The time-honoured dooms of the Nornir;
All men throw
The kindred of Odin to the winds;
Now I am forced to pray to Christ
And leave the offspring of Njörd.”
(Halfred’s Saga, c. 6.)
That conversion to Christianity did not always at first have a softening influence over the character of its converts is to be seen from the following passages:—
“The great Hákon jarl was a zealous sacrificer. When he came to Vikin he found that the (Emperor Otto’s) jarls Urguthrjót and Brimisskjar had broken down the temples and christianized all the people they could. Hákon had all the broken temples rebuilt, and sent word all over Vikin that no man should believe in the faith which the jarls had imposed. He went northward across the land to Thrándheim, and there first remained quiet. He ruled over the whole of Norway, but never afterwards paid any taxes to the King of Denmark. Afterwards he was in all things worse and more heathen than he had been before he was baptized” (Fornmanna Sögur, vol. i., ch. 73).
“Hákon was open-handed with property toward his men, and for a long time beloved by the whole people; but he had the greatest misfortune to his dying day, which was not strange, for he was always guileful, unfaithful and treacherous, both to friends and foes, and the greatest god-nithing and sacrificing man: the time had come when Almighty God had intended that the sacrifices and heathendom, and the evil messenger of the devil, Hákon jarl, should be condemned, and the holy faith and true customs take their place. When Hákon was slain, he had been Jarl thirty-three winters since the fall of his father, Sigurd Jarl; he was twenty-five when his father fell, and lacked two winters of sixty” (Fornmanna Sögur, i., c. 104).
“‘Now, Sigurd, thou hast jarlship over this realm, which I call my own, as well as all other realms, which King Harald Fairhair owned, and each of his descendants have inherited one after the other. As it has happened that thou hast come into my power, thou hast two choices: the first is that thou and all thy dependents shall embrace the true faith and be baptized, and then thou shalt hold from me the rule thou hast heretofore, and what is worth more, live with Almighty God eternally in the kingdom of heaven, if thou observest His commands. The other choice is very bad, and very unlike the former: that thou shalt die in this place, and I will go with fire and sword over the islands and lay waste this whole realm, unless the people will believe in the true God; and, if thou shalt make this choice, then thou wilt, as all others who believe in a skurdgod (carved god, idol), after a sudden death, suffer terribly with the fiend in the flames of hell without end.’ As the Jarl was then situated, he chose to embrace the true faith.