e ready road
to his favor. Thangbrand, I find, lodged with Hall of Sida (familiar
acquaintance of "Burnt Njal," whose Saga has its admirers among us
even now). Thangbrand converted Hall and one or two other leading men;
but in general he was reckoned quarrelsome and blusterous rather than
eloquent and piously convincing. Two skalds of repute made biting
lampoons upon Thangbrand, whom Thangbrand, by two opportunities that
offered, cut down and did to death because of their skaldic quality.
Another he killed with his own hand, I know not for what reason. In
brief, after about a year, Thangbrand returned to Norway and King
Olaf, declaring the Icelanders to be a perverse, satirical, and
inconvertible people, having himself, the record says, been "the death
of three men there." King Olaf was in high rage at this result; but
was persuaded by the Icelanders about him to try farther, and by a
milder instrument. He accordingly chose one Thormod, a pious, patient,
and kindly man, who, within the next year or so, did actually
accomplish the matter; namely, get Christianity, by open vote,
declared at Thingvalla by the general Thing of Iceland there; the roar
of a volcanic eruption at the right moment rather helping the
conclusion, if I recollect. Whereupon Olaf's joy was no doubt great.

One general result of these successful operations was the discontent,
to all manner of degrees, on the part of many Norse individuals,
against this glorious and victorious, but peremptory and terrible king
of theirs. Tryggveson, I fancy, did not much regard all that; a man of
joyful, cheery temper, habitually contemptuous of danger. Another
trivial misfortune that befell in these conversion operations, and
became important to him, he did not even know of, and would have much
despised if he had. It was this: Sigrid, queen-dowager of Sweden,
thought to be among the most shining women of the world, was also
known for one of the most imperious, revengeful, and relentless, and
had got for herself the name of Sigrid the Proud. In her high
widowhood she had naturally many wooers; but treated them in a manner
unexampled.

In spite of which, however, there went from Tryggveson, who was now a
widower, some incipient marriage proposals to this proud widow; by
whom they were favorably received; as from the brightest man in all
the world, they might seem worth being. Now, in one of these
anti-heathen onslaughts of King Olaf's on the idol temples of
Hakon--(I