d, and has conquered for himself a
part of Scotland. And now he claims also my paternal bit of heritage;
cannot be contented without that too. Does he wish to rule over all the
countries of the North? Can he eat up all the kale in England itself,
this Knut the Great? He shall do that, and reduce his England to a
desert, before I lay my head in his hands, or show him any other kind
of vassalage. And so I bid you tell him these my words: I will defend
Norway with battle-axe and sword as long as life is given me, and will
pay tax to no man for my kingdom." Words which naturally irritated Knut
to a high degree.

Next year accordingly (year 1027), tenth or eleventh year of Olaf's
reign, there came bad rumors out of England: That Knut was equipping an
immense army,--land-army, and such a fleet as had never sailed before;
Knut's own ship in it,--a Gold Dragon with no fewer than sixty benches
of oars. Olaf and Onund King of Sweden, whose sister he had married,
well guessed whither this armament was bound. They were friends withal,
they recognized their common peril in this imminence; and had, in
repeated consultations, taken measures the best that their united skill
(which I find was mainly Olaf's but loyally accepted by the other) could
suggest. It was in this year that Olaf (with his Swedish king assisting)
did his grand feat upon Knut in Lymfjord of Jutland, which was already
spoken of. The special circumstances of which were these:

Knut's big armament arriving on the Jutish coasts too late in the
season, and the coast country lying all plundered into temporary wreck
by the two Norse kings, who shrank away on sight of Knut, there was
nothing could be done upon them by Knut this year,--or, if anything,
what? Knut's ships ran into Lymfjord, the safe-sheltered frith, or
intricate long straggle of friths and straits, which almost cuts Jutland
in two in that region; and lay safe, idly rocking on the waters there,
uncertain what to do farther. At last he steered in his big ship and
some others, deeper into the interior of Lymfjord, deeper and deeper
onwards to the mouth of a big river called the Helge (_Helge-aa_, the
Holy River, not discoverable in my poor maps, but certainly enough still
existing and still flowing somewhere among those intricate straits and
friths), towards the bottom of which Helge river lay, in some safe nook,
the small combined Swedish and Norse fleet, under the charge of Onund,
the Swedish king, while at t