Olaf the Glorious: A Story of the Viking Age by Robert Leighton (rocket ebook reader .TXT) 📖

Thora of Rimul; for Thora is his dearest friend of all the dale folk."

Thora of Rimul sat spinning at the doorway of her home in a sheltered dale among the hills. The birch trees were breaking out into fresh buds, the young lambs gambolled on the flowery knolls, and the air was musical with the songs of birds. Thora was considered the fairest woman in all Thrandheim. Her hair was as fair as the flax upon her spindle, and her eyes were as blue as the clear sky above her head. Her heart was lightsome, too; for she had won the love of the great Earl Hakon--Hakon, the conqueror of the vikings of Jomsburg, the proud ruler of all Norway. It was he who had given her the gold ring that was now upon her white finger, and he had promised her that he would make her his queen. She did not believe that what people said of him was true--that he was black of heart, and cruel and base. His hollow words had not sounded hollow to her ears nor had she seen anything of deceitfulness in his eyes.

He had praised her beauty and declared that he loved her, and so she loved him in return.

As she sat there spinning, there was a sudden commotion among the ewes and lambs. She looked up and beheld two men standing in the shadow of the trees. One of them presently left the other and came towards her. He was a low browed, evil looking man, with a bushy black beard and long tangled hair. She rose and went to meet him, knowing him for Kark, Earl Hakon's thrall. He bade her go in among the trees, where the earl was waiting. So she went on into the wood, wondering why Hakon had not come forth and greeted her in the open as was his custom.

Now, so soon as she saw him she knew that some great ill had happened, for his hands trembled and his legs shook under him. His eyes that she had thought so beautiful were bleared and bloodshot, and there were deep lines about his face which she had never before seen. It seemed to her that he had suddenly become a decrepit old man.

"Why do you tremble so?" she asked as she took his hand.

He looked about him in fear.

"Hide me!" he cried. "Hide me! I am in danger. Shame and death are overtaking me. The young King Olaf is in the land, and he is hunting me down!"

"And who is the young King Olaf that he has power to fill the heart of the great Earl Hakon with terror?" asked Thora. "You who have vanquished the vikings of Jomsburg can surely withstand the enmity of one weak man."

"Not so," answered Hakon in a trembling voice. "King Olaf is mightier far than I. And he has the whole of Norway at his back, while I--I have but this one faithful servant. Saving him alone every man in the land is against me."

He looked round in renewed fear. Even the rustling of the tree branches struck terror to his heart.

"Hide me! hide me!" he cried again.

"Little use is there in hiding you in this place," returned Thora. "King Olaf will be seeking you here before very long, for many men know that I would fain help you, and they will surely lead him here and search for you in my household both within and without. Yet, for the love I bear you, Earl Hakon, I will indeed hide you so that neither shame nor death shall come near you."

She led him through among the trees to the back of the steadings. "There is but one place where I deem that King Olaf will not think of seeking for such a man as you," she said; "and that is in the ditch under the pig sty."

"The place is not one that I would have chosen," said Hakon. "But we must take heed to our lives first of all."

Then they went to the sty, which was built with its back against a large boulder stone. Kark took a spade and cleared away the mire, and dug deep until by removing many stones and logs he opened up a sort of cave. When the rubbish had been borne away Thora brought food and candles and warm rugs. Earl Hakon and the thrall hid themselves in the hole and then Thora covered them over with boards and mould, and the pigs were driven over it.

Now, when evening was falling there came along the strath certain horsemen, and the leader of them was King Olaf Triggvison. Thora of Rimul saw them coming, with the light of the setting sun glittering on their armour, and when they halted at her door she greeted them in good friendship.

King Olaf dismounted and asked her if she knew ought of Earl Hakon of Lade. At sight of the handsome young king she for a moment hesitated, thinking to betray the earl. But when Olaf asked her again she shook her head and said that she was not Earl Hakon's keeper, nor knew where he might be.

Nevertheless, King Olaf doubted her, and he bade his followers make a search within and without the farmstead. This they did, but none could find trace of the man they sought. So Olaf called all his men about him to speak to them, and he stood up on the same boulder stone that was at the back of the swine sty. He declared in a loud voice that he would give a great reward and speedy furtherance to the man who should find Earl Hakon and bring him to his death.

Now, this speech was plainly heard by both Earl Hakon himself and his thrall as they crouched together in the cave, and by the light of the candle that stood on the ground between them each eagerly watched the other's face.

