onfessor: That they two should sally out from Normandy in strong
force, unite with Olaf in ditto, and, landing on the Thames, do
something effectual for themselves. But impediments, bad weather or the
like, disheartened the poor Princes, and it came to nothing. Olaf was
much in Normandy, what they then called Walland; a man held in honor by
those Norman Dukes.

What amount of "property" he had amassed I do not know, but could prove,
were it necessary, that he had acquired some tactical or even strategic
faculty and real talent for war. At Lymfjord, in Jutland, but some
years after this (A.D. 1027), he had a sea-battle with the great Knut
himself,--ships combined with flood-gates, with roaring, artificial
deluges; right well managed by King Olaf; which were within a
hair's-breadth of destroying Knut, now become a King and Great; and did
in effect send him instantly running. But of this more particularly by
and by.

What still more surprises me is the mystery, where Olaf, in this
wandering, fighting, sea-roving life, acquired his deeply religious
feeling, his intense adherence to the Christian Faith. I suppose it
had been in England, where many pious persons, priestly and other, were
still to be met with, that Olaf had gathered these doctrines; and that
in those his unfathomable dialogues with the ever-moaning Ocean, they
had struck root downwards in the soul of him, and borne fruit upwards to
the degree so conspicuous afterwards. It is certain he became a deeply
pious man during these long Viking cruises; and directed all his
strength, when strength and authority were lent him, to establishing
the Christian religion in his country, and suppressing and abolishing
Vikingism there; both of which objects, and their respective worth and
unworth, he, must himself have long known so well.

It was well on in A.D. 1016 that Knut gained his last victory, at
Ashdon, in Essex, where the earth pyramids and antique church near by
still testify the thankful piety of Knut,--or, at lowest his joy at
having _won_ instead of lost and perished, as he was near doing there.
And it was still this same year when the noble Edmund Ironside, after
forced partition-treaty "in the Isle of Alney," got scandalously
murdered, and Knut became indisputable sole King of England, and
decisively settled himself to his work of governing there. In the year
before either of which events, while all still hung uncertain for Knut,
and even Eric Jarl of Norway