him hitherto. Svein was sent to Norway as king
or vice-king for Father Knut; and along with him his fond and vehement
mother. Neither of whom gained any favor from the Norse people by
the kind of management they ultimately came to show.

Olaf on news of this change, and such uncertainty prevailing everywhere
in Norway as to the future course of things, whether Svein would come,
as was rumored of at last, and be able to maintain himself if he did,---thought
there might be something in it of a chance for himself and his rights.
And, after lengthened hesitation, much prayer, pious invocation, and
consideration, decided to go and try it. The final grain that had
turned the balance, it appears, was a half-waking morning dream, or
almost ocular vision he had of his glorious cousin Olaf Tryggveson,
who severely admonished, exhorted, and encouraged him; and disappeared
grandly, just in the instant of Olaf's awakening; so that Olaf almost
fancied he had seen the very figure of him, as it melted into air.
{}``Let us on, let us on!'' thought Olaf always after that. He left
his son, not in Russia, but in Sweden with the Queen, who proved very
good and carefully helpful in wise ways to him:---in Russia Olaf had
now nothing more to do but give his grateful adieus, and get ready.

His march towards Sweden, and from that towards Norway and the passes
of the mountains, down Vaerdal, towards Stickelstad, and the crisis
that awaited, is beautifully depicted by Snorro. It has, all of it,
the description (and we see clearly, the fact itself had), a kind
of pathetic grandeur, simplicity, and rude nobleness; something Epic
or Homeric, without the metre or the singing of Homer, but with all
the sincerity, rugged truth to nature, and much more of piety, devoutness,
reverence for what is forever High in this Universe, than meets us
in those old Greek Ballad-mongers. Singularly visual all of it, too,
brought home in every particular to one's imagination, so that it
stands out almost as a thing one actually saw.

Olaf had about three thousand men with him; gathered mostly as he
fared along through Norway. Four hundred, raised by one Dag, a kinsman
whom he had found in Sweden and persuaded to come with him, marched
usually in a separate body; and were, or might have been, rather an
important element. Learning that the Bonders were all arming, especially
in Trondhjem country, Olaf streamed down towards them in the closest
order he could. By no means very close, subsistence even for three
thousand being difficult in such a country. His speech was almost
always free and cheerful, though his thoughts always naturally were
of a high and earnest, almost sacred tone; devout above all. Stickelstad,
a small poor hamlet still standing where the valley ends, was seen
by Olaf, and tacitly by the Bonders as well, to be the natural place
for offering battle. There Olaf issued out from the hills one morning:
drew himself up according to the best rules of Norse tactics, rules
of little complexity, but perspicuously true to the facts. I think
he had a clear open ground still rather raised above the plain in
front; he could see how the Bonder army had not yet quite arrived,
but was pouring forward, in spontaneous rows or groups, copiously
by every path. This was thought to be the biggest army that ever met
in Norway; {}``certainly not much fewer than a hundred times a hundred
men,'' according to Snorro; great Bonders several of them, small
Bonders very many,---all of willing mind, animated with a hot sense
of intolerable injuries. {}``King Olaf had punished great and small
with equal rigor,'' says Snorro; {}``which appeared to the chief
people of the country too severe; and animosity rose to the highest
when they lost relatives by the King's just sentence, although they
were in reality guilty. He again would rather renounce his dignity
than omit righteous judgment. The accusation against him, of being
stingy with his money, was not just, for he was a most generous man
towards his friends. But that alone was the cause of the discontent
raised against him, that he appeared hard and severe in his retributions.
Besides, King Knut offered large sums of money, and the great chiefs
were corrupted by this, and by his offering them greater dignities
than they had possessed before.'' On these grounds, against the intolerable
man, great and small were now pouring along by every path.

Olaf perceived it would still be some time before the Bonder army
was in rank. His own Dag of Sweden, too, was not yet come up; he was
to have the right banner; King Olaf's own being the middle or grand
one; some other person the third or left banner. All which being perfectly
ranked and settled, according to the best rules, and waiting only
the arrival of Dag, Olaf bade his men sit down, and freshen themselves
with a little rest. There were religious services gone through: a
matins-worship such as there have been few; sternly earnest to the
heart of it, and deep as death and eternity, at least on Olaf's own
part. For the rest Thormod sang a stave of the fiercest Skaldic poetry
that was in him; all the army straightway sang it in chorus with fiery
mind. The Bonder of the nearest farm came up, to tell Olaf that he
also wished to fight for him {}``Thanks to thee; but don't,'' said
Olaf; {}``stay at home rather, that the wounded may have some shelter.''
To this Bonder, Olaf delivered all the money he had, with solemn order
to lay out the whole of it in masses and prayers for the souls of
such of his enemies as fell. {}``Such of thy enemies, King?'' {}``Yes,
surely,'' said Olaf, {}``my friends will all either conquer, or
go whither I also am going.''

At last the Bonder army too was got ranked; three commanders, one
of them with a kind of loose chief command, having settled to take
charge of it; and began to shake itself towards actual advance. Olaf,
in the mean while, had laid his head on the knees of Finn Arneson,
his trustiest man, and fallen fast asleep. Finn's brother, Kalf Arneson,
once a warm friend of Olaf, was chief of the three commanders on the
opposite side. Finn and he addressed angry speech to one another from
the opposite ranks, when they came near enough. Finn, seeing the enemy
fairly approach, stirred Olaf from his sleep. {}``Oh, why hast thou
wakened me from such a dream?'' said Olaf, in a deeply solemn tone.
{}``What dream was it, then?'' asked Finn. {}``Idreamt that there
rose a ladder here reaching up to very Heaven,'' said Olaf; {}``I
had climbed and climbed, and got to the very last step, and should
have entered there hadst thou given me another moment.'' {}``King,
I doubt thou art \textit{fey}; I do not quite like that dream.''

The actual fight began about one of the clock in a most bright last
day of July, and was very fierce and hot, especially on the part of
Olaf's men, who shook the others back a little, though fierce enough
they too; and had Dag been on the ground, which he wasn't yet, it
was thought victory might have been won. Soon after battle joined,
the sky grew of a ghastly brass or copper color, darker and darker,
till thick night involved all things; and did not clear away again
till battle was near ending. Dag, with his four hundred, arrived in
the darkness, and made a furious charge, what was afterwards, in the
speech of the people, called {}``Dag's storm.'' Which had nearly
prevailed, but could not quite; victory again inclining to the so
vastly larger party. It is uncertain still how the matter would have
gone; for Olaf himself was now fighting with his own hand, and doing
deadly execution on his busiest enemies to right and to left. But
one of these chief rebels, Thorer Hund (thought to have learnt magic
from the Laplanders, whom he long traded with, and made money by),
mysteriously would not fall for Olaf's best strokes. Best strokes
brought only dust from the (enchanted) deer-skin coat of the fellow,
to Olaf's surprise,---when another of the rebel chiefs rushed forward,
struck Olaf with his battle-axe, a wild slashing wound, and miserably
broke his thigh, so that he staggered or was supported back to the
nearest stone; and there sat down, lamentably calling on God to help
him in this bad hour. Another rebel of note (the name of him long
memorable in Norway) slashed or stabbed Olaf a second time, as did
then a third. Upon which the noble Olaf sank dead; and forever quitted
this doghole of a world,---little worthy of such men as Olaf one sometimes
thinks. But that too is a mistake, and even an important one, should
we persist in it.

