Olaf the Glorious
Chapter XIII: The Hermit Of The Scillys
On a certain day in the late winter of the next year Olaf Triggvison led his fleet across the turbulent waters of the Pentland Firth, and steered his course for the islands of Orkney. On his way northward along the coasts of England he had many times made a landing to plunder some seaside village and to replenish his stores of food and water. He had harried wide on both shores of the Humber and in Northumberland, had stormed King Ida's fortress of Bamborough, and made a raid upon Berwick. In Scotland, also, he had ravaged and plundered. But of these adventures there remains no record. Before the time of his crossing to the Orkneys he had lost five of his ships and a large number of his men, and from this it may be judged that he had either encountered very stormy weather or suffered some reverse at the hands of his enemies.
The snow still lay deep upon the islands when he entered the wide channel named Scapa Flow, and anchored his fleet under shelter of the high island of Hoy. Many of his vessels were by this time in need of repair, so he crossed the sound and beached them near to where the port of Stromness now lies, and at this place he took up his quarters until the coming of the summer.
The Orkney Islands were then, and for many generations afterwards, peopled by Scandinavian vikings and their families, who paid tax and tribute to Norway. Olaf therefore found himself among men who spoke his own tongue, and who were glad enough to make friends with a chief, of whom it could be said that he had done great and valiant deeds in battle. One thing which more than all else won these people to him was their knowledge that he was the same Ole the Esthonian who, with Vagn Akison, had stood out to the end in the great sea fight against Hakon of Lade. Earl Hakon was now the ruler over the Orkney islanders, but he was beginning to be so bitterly hated by them that they looked upon all his enemies as their own particular friends. For a little time they had centred their hopes in Earl Sigvaldi of Jomsburg, who had lately taken refuge in the Orkneys. But Sigvaldi had now gone back to his stronghold on the Baltic, in the hope of restoring his scattered company of vikings. The coming of Olaf was therefore regarded with great favour by the Orcadian vikings, who thought it possible that he would join them in an attempt to drive Earl Hakon from the Norwegian throne.
In order to delay Olaf's departure from the islands the people got him to help them in building a great temple on the shores of one of their lakes, and, when the temple was finished and duly dedicated to Odin, they proposed to Olaf that he should lead an expedition across to Norway. Olaf replied that he did not consider the time ripe for such an attempt, and that for the present he had other plans in hand; but he bade them, in the meantime, busy themselves with the building of ships.
Now while Olaf was still in Orkney there came one day into Scapa Flow one of the ships of King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark. Olaf learned from her captain that the Dane folk had rebelled against Sweyn, for the reason that, having accepted Christianity and compelled his people to follow his example, he had now thrown off the true belief and turned back to the worship of the heathen gods, demanding that his subjects should again acknowledge Odin and Thor to be greater than the God of the Christians. Rather than do this, the Danes had resolved to drive their unbelieving king into exile; and Sweyn Forkbeard, having lost his throne, had taken to vikingry.
On hearing this, Olaf Triggvison gave the ship captain a message to take back to his master, bidding Sweyn remember the vow he had sworn at his inheritance feast, and saying that if he had a mind to fulfil that vow he might now make the attempt, for that he -- Ole the Esthonian -- was now preparing his forces for a great invasion of England, and would be well pleased if Sweyn would join him in the expedition. The place of the gathering of the forces was to be Ipswich, in East Anglia, and the time of meeting was to be the middle of the harvest month in the next summer.
Olaf did not wait in the Orkneys for an answer to this message. His vikings were already growing weary of idleness and eager to be again upon the sea. So the ships were put in readiness, and when a fair wind offered, the anchors were weighed and the sails set, and the fleet sped westward through Roy Sound towards Cape Wrath. Thence they sailed down among the Hebrides -- or the Southern Isles, as the Norsemen always called them. Here Olaf had many battles and won many ships from the descendants of Harald Fairhair's rebel subjects, who had made settlements in the Isles. Here, too, he gained some hundreds of men to his following. He harried also in the north parts of Ireland, and had certain battles in the Island of Man. By this time the summer was far spent, so he sailed east away to Cumberland and there rested throughout the winter.
