Capitals of the Northlands: Tales of Ten Cities

by Ian C. Hannah

At Ladir thereafter King Olaf made a feast and bade to it lords and other great bonders. "But when the feast was arrayed, and the guests were come, the first eve was the feast full fair and the cheer most glorious, and men were very drunk; and that night slept all men in peace there.

"But on the morrow morn when the king was clad he let sing mass before him, and when the mass was ended the king let blow for a House-Thing. And all his men went from the ships" (a "goodly host and great" of them were laid in the Nid) "therewith, and came to the Thing. But when the Thing was established the king stood up and spake in these words: 'A Thing we held up at Frosta, and thereat I bade the bonders be christened; and they bade me back again turn me to offering with them.... But look ye, if I turn me to offering with you, then will I make the greatest blood-offering that is, and will offer up men; yea, and neither will I choose hereto thralls and evil-doers; but rather will I choose gifts for the gods the noblest of men.'"

He proceeded to name some of the chief men present. This was a convincing argument, and when the bonders saw that they lacked might to meet the king, they professed their willingness to trow in the faith of the White Christ. And at Ladir, on the site of the Godhouse, the king let build a church. A Romanesque doorway about a century later than his time still exists in the south wall of the chancel, under which is a crypt; but the present church is a very plain plastered structure, dated 1694; a porch was added in 1767.

Close by, in the year 996, King Olaf Tryggvison raised a city on Nid bank. He chose a site at the very mouth, almost surrounded by the stream, and he desired that his town should be such as he had seen in Christian lands. He would that the Norse should resemble other Europeans, should trow in Christ and dwell in towns and grow rich by trade. The new settlement was known as Nidaros, because it was at the mouth of the Nid, or else as Kaupstad, because it was a merchants' town. But during the sixteenth century it was called as we know it to-day, taking its name from the district round. At first it did not prosper, for though Olaf Tryggvison gave men tofts whereon to build them houses, they did not want a town, nor aught but their farms and their ships.

But when the holy bones of another Olaf, martyr and king and saint, were there enshrined and over them sprang the tall vaulting of Scandinavia's fairest church, pilgrims and trade and prosperity resorted to the mouth of the Nid.

Little of the saint was in Olaf Haraldson during his earlier years. The first story of him in the sagas displays him as a mischievous boy. "On a time it befell that King Sigurd would ride away from his house, and no man was home at the stead; so he bade Olaf, his stepson, to saddle him a horse. Olaf went to the goat-house, and took there the biggest buck-goat and led it home, and laid thereon the saddle of the king, and then went and told him he had harnessed him the nag."

A renowned viking he became, whose deeds men talked about in all the lands from Sweden to the British Isles. But as King of Norway he would have no peace but with believers in the White Christ. Perhaps his methods lacked charity and tact, and his temper lacked control, that he was wealth-grasping, the sagas distinctly say, but he was truly of a religious frame and in comparison with his faith he counted not anything dear.

At the time when he was establishing his power the city that Olaf Tryggvison had founded on Nid-bank was already in decay. King Olaf the Saint, we read in the Heimskringla "gat him gone at his speediest and held out to Nidoyce, where King Olaf Tryggvison had let set a cheaping-stead and reared a king's-house; but before that there was only one house in Nidness, as is writ before. But when King Eric became ruler of the land, he favoured Ladir, where his father had had his chief abode, but he left unheeded the houses which King Olaf had let build on the Nid; and some were now tumbled down, while othersome, though standing, were scarce meet for dwelling in. King Olaf steered his ships up into the Nid; and forthwith he let dight for dwelling the houses yet standing, and reared those up again which were fallen down, and had thereat a throng of men; and he let flit into the houses both the drink and the victuals, being minded to sit there Yule-tide over."

Thrandheim "he deemed was all the pith of the land" (and thither he fared at his speediest), "if he might there bring the folk down under him while the earl was away from the land. But when King Olaf came to Thrandheim, then was no uprising against him there, and there he was taken to king; and he set him down there in the harvest-tide at Nidoyce, and there dight him winter-quarters. He let house a king's garth, and reared Clement's Church there whereas it now standeth. He marked out tofts for garths, and gave them to goodmen, and chapmen, or to any others he would, and who were minded to house. He sat there with many men about him, for he trusted the Thrandheimer's good faith but little, if so be the earl should come back to the land."