ng to say to him
until he had made himself King of a really big kingdom. He made a vow
that he would not comb or cut his hair until he had conquered the whole
country. He led his men to victory after victory, and at length fought
his last great battle at Hafrsfjord (to the south of Stavanger). The
sea-fight was desperate and long, but Harald's fleet succeeded in
overpowering that of the enemy, and Sulki, King of Rogaland, as well
as Erik, King of Hardanger, were slain. Then Harald cut and dressed
his hair, the skalds composed poems in honour of the event, and for
ever after he was known as Fairhair. He was truly a great Viking,
and he did not rest content with the conquest of Norway alone; for
he brought his ships across the North Sea and conquered the Isle of
Man, the Hebrides, the Shetlands, and the Orkneys, and he lived to
the age of eighty-three.

Then there are the stories of the two Olafs--Olaf Tryggvasson and
Olaf the Saint, each of whom took part in many a fight on British
soil, each of whom was the champion of Christianity in Norway
and fought his way to the throne, and each of whom fell in battle
under heroic circumstances, the one at Svold (A.D. 1000), the other
at Sticklestad (A.D. 1030). To us it is interesting to know that
King Olaf Tryggvasson, on one of his early Viking expeditions, was
baptized in the Scilly Isles, that as his second wife he married an
Irish Princess, and that for some time he lived in Dublin. To the
Norwegians he is a Norse hero of the greatest renown, who during his
short reign of barely five years never ceased to force Christianity
on the heathen population, and who, at the age of thirty-one, came to
an untimely end. His fleet was ambuscaded and surrounded, and when
his men had made their last stand he refused to surrender. Neither
would he suffer the ignominy of capture or death at the hands of
his enemies; so, with shield and sword in hand, and in full armour,
he leaped overboard, and immediately sank. For years afterwards his
faithful people believed that he would appear again, and many fancied
that, on occasions, their hero's spirit visited them.

Everyone knows the old triumphant line, "London Bridge is broken
down," yet few are aware that the words are translated from an old
Norse song, and fewer still could say who broke down the bridge. The
story goes that this was accomplished by the other Olaf, afterwards
known as St. Olaf. He and his Vikings had allied themselves with
E