Among such warlike and Spartan-like people the chiefs had to be the foremost in all athletic and gymnastic exercises if they wished to enjoy the respect and confidence of the people, and have rule over them. To talk of what their forefathers had done was not sufficient; they had to show themselves worthy of them, and if incapable of ruling, they were deposed by the people in Thing assembled.
There are several examples in the Sagas of powerful chiefs showing their anger and jealousy when any man excelled them.
“King Olaf was in every respect, of all the men who have been spoken of, the greatest man of idróttir in Norway; he was the strongest and most skilled of all, and many accounts of this have been written. One is about how he climbed Smalsarhorn and fastened his shield on the top of the rock; he helped his hirdman who had climbed the rock and could neither get up nor down again; the king walked up to him and carried him under his arm down to the level plain.... He could fight equally well with both hands, and shoot two spears at once” (Olaf Tryggvason’s Saga, ch. 92 (Heimskringla)).
“Magnus (the king) exercised himself and was skilled in many games and idróttir even in his youth; he walked along the gunwales as young men used to at that time, and he did it with great nimbleness, and showed his accomplishments in this as in other things” (Magnus the Good’s Saga; Fornmanna Sögur, vi. 5).
“Olaf was a great man of idróttir in many respects, highly skilled in the use of the bow and spear, a good swimmer, expert and of good judgment in all handicrafts, whether his own or others. Olaf Haraldsson was eager in games and wanted to be the first, as was fitting for his rank and birth” (St. Olaf’s Saga, ch. 3 (Heimskringla)).
“One day King Olaf talked to Sigmund in the spring, and said: ‘We will amuse ourselves to-day, and try our skill.’ ‘I am very unfit to do that, lord,’ said Sigmund; ‘though this shall, like other things that I can do, be as you wish.’ Then they tried swimming and shooting and other idróttir, and it is said that Sigmund was next to King Olaf in many idróttir, though he was surpassed by the king in them all, but nevertheless nearer to him than any other man in Norway”[[276]] (Fœreyinga Saga, ch. 28–32).
“I (Harald Hardradi) know eight idróttir;
I can make the drink of Ygg;[[277]]
I can ride fast on a horse;
I have sometimes practised swimming;