Olaf the Glorious: A Story of the Viking Age Part 22

She stepped back a pace, so that the moonlight, falling upon him, might show her where to strike. As she did so the hem of her long robe swept across the face of young Einar. The boy awoke and leapt to his feet. He saw a white arm upraised; he saw the gleaming dagger poised over his master's breast. Quick as an arrow's flight the blade flashed to its mark. But quicker still was Einar. In that instant he had caught the white arm in his two strong hands, staying the fatal blow, so that the dagger's point but struck against the ruby cross and did no harm.

The scuffling of feet, the clatter of the dagger upon the floor, and the woman's cry of alarmed surprise awoke the king. Starting from his seat he caught his a.s.sailant and held her in the light of the moon. He gazed into her pale and terror stricken face. It was the face of Gudrun.

Then Olaf besought Einar to tell him all that had happened, and Einar picked up the dagger and gave it to his master, telling him how Gudrun had attempted to slay him.

With the earliest peep of dawn Gudrun went forth upon her lonely way, and never again did she come under the same roof with King Olaf.

At this time there lived in Sweden a certain queen named Sigrid. She was the widow of King Erik the Victorious and the mother of King Olaf the Swede. She was very rich and possessed many great manors in Sweden and large landed estates among the islands of the Baltic. Many of the kings of Scandinavia sought to wed with her, wishing to share her wealth and add her dominions to their own. But Sigrid, who, by reason of her great pride and the value that she set upon her own charms, was named Sigrid the Haughty, would have none of them, although often enough she welcomed them as wooers and listened to their fine speeches and their flatteries.

One king there was who wooed her with such ardour that she resolved to rid herself of him at all costs. His name was Harald Groenske (the father of Saint Olaf), and, as he was of the kin of King Harald Fairhair, he considered himself in all respects her equal. Three several times did he journey into Sweden to pay court to her. On the third time he found that there was another wooer at her manor house, one King Vissavald of Gardarike. Both kings were well received, and lodged in a great hall with all their attendant company. The hall was a very old building, as was all its furniture, but there was no lack of good fare. So hospitable, indeed, was Queen Sigrid, that, ere the night was half spent, the two suitors and all their men were drunk, and the guards slept heavily.

In the middle of the night Queen Sigrid surrounded the hall with dry f.a.ggots and set a lighted torch to them. The hall was quickly burned to the ground, and all who were within it lost their lives.

"I will teach these little kings what risks they run in wooing me!"

said the queen, as from her chamber window she watched the rising flames.

Now Queen Sigrid grew weary of waiting for the coming of a king whom she could consider in all ways worthy of her. Her eyes were l.u.s.treless, and her hair was besprinkled with gray, and yet the right man did not offer himself. But in good time she heard of King Olaf the Glorious, and of his great wealth and his prowess, and of how in his person he was so tall and handsome, that men could only compare him with Balder the Beautiful. And now she deemed that she had at last discovered one whose magnificence would match with her own. So she caused messengers to fare across the frontier into Norway to sing her praises, so that King Olaf might learn how fair she was, and how well suited to reign by his side. And it seemed that her messages had the effect that she wished.

On a certain summer day Queen Sigrid sat at her chamber window, overlooking a wide and beautiful river that lay between her own kingdom and Norway. From afar she saw a company of hors.e.m.e.n. They came nearer and nearer, and at last they halted at the gates. Their leader entered and the queen went down to meet him, guessing that he had come upon some errand of great importance.

When he had greeted her, he told her that he had come all the way from Thrandheim, in Norway, with a message from King Olaf Triggvison, who, hearing of her great charms, now offered her his hand in marriage. And as a token of his good faith the king had sent her a gift. The gift was a large ring of gold--the same that Olaf had taken from the door of the temple at Lade.

Full joyous was Queen Sigrid at this good news, and she took the heavy ring and slipped it upon her arm, bidding the messengers take her hospitality for three days and then return to their master, with the word that she favoured his proposal, and agreed to meet him at her manor of Kongh.e.l.le in three weeks' time.

Now the queen admired that ring, deeming it a most n.o.ble gift. It was most beautifully wrought and interwoven with scrolls and circles so delicate that all wondered how the hand of man could achieve such perfection. Everyone praised it exceedingly, and among others to whom Sigrid showed the ring were her own goldsmiths, two brothers. These handled it with more care than others had done, and weighed it in their hands as if they would estimate its value. The queen saw that the smiths spoke in whispers one with the other; so she called them to her and asked if they thought that any man in Sweden could make such a ring.

At this the smiths smiled.

"Wherefore do you mock at the ring?" demanded Sigrid. "Tell me what you have found?"

The smiths shrugged their shoulders.

"If indeed the truth must be spoken," said the elder of the two, "then we have found this, O queen, that there is false metal in the ring."

