Once, in beginning a parliamentary address, so soon as he came to touch upon Christianity the Bonders rose in murmurs, in vociferations and jingling of arms, which quite drowned the royal voice; declared they had taken arms against King Hakon the Good to compel him to desist from his Christian proposals, and they did not think King Olaf a higher man than him (Hakon the Good). The king then said, “He purposed coming to them next Yule to their great sacrificial feast to see for himself what their customs were,” which pacified the Bonders for this time. The appointed place of meeting was again a Hakon-Jarl Temple, not yet done to ruin, chief shrine in those Trondhjem parts, I believe; there should Tryggveson appear at Yule. Well, but before Yule came, Tryggveson made a great banquet in his palace at Trondhjem, and invited far and wide all manner of important persons out of the district as guests there. Banquet hardly done, Tryggveson gave some slight signal, upon which armed men strode in, seized eleven of these principal persons, and the king said: “Since he himself was to become a heathen again and do sacrifice, it was his purpose to do it in the highest form, namely, that of human sacrifice, and this time not of slaves and malefactors, but of the best men in the country!” In which stringent circumstances the eleven seized persons and company at large gave unanimous consent to baptism, straightway received the same, and abjured their idols, but were not permitted to go home till they had left, in sons, brothers, and other precious relatives, sufficient hostages in the king’s hands. By unwearied industry of this and better kinds, Tryggveson had trampled down idolatry so far as form went--how far in substance may be greatly doubted. But it is to be remembered withal that always on the back of these compulsory adventures there followed English bishops, priests, and preachers, whereby to the open-minded conviction, to all degrees of it, was attainable, while silence and passivity became the duty or necessity of the unconvinced party. In about two years Norway was all gone over with a rough harrow of conversion. Heathenism, at least, constrained to be silent and outwardly conformable.