“Then a third sax was given to each, and they played so that all the time one was in the air and two in their hands; they always caught them by the handle, and no one could determine who was most skilled. After a long while the king said: ‘This game has not yet had sufficient trial.’ “They went down to the shore and out on a large longship, and the king bade his men row the ship, and the king then walked outside the board, on the oars along the side of the ship, and there played with three handsaxes as skilfully as before on land; and Eindridi did the same. The king played first, and Eindridi after him. The king then went again in the same manner along the oars, and thus in front of the stern, not dropping the handsaxes, and not even getting his shoes wet; he came back along the other side on the oars, and up into the ship. No one could understand how he did this. Eindridi stood before the king, when he came upon the ship, and looked at him in silence. The king said: ‘Why dost thou stand, and not try after me?’ Eindridi replied: ‘You, lord, could by no means do this with your idrótt alone, without the power of that God in whom you believe; and from this I see that he is all-powerful, and therefore I shall henceforth believe that he and no one else is the only God’” (Olaf Tryggvason’s Saga; Fornmanna Sögur). Among such warlike and Spartan-like people the chiefs had to be the foremost in all athletic and gymnastic exercises if they wished to enjoy the respect and confidence of the people, and have rule over them. To talk of what their forefathers had done was not sufficient; they had to show themselves worthy of them, and if incapable of ruling, they were deposed by the people in Thing assembled. There are several examples in the Sagas of powerful chiefs showing their anger and jealousy when any man excelled them. “King Olaf was in every respect, of all the men who have been spoken of, the greatest man of idróttir in Norway; he was the strongest and most skilled of all, and many accounts of this have been written. One is about how he climbed Smalsarhorn and fastened his shield on the top of the rock; he helped his hirdman who had climbed the rock and could neither get up nor down again; the king walked up to him and carried him under his arm down to the level plain.... He could fight equally well with both hands, and shoot two spears at once” (Olaf Tryggvason’s Saga, ch. 92 (Heimskringla)). “Magnus (the king) exercised himself and was skilled in many games and idróttir even in his youth; he walked along the gunwales as young men used to at that time, and he did it with great nimbleness, and showed his accomplishments in this as in other things” (Magnus the Good’s Saga; Fornmanna Sögur, vi. 5).