TLV - 01 - The Golden Horn Read Online Free PDF

Stiklastadh, came and hid the body. Later he took it to Nidharos, the town on the Throndheimsfjord, where he tricked some men into supposing they cast it into the water; but he buried it in a sandy bank. After a year, Bishop Grimkell and the great yeoman chief Einar Thambarskelfir, who had held aloof from this struggle, though once he opposed Olaf, dug it up. It was not corrupted, they said, and some of the hair put in a consecrated fire did not burn. Henceforth Olaf's casket lay on the high altar of St. Clement's Church in Nidharos, where the relic was said to work many miracles.
    Meanwhile, though, Knut the Great had Norway. He set his son Sv ein, by the Northumbrian ealdor man's daughter, Aelfgifu, over the realm. Some of Olaf's men, such as Finn Arnason, got peace from the new lords and dwelt quietly at home.
    Nevertheless, the Danish rule was more harsh than folk had awaited. As the years passed, they began to sigh after Olaf, who at the very least had been a Norseman like themselves. Stories grew up about his miracles, both in life and after death; and men agreed that Svein Knutsson and his grasping mother were their own punishment for having slain a saint.
    How They Fared to Miklagardh
    1
    Rognvald Brusason left Harald with a poor hind he knew, deep in the forest. He did not tell that family who the hurt youth was, but promised good payment if Harald was brought safe to him. The next day he departed for Sweden. There was scant danger that anyone would learn about Olaf's kinsman. Woods dwellers like this hardly saw an outsider from one year to the next.
    Harald's wounds had cost him much blood and he needed weeks to get back his strength. He chafed, now furious, now sullen, at the dullness. Toward summer's end it was broken. One afternoon the sun turned dark, and white flames blazed around it. Though this lasted but a short while, he waited in terror for the Last Judgment—he, who had perforce aided his host in making offerings to the elves. But night and morning came as always, and the vision faded in men's minds. After a few years they believed that the sun had gone out at the moment of St. Olaf's death.
    By fall Harald was well. With the man's son as guide, he rode off eastward. They went by wilderness paths wherever they could, over the Keel and out of Norway. Once, riding cold and hungry in the rain, Harald made a verse:
     
    "From wood to wood must I wander
    and hide me without honor.
    Who knows, though, if I never
    shall gain a name men speak of?"
     
    Safe at last in the rich dales of Sweden, they stayed overnight at whatever houses they came to, like ordinary travelers. Though speech was different from place to place, so that anyone could hear that Harald had spent his life near the Oslofjord while the hind's boy was a Thrond, a Norseman could make himself understood through most of the world he knew. In Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Greenland, England, Germany, Flanders they spoke much the same tongue. Even the lords of Russia could still talk the language of their viking forebears.
    The Uppsala king, who had lent Olaf some men, was a Christian, but most of his folk remained heathen; they had made his parents change the name Jacob First given him to a more seemly Onund. Harald could look for no further help here against the mighty Knut of Denmark. He asked his way to where Rognvald was staying, although his hope of finding him grew more forlorn each day.
    Nor did this Orkneyman, when they greeted each other, see any likelihood of winning home. But nonetheless he had plans, which he and Harald often talked about that winter. In spring they gathered their following, many men who had fled hither from Stiklastadh like themselves, and got ships. They sailed across the Baltic Sea to Russia.
    From the coast they rowed up the Neva River to Lake Ladoga, where the headman at the town feasted them so well that they embarked next day with thumping skulls. The River Volkhov took them on to Novgorod. Here they had been told