With Olaf's death the sky cleared again. Battle, now near done, ended
with complete victory to the rebels, and next to no pursuit or result,
except the death of Olaf everybody hastening home, as soon as the
big Duel had decided itself. Olaf's body was secretly carried, after
dark, to some out-house on the farm near the spot; whither a poor
blind beggar, creeping in for shelter that very evening, was miraculously
restored to sight. And, truly with a notable, almost miraculous, speed,
the feelings of all Norway for King Olaf changed themselves, and were
turned upside down, {}``within a year,'' or almost within a day.
Superlative example of \textit{Extinctus amabitur idem.} Not {}``Olaf
the Thick-set'' any longer, but {}``Olaf the Blessed'' or Saint,
now clearly in Heaven; such the name and character of him from that
time to this. Two churches dedicated to him (out of four that once
stood) stand in London at this moment. And the miracles that have
been done there, not to speak of Norway and Christendom elsewhere,
in his name, were numerous and great for long centuries afterwards.
Visibly a Saint Olaf ever since; and, indeed, in \textit{Bollandus}
or elsewhere, I have seldom met with better stuff to make a Saint
of, or a true World-Hero in all good senses.

Speaking of the London Olaf Churches, I should have added that from
one of these the thrice-famous Tooley Street gets its name,---where
those Three Tailors, addressing Parliament and the Universe, sublimely
styled themselves, {}``We, the People of England.'' Saint Olave
Street, Saint Oley Street, Stooley Street, Tooley Street; such are
the metamorphoses of human fame in the world!

The battle-day of Stickelstad, King Olaf's death-day, is generally
believed to have been Wednesday, July 31, 1033. But on investigation,
it turns out that there was no total eclipse of the sun visible in
Norway that year; though three years before, there was one; but on
the 29th instead of the 31st. So that the exact date still remains
uncertain; Dahlmann, the latest critic, inclining for 1030, and its
indisputable eclipse.%
\footnote{\textit{Saxon Chronicle} says expressly, under A.D.\ 1030: {}``In
this year King Olaf was slain in Norway by his own people, and was
afterwards sainted.'' %
}


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER XI. \textit{\emph{Magnus}} \textit{\emph{the}}
\textit{\emph{Good}} \textit{\emph{and}} \textit{\emph{Others}}\emph{.}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER XI. \textit{\emph{Magnus}}
\textit{\emph{the}} \textit{\emph{Good}} \textit{\emph{and}} \textit{\emph{Others}}}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{CHAPTER XI}

St.\ Olaf is the highest of these Norway Kings, and is the last that
much attracts us. For this reason, if a reason were not superfluous,
we might here end our poor reminiscences of those dim Sovereigns.
But we will, nevertheless, for the sake of their connection with bits
of English History, still hastily mention the Dames of one or two
who follow, and who throw a momentary gleam of life and illumination
on events and epochs that have fallen so extinct among ourselves at
present, though once they were so momentous and memorable.

The new King Svein from Jomsburg, Knut's natural son, had no success
in Norway, nor seems to have deserved any. His English mother and
he were found to be grasping, oppressive persons; and awoke, almost
from the instant that Olaf was suppressed and crushed away from Norway
into Heaven, universal odium more and more in that country. Well-deservedly,
as still appears; for their taxings and extortions of malt, of herring,
of meal, smithwork and every article taxable in Norway, were extreme;
and their service to the country otherwise nearly imperceptible. In
brief their one basis there was the power of Knut the Great; and that,
like all earthly things, was liable to sudden collapse,---and it suffered
such in a notable degree. King Knut, hardly yet of middle age, and
the greatest King in the then world, died at Shaftesbury, in 1035,
as Dahlmann thinks%
\footnote{\textit{Saxon Chronicle} says: {}``1035. In this year died King Cnut.\ ...
He departed at Shaftesbury, November 12, and they conveyed him thence
to Winchester, and there buried him.'' %
},---leaving two legitimate sons and a busy, intriguing widow (Norman
Emma, widow of Ethelred the Unready), mother of the younger of these
two; neither of whom proved to have any talent or any continuance.
In spite of Emma's utmost efforts, Harald, the elder son of Knut,
not hers, got England for his kingdom; Emma and her Harda-Knut had
to be content with Denmark, and go thither, much against their will.
Harald in England,---light-going little figure like his father before
him,---got the name of Harefoot here; and might have done good work
among his now orderly and settled people; but he died almost within
year and day; and has left no trace among us, except that of {}``Harefoot,''
from his swift mode of walking. Emma and her Harda-Knut now returned
joyful to England. But the violent, idle, and drunken Harda-Knut did
no good there; and, happily for England and him, soon suddenly ended,
by stroke of apoplexy at a marriage festival, as mentioned above.
In Denmark he had done still less good. And indeed,---under him, in
a year or two, the grand imperial edifice, laboriously built by Knut's
valor and wisdom, had already tumbled all to the ground, in a most
unexpected and remarkable way. As we are now to indicate with all
brevity.

Svein's tyrannies in Norway had wrought such fruit that, within the
four years after Olaf's death, the chief men in Norway, the very slayers
of King Olaf, Kalf Arneson at the head of them, met secretly once
or twice; and unanimously agreed that Kalf Arneson must go to Sweden,
or to Russia itself; seek young Magnus, son of Olaf home: excellent
Magnus, to be king over all Norway and them, instead of this intolerable
Svein. Which was at once done,---Magnus brought home in a kind of
triumph, all Norway waiting for him. Intolerable Svein had already
been rebelled against: some years before this, a certain young Tryggve
out of Ireland, authentic son of Olaf Tryggveson, and of that fine
Irish Princess who chose him in his low habiliments and low estate,
and took him over to her own Green Island,---this royal young Tryggve
Olafson had invaded the usurper Svein, in a fierce, valiant, and determined
manner; and though with too small a party, showed excellent fight
for some time; till Svein, zealously bestirring himself, managed to
get him beaten and killed. But that was a couple of years ago; the
party still too small, not including one and all as now! Svein, without
stroke of sword this time, moved off towards Denmark; never showing
face in Norway again. His drunken brother, Harda-Knut, received him
brother-like; even gave him some territory to rule over and subsist
upon. But he lived only a short while; was gone before Harda-Knut
himself; and we will mention him no more.

Magnus was a fine bright young fellow, and proved a valiant, wise,
and successful King, known among his people as Magnus the Good. He
was only natural son of King Olaf but that made little difference
in those times and there. His strange-looking, unexpected Latin name
he got in this way: Alfhild, his mother, a slave through ill-luck
of war, though nobly born, was seen to be in a hopeful way; and it
was known in the King's house how intimately Olaf was connected with
that occurrence, and how much he loved this {}``King's serving-maid,''
as she was commonly designated. Alfhild was brought to bed late at
night; and all the world, especially King Olaf was asleep; Olaf's
strict rule, then and always, being, Don't awaken me:---seemingly
a man sensitive about his sleep. The child was a boy, of rather weakly
aspect; no important person present, except Sigvat, the King's Icelandic
Skald, who happened to be still awake; and the Bishop of Norway, who,
I suppose, had been sent for in hurry. {}``What is to be done?''
said the Bishop: {}``here is an infant in pressing need of baptism;
and we know not what the name is: go, Sigvat, awaken the King, and
ask.'' {}``I dare not for my life,'' answered Sigvat; {}``King's
orders are rigorous on that point.'' {}``But if the child die unbaptized,''
said the Bishop, shuddering; too certain, he and everybody, where
the child would go in that case! {}``I will myself give him a name,''
said Sigvat, with a desperate concentration of all his faculties;
{}``he shall be namesake of the greatest of mankind,---imperial Carolus
Magnus; let us call the infant Magnus!'' King Olaf, on the morrow,
asked rather sharply how Sigvat had dared take such a liberty; but
excused Sigvat, seeing what the perilous alternative was. And Magnus,
by such accident, this boy was called; and he, not another, is the
prime origin and introducer of that name Magnus, which occurs rather
frequently, not among the Norman Kings only, but by and by among the
Danish and Swedish; and, among the Scandinavian populations, appears
to be rather frequent to this day.

