Olaf the Glorious: A Story of the Viking Age

by Robert Leighton

Thereafter they both sat wakeful, staring at each other with the flickering candlelight between them. Neither dared to close his eyes. But towards morning Earl Hakon leaned back against the rock, with his head thrown back. Sleep overwhelmed him, yet he was troubled, for he started and rolled uneasily as though in a nightmare, and at times he moaned and muttered as if in anguish, so that Kark could not look upon him but with horror. At last, when the earl was quiet, Kark sprang up, gripped a big knife from out of his belt and thrust it into his master's throat.

That was the bane of Earl Hakon.

On the next day Olaf Triggvison was in Lade, and there came to him a man naming himself Kark, bringing with him the severed head of Earl Hakon, which he offered to the king. When Olaf had received proof that the head was indeed that of the earl, he asked Kark how he had come by it, and the thrall told all that had befallen and claimed his reward.

Now King Olaf hated a traitor beyond all men, so he had Kark led away, and ordered one of his berserks to smite the head off him, thus fulfilling the murdered earl's prophecy, for a ring not of gold but of blood was put about the traitor's neck.

King Olaf then fared with many of the bonders out to Nid holm. This island, at the mouth of the river Nid, was kept in those days for the slaying of thieves and evil men, and a gallows stood there upon which the head of Earl Hakon was now hung, side by side with that of his thrall. The bonders crowded round the foot of the gallows, throwing stones and clods of earth at the heads, and crying out that there they fared meetly together, rascal by rascal.

And now that Earl Hakon was dead the people did not shrink from speaking their minds concerning him, and giving free vent to their hatred of his low cunning and his faithlessness, his cruelty and his profligacy. Even his zeal for blood offering and his strong belief in the pagan gods were now regarded with wide disfavour, for it could not be forgotten that he had sacrificed his own son to propitiate the god of war, and this act, added to the evil deeds that he had more recently committed had brought upon him such contempt that the whole of Norway rejoiced at his death.

Olaf Triggvison's claim to the throne of Norway was not for a moment disputed. In the first place his manly beauty and his resemblance to King Hakon the Good gained him immediate favour, and his personal strength and prowess might have been in itself sufficient to warrant his being chosen as a successor to Earl Hakon. But in addition to this there was the undoubted fact that he was a direct descendant of Harald Fairhair, and had therefore the greatest of all claims to the kingdom in which his fathers had reigned. So, very soon after the death of Hakon, a general Thing, or gathering of the people, was held in Trondelag, and Olaf was formally proclaimed the king of all Norway, and the rule given to him according to ancient laws.

The district of Thrandheim was at that time the most populous and important in the land, and the Thranders had exercised the right (a right which they reserve to this day) of proclaiming a new monarch in the name of the whole nation. Nevertheless it was necessary for King Olaf to travel throughout the country to lay personal claim to his dominion, and to receive the allegiance of his subjects remote and near. The news of his coming into Norway was not long in reaching the farthest extremities of the realm. Everywhere it was told how, having by help of his mother's bravery escaped the wrath of the wicked Queen Gunnhild, he had lived as a slave in Esthonia, how he had been rescued by Sigurd Erikson and educated at the court of King Valdemar, how he had roved as a viking on the Baltic, and, after invading England, had at last come back to his native land to claim his own. So that wherever he journeyed he found that his fame had gone before him to prepare the way. He was greeted everywhere with enthusiastic homage. His natural kindliness, his manly bearing, and his winning manners attracted everyone with whom he came in contact, and he was recognized as a king of whom the nation might well be proud. In token of the glory that he had won in foreign lands the people gave him the name of Olaf the Glorious.

CHAPTER XVI: THE CHRISTENING OF NORWAY.

King Olaf's first thought on ascending the throne of Norway was that he would make it his mission to convert the country to Christianity. This had been once before attempted by his own uncle, King Hakon the Good, the foster son of Athelstane of England; but Hakon the Good was a weak man, who, instead of winning his people to the true faith, had allowed himself to drift back into paganism. Olaf was by nature better fitted for the task, being zealous in the faith and strong in the conviction of the sanctity of his cause. He resolved to stand firm against all opposition, and if gentle persuasion should not avail he would have no scruple in employing physical force. To abolish the custom of blood sacrifice, to destroy all heathen temples, and to supplant the worship of the pagan gods by preaching the gospel of Christ--this was to be his life work.