His men thought that this part of England, with its mountains and lakes, was so much like their own birthland in distant Norway, that they showed great unwillingness to leave it. Many did, indeed, remain, and the settlements they made in the lake country have left traces which even to the present day may be recognized, not only in the remains of heathen temples and tombs, but also in the names of places and in certain Norse words that occur in the common speech of the Cumbrian folk.
From Cumberland Olaf sailed south to Wales. There again he harried wide about, and also in Cornwall, and at length he came to the Scilly Isles. King Athelstane had conquered these islands half a century before, and had established a monastery there, the ruins of which may still be seen.
Now when Olaf Triggvison lay at Scilly, sheltering from a storm that had driven him out of his intended course, he heard that in the isle of Tresco there was a certain soothsayer who was said to be well skilled in the foretelling of things which had not yet come to pass. Olaf fell a-longing to test the spaeing of this man.
"I will try him by means of a trick," Olaf said one day to Kolbiorn; "and in this wise: You shall go to him instead of me, and say that you are King Ole the Esthonion; and if he believes you, then is he no soothsayer."
Now Olaf was already famed in all lands for being fairer and nobler than all other men, and he chose Kolbiorn as his messenger because he was the fairest and biggest of his men and most resembled himself, and he sent him ashore, arrayed in the most beautiful clothing.
Kolbiorn searched long among the trees and rocks before he found the little cave in which the lonely hermit dwelt; and when he entered he saw a gray bearded old man, deep in meditation before a crucifix, and wearing the habit of a Christian priest.
The hermit looked up at the tall figure of his visitor, and waited for him to speak. Kolbiorn answered as Olaf had bidden him, saying that his name was King Ole. But the hermit shook his head.
"King thou art not," said he gravely; "but my counsel to thee is, that thou be true to thy King."
No other word did he speak, and Kolbiorn turned away and fared back to Olaf, who, on hearing of the answer that had been given, longed all the more to meet this hermit, whom he now believed to be verily a soothsayer.
So on the next day, while the wind was high and the waves broke with a heavy roar upon the rocks, Olaf dressed himself very simply, without any body armour, and went ashore, attended by two shieldmen. When he entered the hermit's cell he found the old man sitting at an oaken table with a roll of parchment before him, upon which he was inscribing some holy legend. He greeted Olaf most kindly, and when they had spoken together for a while, Olaf asked him what he could say as to how he should speed coming by his rightful inheritance or any other good fortune.
Then the hermit answered:
"In the time that is to come, thou shalt be a very glorious king and do glorious deeds. Many men shalt thou bring to the right troth and to christening, helping thereby both thyself and thy fellow men."
"As to the first part of your prophecy -- that I shall become a great king, that I can well believe," returned Olaf; "but that I shall ever help men to christening, I cannot believe, for I am now, and always shall be, a faithful worshipper of the gods of Asgard and an enemy to all believers in Christ."
"Nevertheless," answered the hermit, "the second part of what I have said is even more certain to come true than the first; and, to the end that my words may be trusted, take this as a token: Hard by thy ship thou shall presently fall into a snare of a host of men, and battle will spring thence, and thou wilt be sorely hurt, and of this wound thou shalt look to die and be borne to ship on shield; yet thou shalt be whole of thy hurt within seven nights and be speedily christened thereafter."
Olaf laughed at the good man, and presently went his way. But as he passed downward towards the boat that awaited him among the rocks, he was met by a party of unpeaceful men who fell suddenly upon him with their swords. Olaf called upon his two guards, who had lagged behind, but ere they came to his help he, being without any arms, received a great sword thrust in his chest. His assailants fled when they saw the two guards approaching from among the trees, and Olaf was left bleeding where he fell. His two men lifted him upon one of their shields, and carried him down to the boat and bore him wounded upon his ship. For six days he lay unconscious, and, as all thought, upon the point of death. But on the seventh night the danger was passed, and thereafter he speedily grew well.
Then Olaf deemed that in having foretold this matter so exactly the old hermit had proved himself to be indeed a very wise soothsayer. So he went ashore a second time, and the two talked much and long together.
It seemed that Cerdic was the hermit's name. He had once been a bondslave among Norsemen, and had known Olaf's father, King Triggvi, whom Olaf personally resembled. He could speak very well in the Norse tongue, and his soft and gentle voice was very soothing to all who heard it. At first he spoke of the ways of heathen men, of their revengeful spirit and their cruelty in warfare, and he condemned their offering of blood sacrifices and their worship of graven images. Such gods as Odin and Thor, Njord and Frey, were, he said, but the creations of men's poetic fancy, and had no real existence. Odin was at one time but an earthly man, with all man's faults and sins. The earthquake and the thunder had nothing to do with the rolling of Thor's chariot or the throwing of Thor's hammer. The waves of the ocean would rise in anger or fall into calm peace though the name of Njord had never been spoken; and the seasons would change in their order, fields and pastures would grow, without the favour of Frey.
So spoke the hermit, and then he told the story of the Creation and of Adam's Fall, and showed how Christ had come to preach peace on earth and to save the world. It was a principle of the Christian faith; said Cerdic, that men should remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, that they should not bow down to graven images, that they should not steal, nor be covetous, nor do murder, nor bear false witness; that they should love their enemies and bless those who cursed them.
Olaf listened in patience to all these things, asking many questions concerning them. At last Cerdic appealed to him and besought him most earnestly to come to repentance and to make himself a faithful follower of Christ, so that he might at the close of his earthly life be worthy to enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Now Olaf Triggvison had until this time lived always in the firm hope that when he died he would be admitted into the shining hall of Valhalla, where he might expect to meet all the great heroes of past times. He believed that Odin would receive him there, and reward him well for all the glorious deeds that he had done. So he was not at all willing to abandon this Norseman's faith in a future life which, as men promised, should be full of warfare by day and of merry carousing by night.
Yet it was evident that Cerdic had not spoken without good effect; for Olaf agreed -- as many of the Scandinavians did in these times -- that he would at once be christened, on the one condition that, while calling himself a follower of Christ, he should not be expected to abandon either his belief in Odin or his hopes of Valhalla. The holy man of Scilly well knew that this divided faith would not last long, but he was also assured that in the contest the victory would certainly rest with Christ.
Accordingly Olaf was christened, with all his warriors and shipmen. He lay among the Scilly Isles for many days thereafter, and learned the true faith so well that it remained his guiding light throughout the rest of his life, and made him, as shall presently be seen, one of the most zealous Christians of his time.
Now, as the summer days passed by and it drew near to the harvest time, Olaf bethought him of his tryst with King Sweyn Forkbeard, so he raised his anchors and sped out into the open main and round by the forelands, and so north to Ipswich. It was three years since he had first besieged the East Anglian town, and in the interval the folk had returned to their devastated dwellings and built them anew. Olaf now took forcible possession of the town for a second time. He was not yet so entirely a Christian that he had any scruples in attacking Christian folk and turning them out of their homes.
He lay with his ships in the Orwell for three weeks, and at the end of that time King Sweyn and his fleet arrived from the Baltic. Olaf had already gathered about him some fifty-five vessels of war, fully manned and equipped; and with those which Sweyn added to the number, he had now a force of ninety-four ships of all sizes, from small skiffs of ten banks of oars and a crew of a hundred men, up to great dragonships with thirty pairs of oars, two towering masts, and a complete company of about four hundred seamen and warriors. The whole force of ninety-four ships carried with them some thirty thousand men.
This was not to be one of the old plundering raids of a body of adventurers seeking merely to better their fortunes by winning themselves new homes at the point of the sword. It was an expedition greater than any that Brihtnoth had ever met with steel or Ethelred with gold, and its purpose was one of deliberately planned invasion and conquest.
At first when Olaf and Sweyn met and joined their fleets and armies there was a disagreement between them as to which chief was to assume the higher command. Sweyn declared that the leading position was his by the right that he was a king, and should be accorded the more power in all things over Olaf, who (as Sweyn supposed) was lowly born. But Olaf stoutly maintained that as it was he who had proposed the expedition, and as he had the larger number of men and ships, the sole command should be his own, Sweyn taking the second place. In the end it was agreed that this should be so, and that, in the event of their success, they were to divide the kingdom of England between them -- Sweyn taking the Northern half, including Northumbria and the upper part of Mercia, and Olaf the Southern half, including East Anglia and the whole of Wessex.
The first point of attack was to be London -- a city which, although not yet the capital of the kingdom, was a chief bulwark of the land and daily becoming one of the most important centres of trade in Western Europe. Alfred the Great, who had himself rescued the city from the Danes, had built a strong fortress for her defence, and her citizens had always been regarded as among the most valiant and patriotic in all England. Olaf Triggvison was well aware that if he should succeed in taking London, his conquest of the rest of Ethelred's realm would be a comparatively easy matter. Unfortunately for his plans, he did not foresee the obstacles which were to meet him.
He led his procession of battleships up the Thames. Never before had such a splendid array been seen upon those waters. The early morning sun shone upon the gilded birds and dragons on the tops of the masts. At the prow of each vessel there was reared the tall figure of some strange and terrible animal, formed of carved and gilded wood or of wrought brass, silver, or even amber. Many of the ships had sails made of the finest silk, woven in beautiful designs. The decks were crowded with men whose glittering spears and burnished helmets gave them a very warlike aspect, and struck terror into the hearts of the people who saw them from the river's banks.
The alarm spread quickly from point to point, and before the invaders had come well within sight of the city the gates were securely closed and barricaded, and the valiant burghers were fully prepared to make a stout resistance.
As the ships came abreast of the Tower they were assailed by volleys of well aimed arrows, fired from the battlements. Heedless of Olaf's plans, King Sweyn drew his division yet nearer under the walls, with the intention of making an assault upon the citadel. But the attempt was useless. The defenders were hidden behind the ramparts and beyond reach of all missiles, while Sweyn's forces were fully exposed to the ceaseless hail of arrows and stones which seemed to issue out of the very walls. So many of his men fell that Sweyn was forced to retire.
The garrison could frustrate an assault upon the fortress, but they could not prevent so vast a number of ships from passing higher up the river and making an attack upon the old Roman rampart. While King Sweyn crossed to the opposite side of the stream and led an attack upon Southwark, Olaf effected a landing near Billing's Gate and directed all his strength upon the wall. He lost many men in the attempt, but at last a breach was made, and at the head of many hundreds of desperate warriors he entered the city. He had depended upon Sweyn following him; and had the Danish king been content to obey, London might indeed have been taken by sheer strength. As it was, however, Olaf quickly found that he had made a fatal mistake. Vast crowds of armed citizens met him at the end of each narrow street and dealt the invaders such lusty blows, with their bills and swords and volleys of heavy stones, that those who were not maimed or killed outright were forced back by overpowering strength, their ranks being driven into hopeless confusion. At one moment Olaf Triggvison found himself, with some six or seven of his men, surrounded by several scores of the defenders. He fought his way through them back to the city wall, where, through the breach that had been made, his hosts were escaping on board the ships. The besiegers were utterly defeated. Once again had the men of London rescued their city from its foes.
Sweyn Forkbeard had fared no better than Olaf had done. He had made a bold attempt to burn the town, but, like Olaf, he had been driven back to his ships with great slaughter.
On that same day the two defeated chiefs sailed away in wrath and sorrow, and with the loss of seven ships and two thousand men.
