King Olaf had a crony in his court, chaplain Thangbrand, the Saxon priest. Thangbrand was a perfectly ferocious man, whose insincerity as a missionary of the gospel of peace must have been most evident. Some years before he had visited Bishop Siric of Canterbury, who had presented him with a valuable and unique shield, on which was wrought the image of the crucified Christ. As Boyesen says:
“Shortly after this occurrence, Thangbrand made the acquaintance of Olaf Tryggvesson, who admired the shield greatly and desired to buy it. The priest received a munificent compensation, and, finding himself suddenly rich, went and bought a beautiful Irish girl, whose charms had beguiled him. A German warrior who saw the girl claimed her, and when his demand was scornfully refused challenged the priest. A duel was fought, and the German was killed. Some ill feeling was aroused against Thangbrand by this incident, and he fled to his friend, Olaf Tryggvesson, and became his court chaplain.”
Needless to say, King Olaf had no idea what Christianity really meant. To him it was merely a substitution of one polytheism for another. The Trinity, the Virgin Mary, and numberless saints took the place of Odin, Thor, Frey, and the rest of the old gods. The one difference which in time permeated the viking consciousness was that, while Odin and his colleagues rejoiced in bloodshed and cruelty, Christ the “White” advocated “Peace on earth, good will to men.” Thirty years later King Olaf Haroldsson earned by his life, and still more by his death, the title of Olaf the Saint. He took the Norse imagination captive, and by his truly saintly life and death won his country to real Christianity.
The first Olaf Tryggvesson resorted at times to the most cruel measures in his efforts to convert his subjects. Raud the Strong, who refused to accept the new faith, he tortured most horribly, finally, it is said, forcing an adder down his throat, which cut its way through his side and killed him with its poison. Eyvind Kinriva, another chieftain who refused to be baptized, “had glowing coals put upon his stomach at the king’s command, and expired under horrible tortures.”
In all this, however, Olaf verily thought that he did God’s service. He was so burning with zeal for the new faith, without at the same time having the slightest conception of what the new faith meant, that he subjected everything to this one idea of fierce missionary enthusiasm.
The case was quite otherwise with the vicious priest, Thangbrand. It is certain that he recognized himself for a charlatan who was interested in the new religion only for what he could get out of it. He had a parish at one time at Moster in Norway, but, as he found it inconvenient to live and support his Irish beauty on his slender income, he “formed the habit of making forays into the neighboring shires, replenishing his stores at the expense of the heathen.” King Olaf was incensed at this, and as a penance he made the Saxon priest go on a missionary journey to Iceland. Here Thangbrand killed nearly as many men as he converted, and he was finally outlawed and compelled to leave the island. But it is strangely enough a fact that about a year after his enforced flight Iceland did legally adopt the new faith at the Althing of June in the year 1000.
I will tell you more about Olaf the Saint and some of the other Olafs and Haakons and Haralds when I come back to Trondhjem. If I run on any more now about history I shall never get you to Narvik. Not far from Thjotta is the great “Svartisen” glacier, which is, being interpreted, “Swarthy Ice,” or “Black Ice.” This is the only glacier in Europe which sends branches down to the edge of the sea.
Fifty miles or so north of the arctic circle there is a town called Bodö, which the tourist steamers utterly ignore, but our good mail skib of the Nordenfjeldske Dampskibsselskab does not scorn it, and afforded us a most interesting stop of two or three hours. Like all these arctic towns, Bodö is built entirely of wood, and offers a good opportunity for fires, which opportunity is seldom neglected for a very long time. There is a church parsonage near the town, which once sheltered no less a celebrity than Louis Philippe, when he was traveling incognito as “Herr Müller.” There is one old room in this house which is still called Louis Philippe’s chamber.
From a hill above Bodö I got my first glimpse of the Lofotens, and I could hardly wait to get among these islands. Directly east of Bodö is a fjord with the unpronouncable name of Skjerstadfjord, which opens out to the main sea through three very narrow openings. The fjord is so large and the openings are so small that a tremendous torrent is formed four times daily by the two incoming and the two outgoing tides. The tide only rises and falls six or at most eight feet, but you can see that to cover a fjord thirty miles long and six or eight miles wide with six feet of water, and to accomplish the inundation in a few hours through a tiny opening, requires a violent torrent. At the Godöström or Saltström, the narrowest of the openings, the tide is so violent that only for an hour at ebb and full tide do the steamers dare to go through.
As we approached the Lofotens, we passed the famous Maelström on the left. This Maelström is a feeble little current which passes around the edge of the southernmost island of the group. Compared with the Saltström it is a calm mill pond, yet some poet had the nerve to fool all the world into thinking that some horrible, yawning cavity in the sea existed somewhere along the Norwegian coast. I have learned that two poets and a bishop are largely responsible for this idea. The poets are Campbell and Poe, and the bishop bore the name of Pontoppidan. Campbell writes: