"But if you ask me to restore
Your sacrifices, stained with gore,
Then will I offer human sacrifices!
"Not slaves and peasants shall they be,
But men of note and high degree,
Such men as Orm of Lyra and Kar of Gryting!"
Then to their Temple strode he in,
And loud behind him heard the din
Of his men-at-arms and the peasants fiercely fighting.
There in the Temple, carved in wood,
The image of great Odin stood,
And other gods, with Thor supreme among them.
King Olaf smote them with the blade
Of his huge war-axe, gold inlaid,
And downward shattered to the pavement flung them.
At the same moment rose without,
From the contending crowd, a shout,
A mingled sound of triumph and of wailing.
And there upon the trampled plain
The farmer Iron-Beard lay slain,
Midway between the assailed and the assailing.
King Olaf from the doorway spoke:
"Choose ye between two things, my folk,
To be baptized or given up to slaughter!"
And seeing their leader stark and dead,
The people with a murmur said,
"O King, baptize us with thy holy water!"
So all the Drontheim land became
A Christian land in name and fame,
In the old gods no more believing and trusting.