take revenge, but just as he had got an army together, the sons of the expelled Eric landed in Norway
and in the battle against them, 961, he received a deadly wound.
The sons of Eric, who had lived in England during their exile, were likewise Christians,
and they took up the cause of Christianity in a very high-handed manner, overthrowing the heathen
altars and forbidding sacrifices. But the impression they made was merely odious, and their successor,
Hakon Jarl, was a rank heathen. The first time Christianity really gained a footing in Norway, was
under Olaf Trygveson. Descended from Harald Haarfagr, but sold, while a child, as a slave in
Esthonia, he was ransomed by a relative who incidentally met him and recognized his own kin in
the beauty of the boy, and was educated at Moscow. Afterwards he roved about much in Denmark,
Wendland, England and Ireland, living as a sea-king. In England he became acquainted with
Christianity and immediately embraced it, but he carried his viking-nature almost unchanged over
into Christianity, and a fiercer knight of the cross was probably never seen. Invited to Norway by
a party which had grown impatient of the tyranny of Hakon Jarl, he easily made himself master of
the country, in 995, and immediately set about making Christianity its religion, "punishing severely,"
as Snorre says, "all who opposed him, killing some, mutilating others, and driving the rest into
banishment." In the Southern part there still lingered a remembrance of Christianity from the days
of Hakon the Good, and things went on here somewhat more smoothly, though Olaf more than
once gave the people assembled in council with him the choice between fighting him or accepting
baptism forthwith. But in the Northern part all the craft and all the energy of the king were needed
in order to overcome the opposition. Once, at a great heathen festival at Moere, he told the assembled
people that, if he should return to the heathen gods it would be necessary for him to make some
great and awful sacrifice, and accordingly he seized twelve of the most prominent men present and
prepared to sacrifice them to Thor. They were rescued, however, when the whole assembly accepted
Christianity and were baptized. In the year 1000, he fell in a battle against the united Danish and
Swedish kings, but though he reigned only five years, he nevertheless succeeded in establishing
Christianity as the religion of Norway and, what is still more remarkable, no general relapse into
heathenism seems to have taken place after his death.
During the reign of Olaf the Saint, who ruled from a.d. 1014–’30, the Christianization of
the country was completed. His task it was to uproot heathenism wherever it was still found lurking,
and to give the Christian religion an ecclesiastical organization. Like his predecessors, he used craft
and violence to reach his goal. Heathen idols and altars disappeared, heathen customs and festivals
were suppressed, the civil laws were brought into conformity with the rules of Christian morals.
The country was divided into dioceses and parishes, churches were built, and regular revenues were
raised for the sustenance of the clergy. For the most part he employed English monks and priests,
but with the consent of the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, under whose authority he placed the
Norwegian church. After his death, in the battle of Stiklestad, July 29, 1030, he was canonized and
became the patron saint of Norway.
To Norway belonged, at that time, Iceland. From Icelandic tradition as well as from the
"De Mensura Orbis" by Dicuilus, an Irish monk in the beginning of the ninth century, it appears
that Culdee anchorites used to retire to Iceland as early as the beginning of the eighth century, while
the island was still uninhabited. These anchorites, however, seem to have had no influence whatever
on the Norwegian settlers who, flying from the tyranny of Harald Haarfagr, came to Iceland in the
latter part of the ninth century and began to people the country. The new-comers were heathen, and
they looked with amazement at Auda the Rich, the widow of Olaf the White, king of Dublin, who
rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
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