Magnus, a youth of great spirit, whose own, and standing at his beck,
all Norway now was, immediately smote home on Denmark; desirous naturally
of vengeance for what it had done to Norway, and the sacred kindred
of Magnus. Denmark, its great Knut gone, and nothing but a drunken
Harda-Knut, fugitive Svein and Co., there in his stead, was become
a weak dislocated Country. And Magnus plundered in it, burnt it, beat
it, as often as he pleased; Harda-Knut struggling what he could to
make resistance or reprisals, but never once getting any victory over
Magnus. Magnus, I perceive, was, like his Father, a skilful as well
as valiant fighter by sea and land; Magnus, with good battalions,
and probably backed by immediate alliance with Heaven and St.\ Olaf,
as was then the general belief or surmise about him, could not easily
be beaten. And the truth is, he never was, by Harda-Knut or any other.
Harda-Knut's last transaction with him was, To make a firm Peace and
even Family-treaty sanctioned by all the grandees of both countries,
who did indeed mainly themselves make it; their two Kings assenting:
That there should be perpetual Peace, and no thought of war more,
between Denmark and Norway; and that, if either of the Kings died
childless while the other was reigning, the other should succeed him
in both Kingdoms. A magnificent arrangement, such as has several times
been made in the world's history; but which in this instance, what
is very singular, took actual effect; drunken Harda-Knut dying so
speedily, and Magnus being the man he was. One would like to give
the date of this remarkable Treaty; but cannot with precision. Guess
somewhere about 1040:%
\footnote{Munch gives the date 1038 (ii.\ 840), Adam of Bremen 1040. %
} actual fruition of it came to Magnus, beyond question, in 1042, when
Harda-Knut drank that wassail bowl at the wedding in Lambeth, and
fell down dead; which in the Saxon Chronicle is dated 3d June of that
year. Magnus at once went to Denmark on hearing this event; was joyfully
received by the headmen there, who indeed, with their fellows in Norway,
had been main contrivers of the Treaty; both Countries longing for
mutual peace, and the end of such incessant broils.

Magnus was triumphantly received as King in Denmark. The only unfortunate
thing was, that Svein Estrithson, the exile son of Ulf, Knut's Brother-in-law,
whom Knut, as we saw, had summarily killed twelve years before, emerged
from his exile in Sweden in a flattering form; and proposed that Magnus
should make him Jarl of Denmark, and general administrator there,
in his own stead. To which the sanguine Magnus, in spite of advice
to the contrary, insisted on acceding. {}``Too powerful a Jarl,''
said Einar Tamberskelver---the same Einar whose bow was heard to break
in Olaf Tryggveson's last battle (\char`\"{}Norway breaking from
thy hand, King!\char`\"{}), who had now become Magnus's chief man,
and had long been among the highest chiefs in Norway; {}``too powerful
a Jarl,'' said Einar earnestly. But Magnus disregarded it; and a
troublesome experience had to teach him that it was true. In about
a year, crafty Svein, bringing ends to meet, got himself declared
King of Denmark for his own behoof, instead of Jarl for another's:
and had to be beaten and driven out by Magnus. Beaten every year;
but almost always returned next year, for a new beating,---almost,
though not altogether; having at length got one dreadful smashing-down
and half-killing, which held him quiet for a while,---so long as Magnus
lived. Nay in the end, he made good his point, as if by mere patience
in being beaten; and did become King himself, and progenitor of all
the Kings that followed. King Svein Estrithson; so called from Astrid
or Estrith, his mother, the great Knut's sister, daughter of Svein
Forkbeard by that amazing Sigrid the Proud, who \textit{burnt} those
two ineligible suitors of hers both at once, and got a switch on the
face from Olaf Tryggveson, which proved the death of that high man.

But all this fine fortune of the often beaten Estrithson was posterior
to Magnus's death; who never would have suffered it, had he been alive.
Magnus was a mighty fighter; a fiery man; very proud and positive,
among other qualities, and had such luck as was never seen before.
Luck invariably good, said everybody; never once was beaten,---which
proves, continued everybody, that his Father Olaf and the miraculous
power of Heaven were with him always. Magnus, I believe, did put down
a great deal of anarchy in those countries. One of his earliest enterprises
was to abolish Jomsburg, and trample out that nest of pirates. Which
he managed so completely that Jomsburg remained a mere reminiscence
thenceforth; and its place is not now known to any mortal.

One perverse thing did at last turn up in the course of Magnus: a
new Claimant for the Crown of Norway, and he a formidable person withal.
This was Harald, half-brother of the late Saint Olaf; uncle or half-uncle,
therefore, of Magnus himself. Indisputable son of the Saint's mother
by St.\ Olaf's stepfather, who was, himself descended straight from
Harald Haarfagr. This new Harald was already much heard of in the
world. As an ardent Boy of fifteen he had fought at King Olaf's side
at Stickelstad; would not be admonished by the Saint to go away. Got
smitten down there, not killed; was smuggled away that night from
the field by friendly help; got cured of his wounds, forwarded to
Russia, where he grew to man's estate, under bright auspices and successes.
Fell in love with the Russian Princess, but could not get her to wife;
went off thereupon to Constantinople as \textit{Vaeringer} (Life-Guardsman
of the Greek Kaiser); became Chief Captain of the Vaeringers, invincible
champion of the poor Kaisers that then were, and filled all the East
with the shine and noise of his exploits. An authentic \textit{Waring}
or \textit{Baring}, such the surname we now have derived from these
people; who were an important institution in those Greek countries
for several ages: Vaeringer Life-Guard, consisting of Norsemen, with
sometimes a few English among them. Harald had innumerable adventures,
nearly always successful, sing the Skalds; gained a great deal of
wealth, gold ornaments, and gold coin; had even Queen Zoe (so they
sing, though falsely) enamored of him at one time; and was himself
a Skald of eminence; some of whose verses, by no means the worst of
their kind, remain to this day.

This character of Waring much distinguishes Harald to me; the only
Vaeringer of whom I could ever get the least biography, true or half-true.
It seems the Greek History-books but indifferently correspond with
these Saga records; and scholars say there could have been no considerable
romance between Zoe and him, Zoe at that date being 60 years of age!
Harald's own lays say nothing of any Zoe, but are still full of longing
for his Russian Princess far away.

