[258] Secs. 18-20.
CHAPTER VIII
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS
The question what attitude to assume toward the organised English Church may have caused Canute some embarrassment; but the English problem was simple compared with the religious complications that the young King had to face in the North. England was Christian, at least officially, while Scandinavia was still largely heathen; though every day saw the camps of Christendom pitched a little farther toward the Arctic. In all the Northern kingdoms missionaries were at work planting the seeds of the new faith. By the close of the millennium Christianity had made great progress in the Danish kingdom; it was firmly rooted in Jutland and had found a foothold on the islands and in Scania. Among the Norwegians the new worship had also made some progress; but in Sweden the darkness of heathendom still hung heavy and low.
Norse Christianity doubtless filtered in with the viking raids: with the plunder of the Catholic South and West, the sea-kings also appropriated many of the forms and ideas of Western civilisation, and it is not to be supposed that the fields of religious thought were neglected or overlooked. King Hakon the Good became a Christian at the court of his foster-father, Ethelstan, the grandson of Alfred.[259] The sons of Eric Bloodax were also baptised in England, where their father had found an exile's refuge.[260] Olaf Trygvesson found his faith and his mission while fighting as viking in England. Olaf the Saint received baptism in Rouen on his return from a raid as viking mercenary. Thus Norway had been in close touch with the new faith for nearly a century; and yet, Christianity had made but little actual progress. During the reign of Canute the Danish Church reached the stage of effective organisation, while in Norway the religious activities were still of the missionary type.
The forces of the Anse-gods were in retreat all along the religious frontier; but it is not to be supposed that they were panic-stricken. To their zeal for the ancestral worship was added a love for the conflict which inspired the faithful to contest every inch of the Christian advance. The challenge of Thor has a sort of historic reality in it: in a sense the issue of religion was settled in the North by wager of battle. In his admiration for strength and force, many a Northman seemed willing to follow the lead of the stronger cult.