KING HAKON BECOMES A HEATHEN AGAIN. 475 



" It is the custom with the Sygna All men throw 



king 1 The kindred of Odin to the winds ; 



To forbid sacrifices ; Now I am forced to pray to Christ 



We must shun most of And leave the offspring of Njord." 

 The time-honoured dooms of the 



jfornir ; (Halfred's Saga, c. (i.) 



That conversion to Christianity did not always at first have a 

 softening influence over the character of its converts is to be 

 seen from the following passages : 



" The great Hakon jarl was a zealous sacrifice!. When 

 he came to Vikin he found that the (Emperor Otto's) jarls 

 Urguthrjot and Brimisskjar had broken down the temples and 

 christianized all the people they could. Hakon had all the 

 broken temples rebuilt, and sent word all over Vikin that no 

 man should believe in the faith which the jarls had imposed. 

 He went northward across the land to Thrandheim, and there 

 first remained quiet. He ruled over the whole of Norway, but 

 never afterwards paid any taxes to the King of Denmark. 

 Afterwards he was in all things worse and more heathen than 

 he had been before he was baptized" (Fornmanna Sogur, vol. i., 

 ch. 73). 



" Hakon was open-handed with property toward his men, and 

 for a long time beloved by the whole people; but he had the 

 greatest misfortune to his dying day, which was not strange, for 

 he was always guileful, unfaithful and treacherous, both to 

 friends and foes, and the greatest god-niihing and sacrificing 

 man : the time had come when Almighty God had intended that 

 the sacrifices and heathendom, and the evil messenger of the 

 devil, Hakon jarl, should be condemned, and the holy faith and 

 true customs take their place. When Hakon was slain, he 

 had been Jarl thirty-three winters since the fall of his father, 

 Sigurd Jarl ; he was twenty-five when his father fell, and 

 lacked two winters of sixty " (Fornmanna Sogur, i., c. 104). 



" 'Now, Sigurd, thou hast jarlship over this realm, which I call 

 my own, as well as all other realms, which King Harald Fairhair 

 owned, and each of his descendants have inherited one after 

 the other. As it has happened that thou hast come into my 

 power, thou hast two choices : the first is that thou and all 

 thy dependents shall embrace the true faith and be baptized, 

 and then thou shalt hold from me the rule thou hast hereto- 

 fore, and what is worth more, live with Almighty God 

 eternally in the kingdom of heaven, if thou observest His 

 commands. The other choice is very bad, and very unlike 



1 Olaf Tryggvasun. 



