s
final settlement of this Raerik problem. Olaf's laugh, I can perceive,
was not so loud as Tryggveson's but equally hearty, coming from the
bright mind of him!

Besides blind Raerik, Olaf had in his household one Thorarin, an
Icelander; a remarkably ugly man, says Snorro, but a far-travelled,
shrewdly observant, loyal-minded, and good-humored person, whom Olaf
liked to talk with. "Remarkably ugly," says Snorro, "especially in
his hands and feet, which were large and ill-shaped to a degree."
One morning Thorarin, who, with other trusted ones, slept in Olaf's
apartment, was lazily dozing and yawning, and had stretched one of his
feet out of the bed before the king awoke. The foot was still there when
Olaf did open his bright eyes, which instantly lighted on this foot.

"Well, here is a foot," says Olaf, gayly, "which one seldom sees the
match of; I durst venture there is not another so ugly in this city of
Nidaros."

"Hah, king!" said Thorarin, "there are few things one cannot match if
one seek long and take pains. I would bet, with thy permission, King, to
find an uglier."

"Done!" cried Olaf. Upon which Thorarin stretched out the other foot.

"A still uglier," cried he; "for it has lost the little toe."

"Ho, ho!" said Olaf; "but it is I who have gained the bet. The _less_ of
an ugly thing the less ugly, not the more!"

Loyal Thorarin respectfully submitted.

"What is to be my penalty, then? The king it is that must decide."

"To take me that wicked old Raerik to Leif Ericson in Greenland."

Which the Icelander did; leaving two vacant seats henceforth at Olaf's
table. Leif Ericson, son of Eric discoverer of America, quietly managed
Raerik henceforth; sent him to Iceland,--I think to father Eric himself;
certainly to some safe hand there, in whose house, or in some still
quieter neighboring lodging, at his own choice, old Raerik spent the
last three years of his life in a perfectly quiescent manner.

Olaf's struggles in the matter of religion had actually settled that
question in Norway. By these rough methods of his, whatever we may think
of them, Heathenism had got itself smashed dead; and was no more heard
of in that country. Olaf himself was evidently a highly devout and pious
man;--whosoever is born with Olaf's temper now will still find, as Olaf
did, new and infinite field for it! Christianity in Norway had the like
fertility as in other countries; or even rose to a higher, and what
Dahlmann thinks, e