At last, what with Zoes, what with Greek perversities and perfidies,
and troubles that could not fail, he determined on quitting Greece;
packed up his immensities of wealth in succinct shape, and actually
returned to Russia, where new honors and favors awaited him from old
friends, and especially, if I mistake not, the hand of that adorable
Princess, crown of all his wishes for the time being. Before long,
however, he decided farther to look after his Norway Royal heritages;
and, for that purpose, sailed in force to the Jarl or quasi-King of
Denmark, the often-beaten Svein, who was now in Sweden on his usual
winter exile after beating. Svein and he had evidently interests in
common. Svein was charmed to see him, so warlike, glorious and renowned
a man, with masses of money about him, too. Svein did by and by become
treacherous; and even attempted, one night, to assassinate Harald
in his bed on board ship: but Harald, vigilant of Svein, and a man
of quick and sure insight, had providently gone to sleep elsewhere,
leaving a log instead of himself among the blankets. In which log,
next morning, treacherous Svein's battle-axe was found deeply sticking:
and could not be removed without difficulty! But this was after Harald
and King Magnus himself bad begun treating; with the fairest prospects,---which
this of the \$vein battle-axe naturally tended to forward, as it altogether
ended the other copartnery.

Magnus, on first hearing of Vaeringer Harald and his intentions, made
instant equipment, and determination to fight his uttermost against
the same. But wise persons of influence round him, as did the like
sort round Vaeringer Harald, earnestly advised compromise and peaceable
agreement. Which, soon after that of Svein's nocturnal battle-axe,
was the course adopted; and, to the joy of all parties, did prove
a successful solution. Magnus agreed to part his kingdom with Uncle
Harald; uncle parting his treasures, or uniting them with Magnus's
poverty. Each was to be an independent king, but they were to govern
in common; Magnus rather presiding. He, to sit, for example, in the
High Seat alone; King Harald opposite him in a seat not quite so high,
though if a stranger King came on a visit, both the Norse Kings were
to sit in the High Seat. With various other punctilious regulations;
which the fiery Magnus was extremely strict with; rendering the mutual
relation a very dangerous one, had not both the Kings been honest
men, and Harald a much more prudent and tolerant one than Magnus.
They, on the whole, never had any weighty quarrel, thanks now and
then rather to Harald than to Magnus. Magnus too was very noble; and
Harald, with his wide experience and greater length of years, carefully
held his heat of temper well covered in.

Prior to Uncle Harald's coming, Magnus had distinguished himself as
a Lawgiver. His Code of Laws for the Trondhjem Province was considered
a pretty piece of legislation; and in subsequent times got the name
of \textit{Gray-goose} (Gragas); one of the wonderfulest names ever
given to a wise Book. Some say it came from the gray color of the
parchment, some give other incredible origins; the last guess I have
heard is, that the name merely denotes antiquity; the witty name in
Norway for a man growing old having been, in those times, that he
was now {}``becoming a gray-goose.'' Very fantastic indeed; certain,
however, that Gray-goose is the name of that venerable Law Book; nay,
there is another, still more famous, belonging to Iceland, and not
far from a century younger, the Iceland \textit{Gray-goose.} The Norway
one is perhaps of date about 1037, the other of about 1118; peace
be with them both! Or, if anybody is inclined to such matters let
him go to Dahlmann, for the amplest information and such minuteness
of detail as might almost enable him to be an Advocate, with Silk
Gown, in any Court depending on these Gray-geese.

Magnus did not live long. He had a dream one night of his Father Olaf's
coming to him in shining presence, and announcing, That a magnificent
fortune and world-great renown was now possible for him; but that
perhaps it was his duty to refuse it; in which case his earthly life
would be short. {}``Which way wilt thou do, then?'' said the shining
presence. {}``Thou shalt decide for me, Father, thou, not I!'' and
told his Uncle Harald on the morrow, adding that he thought he should
now soon die; which proved to be the fact. The magnificent fortune,
so questionable otherwise, has reference, no doubt, to the Conquest
of England; to which country Magnus, as rightful and actual King of
\textit{Denmark}, as well as undisputed heir to drunken Harda-Knut,
by treaty long ago, had now some evident claim. The enterprise itself
was reserved to the patient, gay, and prudent Uncle Harald; and to
him it did prove fatal,---and merely paved the way for Another, luckier,
not likelier!

Svein Estrithson, always beaten during Magnus's life, by and by got
an agreement from the prudent Harald to \textit{be} King of Denmark,
then; and end these wearisome and ineffectual brabbles; Harald having
other work to do. But in the autumn of 1066, Tosti, a younger son
of our English Earl Godwin, came to Svein's court with a most important
announcement; namely, that King Edward the Confessor, so called, was
dead, and that Harold, as the English write it, his eldest brother
would give him, Tosti, no sufficient share in the kingship. Which
state of matters, if Svein would go ahead with him to rectify it,
would be greatly to the advantage of Svein. Svein, taught by many
beatings, was too wise for this proposal; refused Tosti, who indignantly
stepped over into Norway, and proposed it to King Harald there. Svein
really had acquired considerable teaching, I should guess, from his
much beating and hard experience in the world; one finds him afterwards
the esteemed friend of the famous Historian Adam of Bremen, who reports
various wise humanities, and pleasant discoursings with Svein Estrithson.

As for Harald Hardrade, {}``Harald the Hard or Severe,'' as he was
now called, Tosti's proposal awakened in him all his old Vaeringer
ambitious and cupidities into blazing vehemence. He zealously consented;
and at once, with his whole strength, embarked in the adventure. Fitted
out two hundred ships, and the biggest army he could carry in them;
and sailed with Tosti towards the dangerous Promised Land. Got into
the Tyne and took booty; got into the Humber, thence into the Ouse;
easily subdued any opposition the official people or their populations
could make; victoriously scattered these, victoriously took the City
of York in a day; and even got himself homaged there, {}``King of
Northumberland,'' as per covenant,---Tosti proving honorable,---Tosti
and he going with faithful strict copartnery, and all things looking
prosperous and glorious. Except only (an important exception!) that
they learnt for certain, English Harold was advancing with all his
strength; and, in a measurable space of hours, unless care were taken,
would be in York himself. Harald and Tosti hastened off to seize the
post of Stamford Bridge on Derwent River, six or seven miles east
of York City, and there bar this dangerous advent. Their own ships
lay not far off in Ouse River, in case of the worst. The battle that
ensued the next day, September 20, 1066, is forever memorable in English
history.

Snorro gives vividly enough his view of it from the Icelandic side:
A ring of stalwart Norsemen, close ranked, with their steel tools
in hand; English Harold's Army, mostly cavalry, prancing and pricking
all around; trying to find or make some opening in that ring. For
a long time trying in vain, till at length, getting them enticed to
burst out somewhere in pursuit, they quickly turned round, and quickly
made an end, of that matter. Snorro represents English Harold, with
a first party of these horse coming up, and, with preliminary salutations,
asking if Tosti were there, and if Harald were; making generous proposals
to Tosti; but, in regard to Harald and what share of England was to
be his, answering Tosti with the words, {}``Seven feet of English
earth, or more if he require it, for a grave.'' Upon which Tosti,
like an honorable man and copartner, said, {}``No, never; let us
fight you rather till we all die.'' {}``Who is this that spoke to
you?'' inquired Harald, when the cavaliers had withdrawn. {}``My
brother Harold,'' answers Tosti; which looks rather like a Saga,
but may be historical after all. Snorro's history of the battle is
intelligible only after you have premised to it, what he never hints
at, that the scene was on the east side of the bridge and of the Derwent;
the great struggle for the bridge, one at last finds, was after the
fall of Harald; and to the English Chroniclers, said struggle, which
was abundantly severe, is all they know of the battle.

