Olaf's great achievement, as the first successful propagandist of Christianity on the throne of Norway, surrounded his name with a halo which dazzled his biographers and disposed them to exalt him beyond his deserts. For all that, it is a fact that his contemporaries, many of whom had small reason to love him, were no less dazzled by his brilliant personality than his biographers. In the first place, his manly beauty and his resemblance to Haakon the Good, which was frequently commented upon, predisposed the people in his favor. Secondly, his natural kindliness and winning manners attracted every one who came in contact with him. Last, but not least, his extraordinary skill in athletic sports and the use of arms was greatly admired. He could, as Snorre relates, use his right and his left hand equally well in shooting; he could play with three spears at once, so that one was always in the air; he could run forward and backward on the oars of a ship while the men were rowing. In daily intercourse he was affable and generous, fond of a joke, and easily moved to laughter and to wrath. In anger he could do things which he later regretted; and we have seen how, when fired with holy zeal, he committed acts which he ought to have regretted, though there is no evidence that he did. His love of splendor in attire and surroundings may be accounted a weakness, but it served, nevertheless, to endear him to his people. Although surrounded by enemies on all sides, Norway suffered but little from foreign wars during the brief reign of Olaf Tryggvesson. Gudröd, the last surviving son of Erik Blood-Axe, made an attack upon Viken in the summer of 999, but was defeated and slain in the king's absence by his brothers-in-law, Thorgeir and Hyrning. Much more dangerous to King Olaf proved the hostility of Sigrid the Haughty, who was watching for an opportunity to take revenge upon him. Although he must have been well aware of the risks, he did not hesitate to furnish this opportunity. His queen, Thyra, had great estates in Wendland and Denmark, and was dissatisfied, because she was deprived of the revenues which they had formerly brought her. Whenever he spoke to her, she always contrived to bring in something about these estates, and by appeals to his vanity egg him on to war with her brother Sweyn Forkbeard, who withheld from her her rightful property. When these tactics failed, she resorted to prayers and tears, until her husband's patience was wellnigh exhausted. If only for the sake of domestic peace, an expedition to Wendland began to be discussed as an approaching possibility. One Sunday in March--it was Palm Sunday--the king met a man in the street who sold spring vegetables. He bought a bunch and brought it to the queen, remarking that these vegetables were large, considering the earliness of the season. The queen, who was, as usual, weeping for her estates in Wendland, thrust the vegetables contemptuously away, and with the tears