"Why are you so pale, and now again as black as earth?" asked Earl Hakon. "Is it not that, tempted by this offer of reward, you intend to betray me?"

"Nay," answered Kark. "For all King Olaf's gold I will not betray you."

"On one and the same night were we both born," said the earl, "and we shall not be far apart in our deaths."

For a long time they sat in trembling silence, mistrustful of each other, and neither daring to sleep. But as the night wore on Kark's weariness got the better of him, but he tossed about and muttered in his sleep. The earl waked him and asked what it was that he had been dreaming.

Kark answered, rubbing his eyes: "I dreamt that we were both on board the same ship, and that I stood at the helm as her captain."

"That must surely mean that you rule over your own destiny as well as mine," said Earl Hakon. "Be faithful to me, therefore, and when better days come you shall be well rewarded."

Again Kark curled himself up to sleep, and again, as it seemed, he was disturbed by dreams; so Hakon roused him once more and asked him to tell his dream.

"I thought I was at Lade," answered the thrall, "and there I saw King Olaf Triggvison. He spoke to me, and I thought that he laid a gold necklace about my neck."

"The meaning of that must be that Olaf Triggvison will put a blood red ring about your neck whensoever ye meet," said the earl. "Therefore beware of him, Kark, and be faithful to me. Then you will enjoy good things from me always, as you have done before; so betray me not."

Thereafter they both sat wakeful, staring at each other with the flickering candlelight between them. Neither dared to close his eyes. But towards morning Earl Hakon leaned back against the rock, with his head thrown back. Sleep overwhelmed him, yet he was troubled, for he started and rolled uneasily as though in a nightmare, and at times he moaned and muttered as if in anguish, so that Kark could not look upon him but with horror. At last, when the earl was quiet, Kark sprang up, gripped a big knife from out of his belt and thrust it into his master's throat.

That was the bane of Earl Hakon.

On the next day Olaf Triggvison was in Lade, and there came to him a man naming himself Kark, bringing with him the severed head of Earl Hakon, which he offered to the king. When Olaf had received proof that the head was indeed that of the earl, he asked Kark how he had come by it, and the thrall told all that had befallen and claimed his reward.

Now King Olaf hated a traitor beyond all men, so he had Kark led away, and ordered one of his berserks to smite the head off him, thus fulfilling the murdered earl's prophecy, for a ring not of gold but of blood was put about the traitor's neck.

King Olaf then fared with many of the bonders out to Nid holm. This island, at the mouth of the river Nid, was kept in those days for the slaying of thieves and evil men, and a gallows stood there upon which the head of Earl Hakon was now hung, side by side with that of his thrall. The bonders crowded round the foot of the gallows, throwing stones and clods of earth at the heads, and crying out that there they fared meetly together, rascal by rascal.

And now that Earl Hakon was dead the people did not shrink from speaking their minds concerning him, and giving free vent to their hatred of his low cunning and his faithlessness, his cruelty and his profligacy. Even his zeal for blood offering and his strong belief in the pagan gods were now regarded with wide disfavour, for it could not be forgotten that he had sacrificed his own son to propitiate the god of war, and this act, added to the evil deeds that he had more recently committed had brought upon him such contempt that the whole of Norway rejoiced at his death.

Olaf Triggvison's claim to the throne of Norway was not for a moment disputed. In the first place his manly beauty and his resemblance to King Hakon the Good gained him immediate favour, and his personal strength and prowess might have been in itself sufficient to warrant his being chosen as a successor to Earl Hakon. But in addition to this there was the undoubted fact that he was a direct descendant of Harald Fairhair, and had therefore the greatest of all claims to the kingdom in which his fathers had reigned. So, very soon after the death of Hakon, a general Thing, or gathering of the people, was held in Trondelag, and Olaf was formally proclaimed the king of all Norway, and the rule given to him according to ancient laws.

The district of Thrandheim was at that time the most populous and important in the land, and the Thranders had exercised the right (a right which they reserve to this day) of proclaiming a new monarch in the name of the whole nation. Nevertheless it was necessary for King Olaf to travel throughout the country to lay personal claim to his dominion, and to receive the allegiance of his subjects remote and near. The news of his coming into Norway was not long in reaching the farthest extremities of the realm. Everywhere it was told how, having by help of his mother's bravery escaped the wrath of the wicked Queen Gunnhild, he had lived as a slave in Esthonia, how he had been rescued by Sigurd Erikson and educated at the court of King Valdemar, how he had roved as a viking on the Baltic, and, after invading