Enraged at that breaking loose of his steel ring of infantry, Norse
Harald blazed up into true Norse fury, all the old Vaeringer and Berserkir
rage awakening in him; sprang forth into the front of the fight, and
mauled and cut and smashed down, on both hands of him, everything
he met, irresistible by any horse or man, till an arrow cut him through
the windpipe, and laid him low forever. That was the end of King Harald
and of his workings in this world. The circumstance that he was a
Waring or Baring and had smitten to pieces so many Oriental cohorts
or crowds, and had made love-verses (kind of iron madrigals) to his
Russian Princess, and caught the fancy of questionable Greek queens,
and had amassed such heaps of money, while poor nephew Magnus had
only one gold ring (which had been his father's, and even his father's
\textit{mother's}, as Uncle Harald noticed), and nothing more whatever
of that precious metal to combine with Harald's treasures:---all this
is new to me, naturally no hint of it in any English book; and lends
some gleam of romantic splendor to that dim business of Stamford Bridge,
now fallen so dull and torpid to most English minds, transcendently
important as it once was to all Englishmen. Adam of Bremen says, the
English got as much gold plunder from Harald's people as was a heavy
burden for twelve men;%
\footnote{Camden, Rapin, \&c.\ quote. %
} a thing evidently impossible, which nobody need try to believe. Young
Olaf, Harald's son, age about sixteen, steering down the Ouse at the
top of his speed, escaped home to Norway with all his ships, and subsequently
reigned there with Magnus, his brother. Harald's body did lie in English
earth for about a year; but was then brought to Norway for burial.
He needed more than seven feet of grave, say some; Laing, interpreting
Snorro's measurements, makes Harald eight feet in stature,---I do
hope, with some error in excess!


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER XII. \textit{\emph{Olaf}} \textit{\emph{the}}
\textit{\emph{Tranquil}}\emph{,} \textit{\emph{Magnus}} \textit{\emph{Barefoot}}\emph{,}
\textit{\emph{and}} \textit{\emph{Sigurd}} \textit{\emph{the}} \textit{\emph{Crusader}}\emph{.}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER XII. \textit{\emph{Olaf}}
\textit{\emph{the}} \textit{\emph{Tranquil}}\emph{,} \textit{\emph{Magnus}}
\textit{\emph{Barefoot}}\emph{,} \textit{\emph{and}} \textit{\emph{Sigurd}}
\textit{\emph{the}} \textit{\emph{Crusader}}}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{CHAPTER XII}

The new King Olaf, his brother Magnus having soon died, bore rule
in Norway for some five-and-twenty years. Rule soft and gentle, not
like his father's, and inclining rather to improvement in the arts
and elegancies than to anything severe or dangerously laborious. A
slim-built, witty-talking, popular and pretty man, with uncommonly
bright eyes, and hair like floss silk: they called him Olaf \textit{Kyrre}
(the Tranquil or Easygoing).

The ceremonials of the palace were much improved by him. Palace still
continued to be built of huge logs pyramidally sloping upwards, with
fireplace in the middle of the floor, and no egress for smoke or ingress
for light except right overhead, which, in bad weather, you could
shut, or all but shut, with a lid. Lid originally made of mere opaque
board, but changed latterly into a light frame, covered (\textit{glazed},
so to speak) with entrails of animals, clarified into something of
pellucidity. All this Olaf, I hope, further perfected, as he did the
placing of the court ladies, court officials, and the like; but I
doubt if the luxury of a glass window were ever known to him, or a
cup to drink from that was not made of metal or horn. In fact it is
chiefly for his son's sake I mention him here; and with the son, too,
I have little real concern, but only a kind of fantastic.

This son bears the name of Magnus \textit{Barfod} (Barefoot, or Bareleg);
and if you ask why so, the answer is: He was used to appear in the
streets of Nidaros (Trondhjem) now and then in complete Scotch Highland
dress. Authentic tartan plaid and philibeg, at that epoch,---to the
wonder of Trondhjem and us! The truth is, he had a mighty fancy for
those Hebrides and other Scotch possessions of his; and seeing England
now quite impossible, eagerly speculated on some conquest in Ireland
as next best. He did, in fact, go diligently voyaging and inspecting
among those Orkney and Hebridian Isles; putting everything straight
there, appointing stringent authorities, jarls,---nay, a king, {}``Kingdom
of the Suderoer'' (Southern Isles, now called \textit{Sodor}),---and,
as first king, Sigurd, his pretty little boy of nine years. All which
done, and some quarrel with Sweden fought out, he seriously applied
himself to visiting in a still more emphatic manner; namely, to invading,
with his best skill and strength, the considerable virtual or actual
kingdom he had in Ireland, intending fully to enlarge it to the utmost
limits of the Island if possible. He got prosperously into Dublin
(guess A.D.\ 1102). Considerable authority he already had, even among
those poor Irish Kings, or kinglets, in their glibs and yellow-saffron
gowns; still more, I suppose, among the numerous Norse Principalities
there. {}``King Murdog, King of Ireland,'' says the Chronicle of
Man, {}``had obliged himself, every Yule-day, to take a pair of shoes,
hang them over his shoulder, as your servant does on a journey, and
walk across his court, at bidding and in presence of Magnus Barefoot's
messenger, by way of homage to the said {}``King.'' Murdog on this
greater occasion did whatever homage could be required of him; but
that, though comfortable, was far from satisfying the great King's
ambitious mind. The great King left Murdog; left his own Dublin; marched
off westward on a general conquest of Ireland. Marched easily victorious
for a time; and got, some say, into the wilds of Connaught, but there
saw himself beset by ambuscades and wild Irish countenances intent
on mischief; and had, on the sudden, to draw up for battle;---place,
I regret to say, altogether undiscoverable to me; known only that
it was boggy in the extreme. Certain enough, too certain and evident,
Magnus Barefoot, searching eagerly, could find no firm footing there;
nor, fighting furiously up to the knees or deeper, any result but
honorable death! Date is confidently marked {}``24 August, 1103,\char`\"{}---as
if people knew the very day of the month. The natives did humanely
give King Magnus Christian burial. The remnants of his force, without
further molestation, found their ships on the Coast of Ulster; and
sailed home,---without conquest of Ireland; nay perhaps, leaving royal
Murdog disposed to be relieved of his procession with the pair of
shoes.

Magnus Barefoot left three sons, all kings at once, reigning peaceably
together. But to us, at present, the only noteworthy one of them was
Sigurd; who, finding nothing special to do at home, left his brothers
to manage for him, and went off on a far Voyage, which has rendered
him distinguishable in the crowd. Voyage through the Straits of Gibraltar,
on to Jerusalem, thence to Constantinople; and so home through Russia,
shining with such renown as filled all Norway for the time being.
A King called Sigurd Jorsalafarer (Jerusalemer) or Sigurd the Crusader
henceforth. His voyage had been only partially of the Viking type;
in general it was of the Royal-Progress kind rather; Vikingism only
intervening in cases of incivility or the like. His reception in the
Courts of Portugal, Spain, Sicily, Italy, had been honorable and sumptuous.
The King of Jerusalem broke out into utmost splendor and effusion
at sight of such a pilgrim; and Constantinople did its highest honors
to such a Prince of Vaeringers. And the truth is, Sigurd intrinsically
was a wise, able, and prudent man; who, surviving both his brothers,
reigned a good while alone in a solid and successful way. He shows
features of an original, independent-thinking man; something of ruggedly
strong, sincere, and honest, with peculiarities that are amiable and
even pathetic in the character and temperament of him; as certainly,
the course of life he took was of his own choosing, and peculiar enough.
He happens furthermore to be, what he least of all could have chosen
or expected, the last of the Haarfagr Genealogy that had any success,
or much deserved any, in this world. The last of the Haarfagrs, or
as good as the last! So that, singular to say, it is in reality, for
one thing only that Sigurd, after all his crusadings and wonderful
adventures, is memorable to us here: the advent of an Irish gentleman
called {}``Gylle Krist'' (Gil-christ, Servant of Christ), who,---not
over welcome, I should think, but (unconsciously) big with the above
result,---appeared in Norway, while King Sigurd was supreme. Let us
explain a little.

