For Norge, translated by Lady Wilde.
Cleaving the Skager Rak from the Cattegat the small peninsula of Jutland projects far into the large gulf by which the Scandinavian mountain mass is riven on the south. And at the head of the gulf a lovely island-dotted fjord penetrates far among the hills that encircle the long and narrow Norway Lakes.
The shores of the fjord are rocky, in places eaten into cliffs, pines cover all the slopes from which they are not cleared. Just here and there distant mountains of more jagged outline overtop the lower hills. For some miles the seaway is narrow, but it broadens out again before the end is reached. Less wild and rugged, less grand and awesome, than the high-walled fjords that cut into the western coast, but not less beautiful in some respects.
By many coves the sea runs in among the woods, and during saga days here lived sea-kings who never slept under sooty roof-tree, nor ever drank in hearth ingle. Into one of the arms of the branching fjord, the water then called Drafn and now known as Drammensfjord, hove Olaf the Thick, the Holy, with his host in 1028, for he had heard that Knut the Rich, England's all-wielder, was close upon his heels. Knut was planning a great Norse Empire; he had made himself master of Norway, and held Things in every folk-land that he reached. Olaf could not meet him in warfare, but he held him in Drafn water in safety till he heard that Knut was gone south into Denmark, and then he fared forth, only to find that for the time at least the land was beguiled from under him.
A few miles from the arm of the sea that had sheltered St. Olaf another saint was born, related to himself, Hallward, a worthy merchant of those parts, who got his bane while trying to protect a woman who was being attacked by men. Him Harald Hardredy, the same who met his end at Stamford Bridge in 1066, chose to be the patron saint of the new southern town which he founded to rival the capital far north.
In the Heimskringla we read how "King Harald let rear a cheaping-stead east in Oslo, and sat there often; whereas it was good there for the ingathering of victual, with wide countrysides all round about. There he sat well for the warding of the land against the Danes no less than for onsets at Denmark, which he was often wont to, though he might have no great host out."[40]
After his death we learn that "it was the talk of all men that King Harald had been beyond other men in wisdom and deft rede, no matter whether he should take swiftly, or do longsome, a rede for himself or others.... King Harald was a goodly man, and noble to behold; bleak haired and bleak bearded, his lipbeard long; one eyebrow somewhat higher than the other; large hands and feet, yet either shapely waxen; five ells was the tale of his stature. To his unfriends was he grim and vengeful for aught done against him."[41]
To this appreciation we may add that Harald was no bad judge of the best site for a town; for with the rocky forest-covered hills rising all round, and the lake-like sea with its many islands gently rippling in front, this capital has one of the best situations enjoyed by any European town. Nothing but huge advantages of site and greater nearness to the communications of the world could have reconciled Norway to her Government's abandoning the myriad associations of the far more historic city in the North.
During the reign of Sigurd Jerusalem-farer (1121-1130) to Oslo came from Ireland one Harald Gilli, who said he was a Norse king's son, but he did not claim the kingdom for himself. And Sigurd said that Harald should tread bars for his fatherhood, and that ordeal was deemed somewhat hard, but still Harald yeasaid it.