Now, under Alfred or Athelstane such a reverse as the invaders had met with before London would surely have been followed up by some crushing victory. But under the wretched Ethelred there was no attempt made to prevent the more fearful desolation of other parts of the kingdom. Olaf and Sweyn were calmly allowed to avenge their defeat by ravaging the coast at pleasure, and to pillage, burn and murder without meeting the slightest resistance. At the mouth of the Thames the two chiefs had divided their forces, Sweyn sailing northward towards the Humber, while Olaf took his course southward, and ravaged far and wide in the old kingdoms of Kent and Sussex.
Late in the summer, Olaf crossed into Hampshire, and now at last King Ethelred was roused, for the invaders threatened not only the royal city of Andover but also the royal person. The king had no army of sufficient strength to encounter his Norse enemy, and his navy was of still less consequence. The only course he seems to have thought of, therefore, was the old cowardly policy of again buying peace with gold. Olaf was allowed to anchor his fleet for the winter at Southampton, and in order to avert any raiding into the surrounding country, Ethelred levied a special tax upon the people of Wessex to supply the crews with food and pay. He also levied a general tax upon all England to raise the sum of sixteen thousand pounds as a bribe to the invaders to quit the kingdom.
This large sum of money was conveyed to Olaf Triggvison by the king's ambassadors, among whom was a certain Bishop Elfheah -- a zealous Christian, who, in addition to gaining Olaf's solemn promise that he would keep the peace, took upon himself the task of converting the young chief to the Christian faith. Olaf had already been baptized by the good hermit of the Scillys; but he had not yet received the rite of confirmation. He now declared that he was willing to become entirely a Christian, and to set aside his belief in the old gods of Scandinavia. The bishop then led Olaf to the court at Andover, where Ethelred received him with every honour and enriched him with royal gifts. At the confirmation of Olaf, which took place with great pomp, King Ethelred himself was present, and even stood sponsor.
Olaf lived for many weeks at Andover, as King Ethelred's friendly guest, and before he left to join his ships he signed a treaty in which he engaged never again to invade England. This promise he faithfully kept, and for a time there was peace in the land. Ethelred believed that he had now rid his kingdom of all danger from the vikings. But he did not reckon with King Sweyn Forkbeard. Tempted by the great sums of money that had been extorted from the English, Sweyn returned again and again, and at last succeeded in expelling Ethelred from the land. For many years Sweyn was the virtual ruler of England, and he thus prepared the way for his son, Canute the Mighty, who was afterwards the chosen king of the English people.
Now, while Olaf Triggvison was still the guest of King Ethelred, there also lived at the court a certain princess named Gyda. She was the sister of the King of Dublin, in Ireland, and she was considered very beautiful. A great many wooers sought to wed with her, and among others a man named Alfwin, a renowned champion and man slayer. A day was fixed on which Gyda had promised to choose a husband, and many high born men had come together, hoping to be chosen. All were splendidly attired.
Olaf Triggvison, clad in a coarse, wet weather cloak with a fur hood, stood apart with a few of his comrades, merely to look on.
Gyda went here and there among her wooers, but seemed to find none that pleased her. But at length she came to where Olaf stood, with his head half hidden under his fur hood. She went nearer to him, lifted up his hood and looked long and earnestly into his eyes.
"A taller and handsomer man I have never seen," said she. "Who art thou, and whence came you?"
"I am an outland man here," he answered; "and I am named Ole the Esthonian."
Gyda said, "Wilt thou have me? Then will I choose thee for my husband."
Olaf replied that he was not unwilling to take her at her word. So they talked the matter over and, being of one mind, they were forthwith betrothed.
Alfwin was ill content at this, and in great wrath he challenged Olaf to fight. It was the custom of those days in England that if any two men contended about a matter they should each bring twelve men and dispute their rights in a pitched battle. So when these two rivals met, Olaf gave the word to his men to do as he did. He had a great axe, and when Alfwin attacked him with his sword, he quickly overpowered him, and then bound him fast with ropes. In like wise were all Alfwin's men defeated; and Olaf forced them to depart from the land and never come back. Alfwin was a very wealthy man, and his wealth was forfeited to Olaf. Then Olaf wedded Princess Gyda, and went with her to Ireland, and lived in great happiness for many days.