umor ran among his people that he still was not dead; grounding on some
movement by the ships of that traitorous Sigwald, they fancied Olaf had
dived beneath the keels of his enemies, and got away with Sigwald, as
Sigwald himself evidently did. "Much was hoped, supposed, spoken," says
one old mourning Skald; "but the truth was, Olaf Tryggveson was never
seen in Norseland more." Strangely he remains still a shining figure to
us; the wildly beautifulest man, in body and in soul, that one has ever
heard of in the North.

CHAPTER VIII. JARLS ERIC AND SVEIN.

Jarl Eric, splendent with this victory, not to speak of that over the
Jomsburgers with his father long ago, was now made Governor of Norway:
Governor or quasi-sovereign, with his brother, Jarl. Svein, as partner,
who, however, took but little hand in governing;--and, under the
patronage of Svein Double-Beard and the then Swedish king (Olaf his
name, Sigrid the Proud, his mother's), administered it, they say, with
skill and prudence for above fourteen years. Tryggveson's death is
understood and laboriously computed to have happened in the year 1000;
but there is no exact chronology in these things, but a continual
uncertain guessing after such; so that one eye in History as regards
them is as if put out;--neither indeed have I yet had the luck to find
any decipherable and intelligible map of Norway: so that the other
eye of History is much blinded withal, and her path through those wild
regions and epochs is an extremely dim and chaotic one. An evil that
much demands remedying, and especially wants some first attempt at
remedying, by inquirers into English History; the whole period from
Egbert, the first Saxon King of England, on to Edward the Confessor,
the last, being everywhere completely interwoven with that of their
mysterious, continually invasive "Danes," as they call them, and
inextricably unintelligible till these also get to be a little
understood, and cease to be utterly dark, hideous, and mythical to us as
they now are.

King Olaf Tryggveson is the first Norseman who is expressly mentioned
to have been in England by our English History books, new or old; and of
him it is merely said that he had an interview with King Ethelred II. at
Andover, of a pacific and friendly nature,--though it is absurdly added
that the noble Olaf was converted to Christianity by that extremely
stupid Royal Person. Greater contrast in an interview than in this
at Andover, betw