"Prove what you say!" cried the queen. And she let them break the ring asunder--and lo! it was shown to be made of copper and not of gold.

Then into Sigrid's eyes there flashed an angry light.

"If King Olaf of Norway can be so false in his gifts, he will be faithless also in his love!" she cried. And she s.n.a.t.c.hed the pieces of the ring and flung them furiously away from her.

Now when the three weeks of his appointment had gone by Olaf Triggvison journeyed east to the trysting place at Kongh.e.l.le, near the boundary line between Norway and Sweden, and there Queen Sigrid met him. Amazed was Sigrid to see the splendour of the man who offered her marriage.

Never before had her eyes rested upon one so tall and handsome and so gloriously attired. Arrived now at his full manhood Olaf looked n.o.bler and more majestic than ever in his life before. His cloak of fine crimson silk clung to his giant frame and showed the muscular moulding of his limbs. His step was light and elastic, and, in spite of his great strength, his movements were gentle and easy as those of a woman.

His hands were very large and powerful, yet the touch of them was soft and delicate; and his voice, which could be loud and full as a trumpet blast, could also be lowered to the musical sweetness of a purling brook. His forehead, where his helmet had shielded it from the heat of the sun and from the briny freshness of the sea air, was white and smooth as polished marble; but the lower part of his face was of a clear, rich golden brown. He wore no beard, but the hair was left unshaven on his upper lip and it streamed down on either side of his chin as fine as silk. When he smiled, his white and even teeth gleamed like a row of pearls between the coral redness of his lips. Queen Sigrid, as she beheld him for the first time, had no thought of the ring that he had given her, nor of its falseness.

King Olaf, on his part, was more than a little disappointed with the looks of the queen whose praises had been so often whispered in his ears. He had heard that she was young, yet he now saw that her hair was sprinkled with gray, that her eyes had lost the fire and fervour of youth, and that her brow was wrinkled with age. Younger and more comely was his own mother Astrid than this much exalted queen. But, having given his word that he meant to woo her and wed her, he had too much honour to draw back.

They sat together and talked over the matter of their wedding, and of how they would unite their domains and rule together over all the Swedes and Nors.e.m.e.n. And at last he took her hand and swore by the holy rood that he would be true to her.

Now Sigrid the Haughty was still a heathen, and she liked not to hear King Olaf swear by Christian tokens. So she turned upon him with a quick glance of suspicion and contempt in her eyes.

"Such vows do not please me, King Olaf," she said. "It is told that great Odin once swore on the ring. Will you swear by this ring to be true?" And she rose and took up the ring he had sent as a gift, which ere this time her two smiths had repaired.

"O speak not of Odin to me!" cried the king. "He is dead as the stones in the street. By no other symbol than the cross will I swear. Sorry am I to hear that you, Queen Sigrid, are still a believer in the old dead G.o.ds. Since this is so, however, there is little use in my being in this place, for I have made up my mind that the woman who weds me shall be a true Christian and not a worshipper of senseless idols hewn out of trees and rocks. Abandon these things, take christening, and believe in the one true G.o.d who made all things and knows all things, and then I will wed with you; but not else, O queen."

Queen Sigrid, astonished that any man dared to speak to her in this wise, looked back at King Olaf in anger.

"Never shall I depart from the troth that I have always held," she cried. "And although you had twice the wealth that you have and were yet more glorious than you are, yet never should I obey such a bidding.

No, no, King Olaf. I keep true to my faith and to my vows; and can fare very well without you and your new religion. So go back to your bald headed priests and to your singing of ma.s.s. I will have none of them!"

Then the king rose in wrath and his face was darkened with gloom. For a moment he forgot his manliness, and in his anger he struck her across her cheek with his glove.

"Why, then, should I care to wed with thee?" he cried; "thou withered old heathen jade!"

With these taunting words on his lips he turned and strode from the chamber. But while the wooden stairway was still creaking under his tread, Queen Sigrid called after him in bitterest anger:

"Go, then, O proud and stubborn king. Go where you will. But remember this, that the insult you have offered me and the blow you have struck me shall be your death!"

So Olaf departed, ere yet he had broken bread, and he went north into Viken, while Queen Sigrid the Haughty went east into Sweden.

King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark had by this time regained full possession of his kingdom, and was contemplating an invasion of England which should be more complete and decisive than the attempt which he had made in company with the viking whom he had known as Ole the Esthonian. Sweyn had now, of course, discovered that this man Ole and King Olaf of Norway were one and the same person, and he began to be very jealous of the glory that was gathering about Olaf's name. A new cause for jealousy had now arisen.

