King Olafs Last March 227 



sea. The time was sunset ; that is to say, it was not far 

 from midnight ; about half-past eleven, when the sun 

 had just gone down, the red sunset clouds still brooded 

 over the scene and were reflected in the waters of the 

 fjord. 



As King Olaf, winding down from the highlands, 

 looked over the same landscape, he became abstracted, 

 and as one who looked and saw not. And afterwards, 

 when questioned by the bishop, who rode at his side, he 

 said it had seemed to him as if the whole of Norway 

 had opened before him, and he saw the entire land, 

 over which he had ruled so many years, and which had 

 been the scene of so many of his adventures, lucky and 

 disastrous. Then it had appeared to him that the 

 scene widened still more, and that he could see over 

 the whole world. No doubt tlie memory of all his 

 youthful achievements came back to him in these 

 moments which lay — though he knew it not — so near 

 the term of his strenuous and adventurous life. He 

 saw the scenes of those thirteen battles which he had 

 fought in the Baltic, in Yalland (France), far down the 

 Atlantic shores, almost to the Gates of Hercules. Or 

 he beheld the places where he had stood by ^thelred, 

 and the sons of ^thelred, against his old enemy and 

 present foe, King Cuut : saw London Bridge as he had 

 stormed it that day, when he had brought up his fleet, 

 roofed with planks, to protect the crews from missiles, 

 and had then moored the boats to the piers of the 

 bridge. 



What a life of travel and of activity had his been ! 

 He might claim to have seen almost the whole world 

 as it was known to the Norsemen of his day, now that, 



