lieve in Christ, and making his scoff of God. Then the king was wroth,
and said Raud should die the worst of deaths. And the king ordered him
to be bound to a beam of wood, with his face uppermost, and a round pin
of wood set between his teeth to force his mouth open. Then the king
ordered an adder to be stuck into the mouth of him; but the serpent
would not go into his mouth, but shrunk back when Raud breathed against
it. Now the king ordered a hollow branch of an angelica root to be stuck
into Raud's mouth; others say the king put his horn into his mouth,
and forced the serpent to go in by holding a red-hot iron before the
opening. So the serpent crept into the mouth of Raud and down his
throat, and gnawed its way out of his side; and thus Raud perished. King
Olaf took here much gold and silver, and other property of weapons, and
many sorts of precious effects; and all the men who were with Raud he
either had baptized, or if they refused had them killed or tortured.
Then the king took the dragonship which Raud had owned, and steered it
himself; for it was a much larger and handsomer vessel than the Crane.
In front it had a dragon's head, and aft a crook, which turned up, and
ended with the figure of the dragon's tail. The carved work on each side
of the stem and stern was gilded. This ship the king called the Serpent.
When the sails were hoisted they represented, as it were, the dragon's
wings; and the ship was the handsomest in all Norway. The islands on
which Raud dwelt were called Gylling and Haering; but the whole islands
together were called Godey Isles, and the current between the isles and
the mainland the Godey Stream. King Olaf baptized the whole people of
the fjord, and then sailed southwards along the land; and on this
voyage happened much and various things, which are set down in tales
and sagas,--namely, how witches and evil spirits tormented his men, and
sometimes himself; but we will rather write about what occurred when
King Olaf made Norway Christian, or in the other countries in which he
advanced Christianity. The same autumn Olaf with his fleet returned to
Throndhjem, and landed at Nidaros, where he took up his winter abode.
What I am now going to write about concerns the Icelanders.

88. OF THE ICELANDERS.

Kjartan Olafson, a son's son of Hoskuld, and a daughter's son of Egil
Skallagrimson, came the same autumn (A.D. 999) from Iceland to Nidaros,
and he was considered to be the most agreeable