This Gylle Krist, the unconsciously fatal individual, who {}``spoke
Norse imperfectly,'' declared himself to be the natural son of whilom
Magnus Barefoot; born to him there while engaged in that unfortunate
{}``Conquest of Ireland.'' {}``Here is my mother come with me,''
said Gilchrist, {}``who declares my real baptismal name to have been
Harald, given me by that great King; and who will carry the red-hot
ploughshares or do any reasonable ordeal in testimony of these facts.
I am King Sigurd's veritable half-brother: what will King Sigurd think
it fair to do with me?'' Sigurd clearly seems to have believed the
man to be speaking truth; and indeed nobody to have doubted but he
was. Sigurd said, {}``Honorable sustenance shalt thou have from me
here. But, under pain of extirpation, swear that, neither in my time,
nor in that of my young son Magnus, wilt thou ever claim any share
in this Government.'' Gylle swore; and punctually kept his promise
during Sigurd's reign. But during Magnus's, he conspicuously broke
it; and, in result, through many reigns, and during three or four
generations afterwards, produced unspeakable contentions, massacrings,
confusions in the country he had adopted. There are reckoned, from
the time of Sigurd's death (A.D.\ 1130), about a hundred years of
civil war: no king allowed to distinguish himself by a solid reign
of well-doing, or by any continuing reign at all,---sometimes as many
as four kings simultaneously fighting;---and in Norway, from sire
to son, nothing but sanguinary anarchy, disaster and bewilderment;
a Country sinking steadily as if towards absolute ruin. Of all which
frightful misery and discord Irish Gylle, styled afterwards King Harald
Gylle, was, by ill destiny and otherwise, the visible origin: an illegitimate
Irish Haarfagr who proved to be his own destruction, and that of the
Haarfagr kindred altogether!

Sigurd himself seems always to have rather favored Gylle, who was
a cheerful, shrewd, patient, witty, and effective fellow; and had
at first much quizzing to endure, from the younger kind, on account
of his Irish way of speaking Norse, and for other reasons. One evening,
for example, while the drink was going round, Gylle mentioned that
the Irish had a wonderful talent of swift running and that there were
among them people who could keep up with the swiftest horse. At which,
especially from young Magnus, there were peals of laughter; and a
declaration from the latter that Gylle and he would have it tried
to-morrow morning! Gylle in vain urged that he had not himself professed
to be so swift a runner as to keep up with the Prince's horses; but
only that there were men in Ireland who could. Magnus was positive;
and, early next morning, Gylle had to be on the ground; and the race,
naturally under heavy bet, actually went off. Gylle started parallel
to Magnus's stirrup; ran like a very roe, and was clearly ahead at
the goal. {}``Unfair,'' said Magnus; {}``thou must have had hold
of my stirrup-leather, and helped thyself along; we must try it again.''
Gylle ran behind the horse this second time; then at the end, sprang
forward; and again was fairly in ahead. {}``Thou must have held by
the tail,'' said Magnus; {}``not by fair running was this possible;
we must try a third time!'' Gylle started ahead of Magnus and his
horse, this third time; kept ahead with increasing distance, Magnus
galloping his very best; and reached the goal more palpably foremost
than ever. So that Magnus had to pay his bet, and other damage and
humiliation. And got from his father, who heard of it soon afterwards,
scoffing rebuke as a silly fellow, who did not know the worth of men,
but only the clothes and rank of them, and well deserved what he had
got from Gylle. All the time King Sigurd lived, Gylle seems to have
had good recognition and protection from that famous man; and, indeed,
to have gained favor all round, by his quiet social demeanor and the
qualities he showed.


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER XIII. \textit{\emph{Magnus}} \textit{\emph{the}}
\textit{\emph{Blind}}\emph{,} \textit{\emph{Harald}} \textit{\emph{Gylle}}\emph{,}
\textit{\emph{and}} \textit{\emph{Mutual Extinction of}} \textit{\emph{the}}
\textit{\emph{Haarfagrs}}\emph{.}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER XIII. \textit{\emph{Magnus}}
\textit{\emph{the}} \textit{\emph{Blind}}\emph{,} \textit{\emph{Harald}}
\textit{\emph{Gylle}}\emph{,} \textit{\emph{and}} \textit{\emph{Mutual
Extinction of}} \textit{\emph{the}} \textit{\emph{Haarfagrs}}}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{CHAPTER XIII}

On Sigurd the Crusader's death, Magnus naturally came to the throne;
Gylle keeping silence and a cheerful face for the time. But it was
not long till claim arose on Gylle's part, till war and fight arose
between Magnus and him, till the skilful, popular, ever-active and
shifty Gylle had entirely beaten Magnus; put out his eyes, mutilated
the poor body of him in a horrid and unnamable manner, and shut him
up in a convent as out of the game henceforth. There in his dark misery
Magnus lived now as a monk; called {}``Magnus the Blind'' by those
Norse populations; King Harald Gylle reigning victoriously in his
stead. But this also was only for a time. There arose avenging kinsfolk
of Magnus, who had no Irish accent in their Norse, and were themselves
eager enough to bear rule in their native country. By one of these,---a
terribly stronghanded, fighting, violent, and regardless fellow, who
also was a Bastard of Magnus Barefoot's, and had been made a Priest,
but liked it unbearably ill, and had broken loose from it into the
wildest courses at home and abroad; so that his current name got to
be {}``Slembi-diakn,'' Slim or Ill Deacon, under which he is much
noised of in Snorro and the Sagas: by this Slim-Deacon, Gylle was
put an end to (murdered by night, drunk in his sleep); and poor blind
Magnus was brought out, and again set to act as King, or King's Cloak,
in hopes Gylle's posterity would never rise to victory more. But Gylle's
posterity did, to victory and also to defeat, and were the death of
Magnus and of Slim-Deacon too, in a frightful way; and all got their
own death by and by in a ditto. In brief, these two kindreds (reckoned
to be authentic enough Haarfagr people, both kinds of them) proved
now to have become a veritable crop of dragon's teeth; who mutually
fought, plotted, struggled, as if it had been their life's business;
never ended fighting and seldom long intermitted it, till they had
exterminated one another, and did at last all rest in death. One of
these later Gylle temporary Kings I remember by the name of Harald
Herdebred, Harald of the Broad Shoulders. The very last of them I
think was Harald Mund (Harald of the \textit{Wry-Mouth}), who gave
rise to two Impostors, pretending to be Sons of his, a good while
after the poor Wry-Mouth itself and all its troublesome belongings
were quietly underground. What Norway suffered during that sad century
may be imagined.


