sea-roving were drawing to an end,
and its picturesque story may well be told as that of a typical Norse
battle, for its hero, King Olaf Tryggveson, was the ideal of a northern
sea-king.

Olaf was a descendant of the race of Harold Haarfager, "Fair-haired
Harold," the warrior who had united the kingdom of Norway, and made himself
its chief king at the close of the ninth century. But Olaf came of a branch
of the royal house that civil war had reduced to desperate straits. He was
born when his mother, Astrid, was a fugitive in a lonely island of the
Baltic. As a boy he was sold into slavery in Russia. There, one day, in the
marketplace of an Esthonian town, he was recognized by a relative, Sigurd,
the brother of Astrid, and was freed from bondage and trained to arms as a
page at the Court of the Norse adventurers who ruled the land. The "Saga"
tells how Olaf, the son of Tryggva, grew to be tall of stature, and strong
of limb, and skilled in every art of land and sea, of peace and war. None
swifter than he on the snow-shoes in winter, no bolder swimmer when the
summer had cleared the ice from the waters. He could throw darts with both
hands, he could toss up two swords, catching them like a juggler, and
keeping one always in the air. He could climb rocks and peaks like a
mountain goat. He could row and sail, and had been known to display his
daring skill as an athlete by running along the moving oars outside the
ship. He could ride a horse, and fight, mounted or on foot, with axe or
sword, with spear or bow.

In early manhood he came back to Norway to avenge the death of his father
Tryggva, and then took to sea-roving, for piracy was still the Norseman's
trade. He raided the shores of the Continent from Friesland to Northern
France, but most of his piratical voyages were to the shores of our own
islands, and many a seaboard town in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland
saw Olaf's plundering squadron of swift ships. Five was the number of them
with which he visited the Orkneys.

The Viking warships were small vessels. The ship dug out of the great grave
mound at Sandefjord, in Norway, and now shown at Christiania, is
seventy-seven feet long, with a beam of seventeen amidships, and a depth of
just under six feet. Her draught of water would be only four feet, and she
would lie very low in the water, but her lines are those of a good sea
boat. She had one mast, forty feet high, to carry a crossyard and a square
sail, and sh