ty, and rude nobleness; something Epic or
Homeric, without the metre or the singing of Homer, but with all the
sincerity, rugged truth to nature, and much more of piety, devoutness,
reverence for what is forever High in this Universe, than meets us
in those old Greek Ballad-mongers. Singularly visual all of it, too,
brought home in every particular to one's imagination, so that it stands
out almost as a thing one actually saw.

Olaf had about three thousand men with him; gathered mostly as he fared
along through Norway. Four hundred, raised by one Dag, a kinsman whom he
had found in Sweden and persuaded to come with him, marched usually in
a separate body; and were, or might have been, rather an important
element. Learning that the Bonders were all arming, especially in
Trondhjem country, Olaf streamed down towards them in the closest order
he could. By no means very close, subsistence even for three thousand
being difficult in such a country. His speech was almost always free
and cheerful, though his thoughts always naturally were of a high and
earnest, almost sacred tone; devout above all. Stickelstad, a small
poor hamlet still standing where the valley ends, was seen by Olaf, and
tacitly by the Bonders as well, to be the natural place for offering
battle. There Olaf issued out from the hills one morning: drew himself
up according to the best rules of Norse tactics, rules of little
complexity, but perspicuously true to the facts. I think he had a clear
open ground still rather raised above the plain in front; he could see
how the Bonder army had not yet quite arrived, but was pouring forward,
in spontaneous rows or groups, copiously by every path. This was thought
to be the biggest army that ever met in Norway; "certainly not much
fewer than a hundred times a hundred men," according to Snorro; great
Bonders several of them, small Bonders very many,--all of willing
mind, animated with a hot sense of intolerable injuries. "King Olaf had
punished great and small with equal rigor," says Snorro; "which appeared
to the chief people of the country too severe; and animosity rose to the
highest when they lost relatives by the King's just sentence, although
they were in reality guilty. He again would rather renounce his dignity
than omit righteous judgment. The accusation against him, of being
stingy with his money, was not just, for he was a most generous man
towards his friends. But that alone was the cause of the discontent