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER XIV. \textit{\emph{Sverrir}} \textit{\emph{and}}
\textit{\emph{Descendants}}\emph{,} \textit{\emph{to}} \textit{\emph{Hakon}}
\textit{\emph{the}} \textit{\emph{Old}}\emph{.}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER XIV. \textit{\emph{Sverrir}}
\textit{\emph{and}} \textit{\emph{Descendants}}\emph{,} \textit{\emph{to}}
\textit{\emph{Hakon}} \textit{\emph{the}} \textit{\emph{Old}}}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{CHAPTER XIV}

The end of it was, or rather the first abatement, and \textit{beginnings}
of the end, That, when all this had gone on ever worsening for some
forty years or so, one Sverrir (A.D.\ 1177), at the head of an armed
mob of poor people called \textit{Birkebeins}, came upon the scene.
A strange enough figure in History, this Sverrir and his Birkebeins!
At first a mere mockery and dismal laughing-stock to the enlightened
Norway public. Nevertheless by unheard-of fighting, hungering, exertion,
and endurance, Sverrir, after ten years of such a death-wrestle against
men and things, got himself accepted as King; and by wonderful expenditure
of ingenuity, common cunning, unctuous Parliamentary Eloquence or
almost Popular Preaching, and (it must be owned) general human faculty
and valor (or value) in the over-clouded and distorted state, did
victoriously continue such. And founded a new Dynasty in Norway, which
ended only with Norway's separate existence, after near three hundred
years.

This Sverrir called himself a Son of Harald Wry-Mouth; but was in
reality the son of a poor Comb-maker in some little town of Norway;
nothing heard of Sonship to Wry-Mouth till after good success otherwise.
His Birkebeins (that is to say, \textit{Birchlegs;} the poor rebellious
wretches having taken to the woods; and been obliged, besides their
intolerable scarcity of food, to thatch their bodies from the cold
with whatever covering could be got, and their legs especially with
birch bark; sad species of fleecy hosiery; whence their nickname),---his
Birkebeins I guess always to have been a kind of Norse \textit{Jacquerie}:
desperate rising of thralls and indigent people, driven mad by their
unendurable sufferings and famishings,---theirs the \textit{deepest}
stratum of misery, and the densest and heaviest, in this the general
misery of Norway, which had lasted towards the third generation and
looked as if it would last forever:---whereupon they had risen proclaiming,
in this furious dumb manner, unintelligible except to Heaven, that
the same could not, nor would not, be endured any longer! And, by
their Sverrir, strange to say, they did attain a kind of permanent
success; and, from being a dismal laughing-stock in Norway, came to
be important, and for a time all-important there. Their opposition
nicknames, {}``\textit{Baglers} (from Bagall, \textit{baculus}, bishop's
staff; Bishop Nicholas being chief Leader),'' {}``\textit{Gold-legs},''
and the like obscure terms (for there was still a considerable course
of counter-fighting ahead, and especially of counter-nicknaming),
I take to have meant in Norse prefigurement seven centuries ago, {}``bloated
Aristocracy,'' {}``tyrannous-\textit{Bourgeoisie},\char`\"{}---till,
in the next century, these rents were closed again!

King Sverrir, not himself bred to comb-making, had, in his fifth year,
gone to an uncle, Bishop in the Faroe Islands; and got some considerable
education from him, with a view to Priesthood on the part of Sverrir.
But, not liking that career, Sverrir had fled and smuggled himself
over to the Birkebeins; who, noticing the learned tongue, and other
miraculous qualities of the man, proposed to make him Captain of them;
and even threatened to kill him if he would not accept,---which thus
at the sword's point, as Sverrir says, he was obliged to do. It was
after this that he thought of becoming son of Wry-Mouth and other
higher things.

His Birkebeins and he had certainly a talent of campaigning which
has hardly ever been equalled. They fought like devils against any
odds of number; and before battle they have been known to march six
days together without food, except, perhaps, the inner barks of trees,
and in such clothing and shoeing as mere birch bark:---at one time,
somewhere in the Dovrefjeld, there was serious counsel held among
them whether they should not all, as one man, leap down into the frozen
gulfs and precipices, or at once massacre one another wholly, and
so finish. Of their conduct in battle, fiercer than that of \textit{Baresarks},
where was there ever seen the parallel? In truth they are a dim strange
object to one, in that black time; wondrously bringing light into
it withal; and proved to be, under such unexpected circumstances,
the beginning of better days!

Of Sverrir's public speeches there still exist authentic specimens;
wonderful indeed, and much characteristic of such a Sverrir. A comb-maker
King, evidently meaning several good and solid things; and effecting
them too, athwart such an element of Norwegian chaos-come-again. His
descendants and successors were a comparatively respectable kin. The
last and greatest of them I shall mention is Hakon VII., or Hakon
the Old; whose fame is still lively among us, from the Battle of Largs
at least.


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER XV. \textit{\emph{Hakon}} \textit{\emph{the}}
\textit{\emph{Old}} \textit{\emph{at}} \textit{\emph{Largs}}\emph{.}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER XV. Hakon the Old at Largs}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{Hakon the Old at Largs}

In the Norse annals our famous Battle of Largs makes small figure,
or almost none at all among Hakon's battles and feats. They do say
indeed, these Norse annalists, that the King of Scotland, Alexander
III.\ (who had such a fate among the crags about Kinghorn in time
coming), was very anxious to purchase from King Hakon his sovereignty
of the Western Isles, but that Hakon pointedly refused; and at length,
being again importuned and bothered on the business, decided on giving
a refusal that could not be mistaken. Decided, namely, to go with
a big expedition, and look thoroughly into that wing of his Dominions;
where no doubt much has fallen awry since Magnus Barefoot's grand
visit thither, and seems to be inviting the cupidity of bad neighbors!
{}``All this we will put right again,'' thinks Hakon, {}``and gird
it up into a safe and defensive posture.'' Hakon sailed accordingly,
with a strong fleet; adjusting and rectifying among his Hebrides as
he went long, and landing withal on the Scotch coast to plunder and
punish as he thought fit. The Scots say he had claimed of them Arran,
Bute, and the Two Cumbraes (\char`\"{}given my ancestors by Donald
Bain,'' said Hakon, to the amazement of the Scots) {}``as part of
the Sudoer'' (Southern Isles): ---so far from selling that fine kingdom!---and
that it was after taking both Arran and Bute that he made his descent
at Largs.

Of Largs there is no mention whatever in Norse books. But beyond any
doubt, such is the other evidence, Hakon did land there; land and
fight, not conquering, probably rather beaten; and very certainly
{}``retiring to his ships,'' as in either case he behooved to do!
It is further certain he was dreadfully maltreated by the weather
on those wild coasts; and altogether credible, as the Scotch records
bear, that he was so at Largs very specially. The Norse Records or
Sagas say merely, he lost many of his ships by the tempests, and many
of his men by land fighting in various parts,---tacitly including
Largs, no doubt, which was the last of these misfortunes to him. {}``In
the battle here he lost 15,000 men, say the Scots, we 5,000''! Divide
these numbers by ten, and the excellently brief and lucid Scottish
summary by Buchanan may be taken as the approximately true and exact.%
\footnote{\textit{Buchanani Hist.} i.\ 130. %
} Date of the battle is A.D.\ 1263.