Sweyn, it will be remembered, had married the Princess Gunnhild, daughter of Burislaf, King of the Wends. But in these days even now told of it befell that Queen Gunnhild was stricken with an illness and died. King Sweyn, ever ambitious of winning great dominion, had a mind to take unto himself a new wife in the person of Queen Sigrid of Sweden. He was on the point of setting out to woo her when he heard by chance that King Olaf Triggvison was already bent upon a similar journey. Envy and jealousy and bitter hatred welled up in Sweyn's breast against his rival, and he swore by Thor's hammer that sooner or later he would lower King Olaf to the dust.

But in good time King Sweyn heard of the quarrel that had befallen between Queen Sigrid and her young Norwegian suitor. So he at once fared north into Sweden to essay his own fortune with the haughty queen. He gained a ready favour with Sigrid by speaking all manner of false and malicious scandal against the man whom she had so lately rejected. Sigrid probably saw that by marrying the King of Denmark she might the more easily accomplish her vengeance upon Olaf Triggvison.

She therefore accepted Forkbeard's proposals, and they were wedded in accordance with the rites and customs of their pagan faith.

Earl Erik, the son of the late Earl Hakon, was at this time the guest and friend of Sigrid's son, Olaf the Swede King; and these three--King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark, King Olaf of Sweden, and Earl Erik of Lade--had each a private cause of enmity against Olaf Triggvison. It was they who, two years afterwards, united their forces in the great sea fight in which Olaf the Glorious lost his life.

CHAPTER XVIII: THE "LONG SERPENT".

King Olaf had now ruled over Norway for three years. In that brief time he had done more for the country than any king who had gone before him.

He had succeeded in establishing Christianity--not very thoroughly, it is true, for during the rest of his reign, and for long enough afterwards, there was plenty of heathenism in Norway; but he did all that he could to make men Christians, as far as he knew how himself, and, by his own example of a pure and upright life, he did much to deepen the feeling that, even in a social sense, the Christian religion' offered advantages which had never before been enjoyed in the land. It was noticed almost immediately that there was less bloodshed among the people than formerly, and that the peasants lived in greater security. The doctrine of peace upon earth was set forth as one of the first principles of Olaf's mission, and he was never tired of showing that, while Odin and Thor took pleasure in bloodshed and rejoiced in war, Christ the White was a lover of peace, and accorded no merit to the manslayer.

Olaf made it a law throughout his realm that all men should keep the Sabbath holy, that they should always fast on Fridays, and that they should teach their children the Ten Commandments. He could not hope that grownup people, who had all their lives been accustomed to worship graven images, would all at once become fervent and devout Christians; but he clearly saw the importance of bringing up all the children to a full knowledge of the Christian faith, and accordingly he bade his priests give constant care to the education of the young.

What King Olaf achieved in Norway he achieved also in the outlying parts of his dominions. He sent priests into the lands of the Laps and Fins. It has been told how he sent his priest Thrangbrand to Iceland.

He also sent missions to the Orkney Islands, to the Shetlands, and the Faroes, and even to so distant a country as Greenland. All these lands were converted to Christianity during Olaf's brief reign.

But it was not in religious matters alone that Olaf Triggvison exercised his wisdom and his rule. He encouraged fisheries and husbandry and handicrafts, and men who had given up their lives to warfare and vikingry now occupied themselves with useful arts and industries. Himself a rare sailor, he loved all seamen and shipmen and shipbuilders, and so that these might have work to do he encouraged commerce with the lands over sea--with England and Scotland and Ireland, with Russia, Wendland, Friesland, Flanders, and France.

When he had been in England he had learned something of the good laws established in that country by King Alfred the Great. He strove to introduce many of these laws into his own kingdom. Like Alfred the Great, King Olaf recognized the value of a strong navy, and, so soon as he had a.s.sured himself of the goodwill of his subjects, he levied taxes upon them, and set about the work of building ships.

The great dragonship which he had taken as a prize of war from Rand the Wizard was the largest and finest vessel in the Norwegian seas at this time. The king determined to have a much larger and finer ship built, one which should surpa.s.s in splendour and equipment every vessel that had been launched in Norway or any other land throughout the ages. On the banks of the river Nid, at the place where he had built the town of Nidaros, a great forest of pine trees had been cleared, and there was timber in plenty ready at hand. There had been two most fruitful seasons, with good crops, and the country was rich. Olaf himself possessed more wealth than any monarch in all Scandinavia, and also he was fortunate in having about him a number of men who were highly skilled in the work of designing and building ships. So he had a shipyard prepared under the cliffs of Lade, and he appointed a man named Thorberg Shafting to be his master builder.

Rand's dragonship, which was named the Serpent, was taken as a model of the new ship that was to be made, but all her measurements were exactly doubled, for the new craft was to be twice as long in the keel, twice as broad in the beam, and twice as great in the scantling. Olaf himself helped at the work, and laboured as hard as any other two men. Whenever any difficulty arose he was there to set it right, and all knew that every part of the work must be well done, that every piece of timber must be free from rot, and every nail and rivet made of the best metal or the king would discover the fault and have it undone.