358 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
deprived of his property, and some of their lives; and 
foreigners are now sitting in the possessions of my 
fathers.” One sees here a faint glimmer of the Saint’s 
nimbus, over the helmet of the Viking, a dawning per¬ 
ception of the “ rights of property,” which, no doubt, 
must have startled his hearers into the most ardent 
conservative zeal for the good old marauding customs. 
But though years elapsed, and fortunes changed, 
before this dim light of the early Church became that 
scorching and devouring flame which, later, spread 
terror and confusion among the haunts of the still 
lingering ancient gods, an earnest sense of duty seems 
to have been ever present with him. If it cannot be 
denied that he shared the errors of other proselytizing 
monarchs, and put down Paganism with a stern and 
bloody hand, no merely personal injury ever weighed 
with him. How grand is his reply to those who advise 
him to ravage with fire and sword the rebellious district 
of Throndhjem, as he had formerly punished numbers of 
his subjects who had rejected Christianity:—“ We had 
then God’s honour to defend; but this treason against 
their sovereign is a much less grievous crime; it is 
more in my power to spare those who have dealt ill 
