Youth of Olaf Tryggvason i 7 1 



place, and asked him his name and parentage. The boy 

 was Olaf, and the king's agent was Olaf's Uncle Sigurd. 

 As soon as he learnt Olaf's parentage he bought him 

 and carried him away, but did not tell Olaf that he was 

 his uncle. Not long after this the young Olaf, who 

 could not have been more than seven or eisfht, saw in 

 the market-place of Novgorod his first owner, Klserkon, 

 the same who had killed his foster-father Thorolf. Olaf 

 went up to Kleerkon, and, having a small child's axe in 

 his hand, struck Klaerkon with it such a blow that the 

 iron entered into his brain and he fell down dead. 

 Sigurd, in order to save the boy from the penalty for his 

 act, carried him off to the Queen Allogia; and she 

 readily promised her protection to the handsome child. 



About this time Olaf was again the subject of pro- 

 phecy among the wise men in Eussia. 



' At the time when Olaf came to Gardariki there were 

 in Holmgard^ many people who could foretell the 

 future. Their second sicjht told them that there had 

 come to the country the " genius " ^ of an outland 

 man,2 one so highly gifted that there had never before 

 been seen such a noble Fylgja. They had no idea 

 where the man was ; though they declared that the 

 light which shone from him sent a reflex over all 

 Gardariki, and round about over the eastern side of the 

 earth. Queen Allogia herself, who was in some sort a 



1 Novgorod. 



2 Fylgja, a sort of double, which at the same time had, so to say, a 

 more direct couimunication than the ordinary Lody with the spiritual 

 world, and passed on its knowledge to the man himself. It might be 

 likened to the Astral Body of the Theosophists. It is not accurate to 

 speak of the Fylgjar as guardian angels ; though under the influence of 

 Christian ideas they came to be regarded as much the same thing. 



=■ Foreigner. 



