NEWS OF FREY REACHES NORWAY
In Norway under King Olaf Trygvasson affairs were prospering all this
while. The king had settled his kingdom into his own ways, and being of
a restless and acquisitive mind, he was already thinking how he could
better himself. He had thought more than once of Iceland as a heathen
country stocked with fine people well worth the pains of conversion. "To
drive them to the water may cost me five hundred lives," he said, "but
you may take that as a sowing of which the harvest will be a
thousandfold. Christ will win souls and I a new realm." The more he
thought of it the more he desired to do it.
Then there came strange news out of Sweden, of painful interest to King
Olaf. He heard of mighty stirrings of the pagan people out there, of
miracles wrought by their chief god Frey which overpassed any which his
own priests could do. What struck him most in these accounts was that
the manner of devotion had been changed. Frey, he was assured, was
milder-mannered, and would have nothing to do with human sacrifice. More
than that, blood-offerings of all sorts were utterly done away with. The
king could not understand it, and talked it over with the lords of his
council.
"It looks to me," he said, "as if Frey was half-way to be a Christian.
Not only will he have no bloodshed, but all his works are those of
mercy. He heals the sick, comforts the fatherless, gives sight to the
blind, sets captives free! There is something in all this which I cannot
fathom. But let me tell you that baptism of a heathen god would be a
thing to root the true faith in the rock, as it should be. Then it would
stand fast for ever."
Some said one thing, and some another. But Sigurd Helming looked down at
his finger-nails with his brows drawn up very high, and said nothing at
all.
He was so pointedly silent that the king observed it. "Well," he asked
him, "and what are you thinking to see in your finger-nails?"
Sigurd held up the forefinger of one hand. "There is a white fleck in
this one," he said, "which warns me of a stranger in Sweden."
"Well," said King Olaf, "and that is true to report. What next?"
"Sir," said Sigurd, "a stranger to my knowledge went into Sweden a year
ago, and has not been heard of as coming out again. That was my brother
Gunnar, who went for a good reason."
The king frowned. "You did no service to this country when you warned
him of my anger."
"Sir," Sigurd said, "I know that. But I was very sure then that he had
no part in Halward's slaughter, and I believe that you had an inkling of
how the case stood. Otherwise you had not kept me on your council, but
had expelled me the realm."
"Well," said the king, "what I have heard since has softened my
resentment; but I know nothing. What makes you see the mind of Gunnar in
these heathen doings?"
"The knowledge I have of his mind," said Sigurd. "He is a merry man and
a mild-mannered man until he is vexed. Now, he never would sacrifice
beasts to the gods in the old days when the gods required it. And he
always said that it was better to kill a man outright than to keep him
in chains or darkness. These are two reasons. Lastly, if it is true
that Frey had a woman for his wife, I believe that Gunnar has her now,
and that the next miracle of Frey's we hear about will be that she is to
give him a child."
The king took hold of his chin under his beard, and considered. Then he
said, "Sigurd, do you go into Sweden and witness some of the doings of
Frey. If you are right in what you suspect--and I think that you
are--you will see Gunnar, and maybe he will tell you the truth of the
matter. It is an old story by now, but I don't say that I shall not have
a word with the slayer of Halward hereafter if I happen to meet with
him." Sigurd said that he would gladly go to Sweden. It was settled that
he should set out in the summer when the passes were open and Frey at
home again.