With the king's death the battle was virtually at an end. The peasants remained in possession of the field. Wounded warriors of both parties crawled about among the trees and stones, and some reached a hut where a woman surgeon was busy washing and bandaging their wounds. Hither came also Thormod Kolbruna-Scald, whose left side had been pierced by an arrow. He sat down on a bench, and a man of the peasant army who stood by said to him: "Why art thou so pale? Art thou badly wounded?" He answered in verse that he had got his wound from Danish weapons—a mocking allusion to the alliance of the peasants with the Danish king. The woman, not knowing how serious his hurt was, asked him to go out and get an armful of firewood. When he returned he looked white as a ghost. She begged to see his wound, and with a pair of tongs attempted to pull out the arrow, the shaft of which was broken off. But her attempts were futile. Then the scald took from his arm the heavy gold ring which the king had given him for his song and handed it to her.
ST. OLAF AND THE TROLDS. FROM FRESCO PAINTING IN TEGELSMORA CHURCH IN UPLAND.
"It came from a good man," he said; "King Olaf gave it to me this morning."
Taking the tongs, he clenched them over the stump of the arrow and pulled it out. Pieces of flesh and red and white fibres adhered to the barbs. He looked at them for a moment and said: "The king has fed us well, for I am yet fat about the heart-roots"; then fell back and died.
The king's body was found by a peasant named Thorgils, who before the battle had promised Olaf to bury him if he fell. As later tradition reports, many miracles were wrought by the king's blood and by the mere touch of his lifeless hand. Tales without number were told of his marvellous powers in life as well as in death, and legends attributing to him the work of the Thundering Thor, have clustered luxuriantly about his name. He slew the trolds whom his church-bells annoyed, and turned them to stone. St. Olaf, with the flame-red beard, became not only the national saint, but also the national hero. The tragic circumstances of his death, no less than his valiant work for the cause of Christ, imbedded his memory deeply in the people's hearts.
