Norway -- History -- 1030-1397; Norway -- History -- To 1030; Norway -- King and rulers
Tryggveson, on this occasion, was a good while at Southampton; and
roamed extensively about, easily victorious over everything, if
resistance were attempted, but finding little or none; and acting now
in a peaceable or even friendly capacity. In the Southampton country
he came in contact with the then Bishop of Winchester, afterwards
Archbishop of Canterbury, excellent Elphegus, still dimly decipherable
to us as a man of great natural discernment, piety, and inborn veracity;
a hero-soul, probably of real brotherhood with Olaf's own. He even made
court visits to King Ethelred; one visit to him at Andover of a very
serious nature. By Elphegus, as we can discover, he was introduced into
the real depths of the Christian faith. Elphegus, with due solemnity of
apparatus, in presence of the king, at Andover, baptized Olaf anew, and
to him Olaf engaged that he would never plunder in England any more;
which promise, too, he kept. In fact, not long after, Svein's conquest
of England being in an evidently forward state, Tryggveson (having made,
withal, a great English or Irish marriage,--a dowager Princess, who had
voluntarily fallen in love with him,--see Snorro for this fine romantic
fact!) mainly resided in our island for two or three years, or else in
Dublin, in the precincts of the Danish Court there in the Sister Isle.
Accordingly it was in Dublin, as above noted, that Hakon's spy found
him; and from the Liffey that his squadron sailed, through the Hebrides,
through the Orkneys, plundering and baptizing in their strange way,
towards such success as we have seen.
Tryggveson made a stout, and, in effect, victorious and glorious
struggle for himself as king. Daily and hourly vigilant to do so, often
enough by soft and even merry methods, for he was a witty, jocund man,
and had a fine ringing laugh in him, and clear pregnant words ever
ready,--or if soft methods would not serve, then by hard and even
hardest he put down a great deal of miscellaneous anarchy in Norway; was
especially busy against heathenism (devil-worship and its rites): this,
indeed, may be called the focus and heart of all his royal endeavor in
Norway, and of all the troubles he now had with his people there. For
this was a serious, vital, all-comprehending matter; devil-worship, a
thing not to be tolerated one moment longer than you could by any method
help! Olaf's success was intermittent, of varying complexion; but his
effort, swift or slow, was strong and continual; and on the whole he did
succeed. Take a sample or two of that wonderful conversion process:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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