Thorolf and Helgi were not the only settlers who allowed Thor to fix the place of their habitation in Iceland, and one in the south of the island also consecrated all his land to Thor and called it Thor's-mark. The tendency to appeal to Thor for help in time of need is further illustrated by an incident recorded as having taken place during the Wineland expedition of 1007-8. The explorers were in great straits for want of food, and had prayed for help, which seemed long in coming. One of the party, named Thorhall, was found by the others on the peak of a cliff, looking up to the sky, and muttering something, besides making strange gestures of which he would give no explanation. Shortly afterwards a whale came ashore, and Thorhall said, 'The red-bearded one was stronger now than your Christ. I have got this for my poetry that I made about Thor. He has seldom failed me.' This contrasting of Thor with Christ is a trait which appears in other narratives, and is significant of the place which the god held in the old religion. In the struggle between heathenism and Christianity in the Scandinavian countries it is usually Thor, the red-bearded one, who is the champion of the primitive faith and its most powerful representative. The cases in which Odin takes this place have a much more legendary character, and are more likely to be due to later invention. It was Thor whom the believers in the old faith expressly put forward as a rival to the God of the Christians. In the early part of the eleventh century, when King Olaf Haraldsson was doing his utmost to christianise Norway, the following words are represented as having been spoken by a powerful chief named Gudbrand: 'There is come hither a man named Olaf to offer us another faith than the one we had, and to break all our gods in pieces, and he says that he has a greater and mightier god. It is a marvel that the earth does not open under him when he dares to say such things, and that our gods let him go any further. I expect, if we carry Thor out of our temple where he stands, and where he has always stood by us, that as soon as he looks on Olaf and his men, then _his_ god and himself and his men will melt away and come to nought.' So also when Thangbrand the priest went to Iceland on his missionary enterprise in 997, he met a woman who preached heathendom to him at great length, and asked him, 'Have you not heard that Thor challenged Christ to single combat, and He dared not fight with Thor?' When Thangbrand's ship was destroyed by a violent storm, it was to Thor that the credit of the accident was assigned.