She said, wonderingly, "No." Then Gunnar kissed her. And then she told him that she knew quite well what he meant, and that the truth was so. "Great is Frey," said Gunnar.
NEWS OF FREY REACHES NORWAY
CHAPTER XVIII NEWS OF FREY REACHES NORWAY
In Norway under King Olaf Trygvasson affairs were prospering all this while. The king had settled his kingdom into his own ways, and being of a restless and acquisitive mind, he was already thinking how he could better himself. He had thought more than once of Iceland as a heathen country stocked with fine people well worth the pains of conversion. "To drive them to the water may cost me five hundred lives," he said, "but you may take that as a sowing of which the harvest will be a thousandfold. Christ will win souls and I a new realm." The more he thought of it the more he desired to do it.
Then there came strange news out of Sweden, of painful interest to King Olaf. He heard of mighty stirrings of the pagan people out there, of miracles wrought by their chief god Frey which overpassed any which his own priests could do. What struck him most in these accounts was that the manner of devotion had been changed. Frey, he was assured, was milder-mannered, and would have nothing to do with human sacrifice. More than that, blood-offerings of all sorts were utterly done away with. The king could not understand it, and talked it over with the lords of his council.