To this day, on a little plain to the south of the village, now town,
of Largs, in Ayrshire, there are seen stone cairns and monumental
heaps, and, until within a century ago, one huge, solitary, upright
stone; still mutely testifying to a battle there,---altogether clearly,
to this battle of King Hakon's; who by the Norse records, too, was
in these neighborhoods at that same date, and evidently in an aggressive,
high kind of humor. For {}``while his ships and army were doubling
the Mull of Cantire, he had his own boat set on wheels, and therein,
splendidly enough, had himself drawn across the Promontory at a flatter
part,'' no doubt with horns sounding, banners waving. {}``All to
the left of me is mine and Norway's,'' exclaimed Hakon in his triumphant
boat progress, which such disasters soon followed.

Hakon gathered his wrecks together, and sorrowfully made for Orkney.
It is possible enough, as our Guide Books now say, he may have gone
by Iona, Mull, and the narrow seas inside of Skye; and that the \textit{Kyle-Akin},
favorably known to sea-bathers in that region, may actually mean the
Kyle (narrow strait) of Hakon, where Hakon may have dropped anchor,
and rested for a little while in smooth water and beautiful environment,
safe from equinoctial storms. But poor Hakon's heart was now broken.
He went to Orkney; died there in the winter; never beholding Norway
more.

He it was who got Iceland, which had been a Republic for four centuries,
united to his kingdom of Norway: a long and intricate operation,---much
presided over by our Snorro Sturleson, so often quoted here, who indeed
lost his life (by assassination from his sons-in-law) and out of great
wealth sank at once into poverty of zero,---one midnight in his own
cellar, in the course of that bad business. Hakon was a great Politician
in his time; and succeeded in many things before he lost Largs. Snorro's
death by murder had happened about twenty years before Hakon's by
broken heart. He is called Hakon the Old, though one finds his age
was but fifty-nine, probably a longish life for a Norway King. Snorro's
narrative ceases when Snorro himself was born; that is to say, at
the threshold of King Sverrir; of whose exploits and doubtful birth
it is guessed by some that Snorro willingly forbore to speak in the
hearing of such a Hakon.


\chapter*{\protect\raggedright CHAPTER XVI. Epilogue.}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{CHAPTER XVI. Epilogue}

\markboth{EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY}{CHAPTER XVI. Epilogue}

Haarfagr's kindred lasted some three centuries in Norway; Sverrir's
lasted into its third century there; how long after this, among the
neighboring kinships, I did not inquire. For, by regal affinities,
consanguinities, and unexpected chances and changes, the three Scandinavian
kingdoms fell all peaceably together under Queen Margaret, of the
Calmar Union (A.D.\ 1397); and Norway, incorporated now with Denmark,
needed no more kings.

The History of these Haarfagrs has awakened in me many thoughts: Of
Despotism and Democracy, arbitrary government by one and self-government
(which means no government, or anarchy) by all; of Dictatorship with
many faults, and Universal Suffrage with little possibility of any
virtue. For the contrast between Olaf Tryggveson, and a Universal-Suffrage
Parliament or an {}``Imperial'' Copper Captain has, in these nine
centuries, grown to be very great. And the eternal Providence that
guides all this, and produces alike these entities with their epochs,
is not its course still through the great deep? Does not it still
speak to us, if we have ears? Here, clothed in stormy enough passions
and instincts, unconscious of any aim but their own satisfaction,
is the blessed beginning of Human Order, Regulation, and real Government;
there, clothed in a highly different, but again suitable garniture
of passions, instincts, and equally unconscious as to real aim, is
the accursed-looking ending (temporary ending) of Order, Regulation,
and Government;---very dismal to the sane onlooker for the time being;
not dismal to him otherwise, his hope, too, being steadfast! But here,
at any rate, in this poor Norse theatre, one looks with interest on
the first transformation, so mysterious and abstruse, of human Chaos
into something of articulate Cosmos; witnesses the wild and strange
birth-pangs of Human Society, and reflects that without something
similar (little as men expect such now), no Cosmos of human society
ever was got into existence, nor can ever again be.

The violences, fightings, crimes---ah yes, these seldom fail, and
they are very lamentable. But always, too, among those old populations,
there was one saving element; the now want of which, especially the
unlamented want, transcends all lamentation. Here is one of those
strange, piercing, winged-words of Ruskin, which has in it a terrible
truth for us in these epochs now come:---

{}``My friends, the follies of modern Liberalism, many and great
though they be, are practically summed in this denial or neglect of
the quality and intrinsic value of things. Its rectangular beatitudes,
and spherical benevolences,---theology of universal indulgence, and
jurisprudence which will hang no rogues, mean, one and all of them,
in the root, incapacity of discerning, or refusal to discern, worth
and unworth in anything, and least of all in man; whereas Nature and
Heaven command you, at your peril, to discern worth from unworth in
everything, and most of all in man. Your main problem is that ancient
and trite one, `Who is best man?' and the Fates forgive much,---forgive
the wildest, fiercest, cruelest experiments,---if fairly made for
the determination of that.

Theft and blood-guiltiness are not pleasing in their sight; yet the
favoring powers of the spiritual and material world will confirm to
you your stolen goods, and their noblest voices applaud the lifting
of Your spear, and rehearse the sculpture of your shield, if only
your robbing and slaying have been in fair arbitrament of that question,
`Who is best man?' But if you refuse such inquiry, and maintain every
man for his neighbor's match,---if you give vote to the simple and
liberty to the vile, the powers of those spiritual and material worlds
in due time present you inevitably with the same problem, soluble
now only wrong side upwards; and your robbing and slaying must be
done then to find out, `Who is worst man?' Which, in so wide an order
of merit, is, indeed, not easy; but a complete Tammany Ring, and lowest
circle in the Inferno of Worst, you are sure to find, and to be governed
by.\char`\"{}%
\footnote{\textit{Fors Clavigera}, Letter XIV. Pp.\ 8-10. %
} All readers will admit that there was something naturally royal in
these Haarfagr Kings. A wildly great kind of kindred; counts in it
two Heroes of a high, or almost highest, type: the first two Olafs,
Tryggveson and the Saint. And the view of them, withal, as we chance
to have it, I have often thought, how essentially Homeric it was:---indeed
what is {}``Homer'' himself but the \textit{Rhapsody} of five centuries
of Greek Skalds and wandering Ballad-singers, done (i.e. {}``stitched
together'') by somebody more musical than Snorro was? Olaf Tryggveson
and Olaf Saint please me quite as well in their prosaic form; offering
me the truth of them as if seen in their real lineaments by some marvellous
opening (through the art of Snorro) across the black strata of the
ages. Two high, almost among the highest sons of Nature, seen as they
veritably were; fairly comparable or superior to god-like Achilleus,
goddess-wounding Diomedes, much more to the two Atreidai, Regulators
of the Peoples.

I have also thought often what a Book might be made of Snorro, did
there but arise a man furnished with due literary insight, and indefatigable
diligence; who, faithfully acquainting himself with the topography,
the monumental relies and illustrative actualities of Norway, carefully
scanning the best testimonies as to place and time which that country
can still give him, carefully the best collateral records and chronologies
of other countries, and who, himself possessing the highest faculty
of a Poet, could, abridging, arranging, elucidating, reduce Snorro
to a polished Cosmic state, unweariedly purging away his much chaotic
matter! A modern {}``highest kind of Poet,'' capable of unlimited
slavish labor withal;---who, I fear, is not soon to be expected in
this world, or likely to find his task in the \textit{Heimskringla}
if he did appear here. 
\end{document}
