The story of the preaching of Christianity in Norway is a chequered one. The first attempt to establish the Christian faith was made by Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri (_v. supra_, p. 36). Baptised and educated in England, he began warily, inducing those who were best beloved by him to become Christians, but he soon came into conflict with the more ardent followers of paganism. At the great autumn festival at Lade when the cups of memory were drunk, Earl Sigurd signed a cup to Odin, but the king made the sign of the cross over his cup. Earl Sigurd pacified popular clamour by saying that the king had made the sign of the hammer and consecrated the cup to Thor. The next day the king would not eat the horse-flesh used in their offerings nor drink the blood from it: the people were angry and the king compromised by inhaling the steam from the offering through a linen cloth placed over the sacrificial kettle, but no one was satisfied and at the next winter-feast the king had to eat some bits of horse-liver and to drink crossless all the cups of memory. Hákon died a Christian but Eyvindr Skaldaspillir in _Hákonarmál_ describes how he was welcomed by Odin to Valhalla. Earl Hákon Sigurdson, nicknamed _blót-jarl_, i.e. sacrifice-earl, was a zealous heathen, but Olaf Tryggvason after his succession in 995 promoted the cause of Christianity by every means in his power, and it was largely to this that he owed his ultimate overthrow. Then, after a brief interval, the crown passed to St Olaf, greatest of all Christian champions in Norway, and during his reign that country became definitely Christian, though his rough and ready methods of conversion were hardly likely to secure anything but a purely formal and outward adhesion to the new faith. Sweden was the most reluctant of the three northern realms to accept Christianity, and the country remained almost entirely heathen until the close of the Viking period.