It was King Olaf's custom to rise betimes in the morning, put on his
clothes, wash his hands, and then go to the church and hear the matins
and morning mass. Thereafter he went to the Thing-meeting, to bring
people to agreement with each other, or to talk of one or the other
matter that appeared to him necessary. He invited to him great and small
who were known to be men of understanding. He often made them recite to
him the laws which Hakon Athelstan's foster-son had made for Throndhjem;
and after considering them with those men of understanding, he ordered
laws adding to or taking from those established before. But Christian
privileges he settled according to the advice of Bishop Grimbel and
other learned priests; and bent his whole mind to uprooting heathenism,
and old customs which he thought contrary to Christianity. And he
succeeded so far that the bondes accepted of the laws which the king
proposed. So says Sigvat:--
"The king, who at the helm guides
His warlike ship through clashing tides,
Now gives one law for all the land--
A heavenly law, which long will stand."
King Olaf was a good and very gentle man, of little speech, and
open-handed although greedy of money. Sigvat the skald, as before
related, was in King Olaf's house, and several Iceland men. The king
asked particularly how Christianity was observed in Iceland, and it
appeared to him to be very far from where it ought to be; for, as
to observing Christian practices, it was told the king that it was
permitted there to eat horse-flesh, to expose infants as heathens do,
besides many other things contrary to Christianity. They also told the
king about many principal men who were then in Iceland. Skapte Thorodson
was then the lagman of the country. He inquired also of those who were
best acquainted with it about the state of people in other distant
countries; and his inquiries turned principally on how Christianity was
observed in the Orkney, Shetland, and Farey Islands: and, as far as
he could learn, it was far from being as he could have wished. Such
conversation was usually carried on by him; or else he spoke about the
laws and rights of the country.