IRON-BEARD
Olaf the King, one summer
morn,
Blew a blast on his bugle-horn,
Sending his signal through the land of Drontheim.
And to the Hus-Ting held at
Mere
Gathered the farmers far and
near,
With their war weapons ready to confront him.
Ploughing under the morning
star,
Old Iron-Beard in Yriar
Heard the summons, chuckling with a low laugh.
He wiped the sweat-drops from
his brow,
Unharnessed his horses from
the plough,
And clattering came on horseback to King Olaf.
He was the churliest of the
churls;
Little he cared for king or
earls;
Bitter as home-brewed ale were his foaming passions.
Hodden-gray was the garb he
wore,
And by the Hammer of Thor
he swore;
He hated the narrow town, and all its fashions.
But he loved the freedom of
his farm,
His ale at night, by the fireside
warm,
Gudrun his daughter, with her flaxen tresses.
He loved his horses and his
herds,
The smell of the earth, and
the song of birds,
His well-filled barns, his brook with its water-cresses.
Huge and cumbersome was his
frame;
His beard, from which he took
his name,
Frosty and fierce, like that of Hymer the Giant.
So at the Hus-Ting he appeared,
The farmer of Yriar, Iron-Beard,
On horseback, in an attitude defiant.
And to King Olaf he cried
aloud,
Out of the middle of the crowd,
That tossed about him like a stormy ocean:
“Such sacrifices shalt
thou bring;
To Odin and to Thor, O King,
As other kings have done in their devotion!”
King Olaf answered: “I
command
This land to be a Christian
land;
Here is my Bishop who the folk baptizes!
“But if you ask me to
restore
Your sacrifices, stained with
gore,
Then will I offer human sacrifices!
“Not slaves and peasants
shall they be,
But men of note and high degree,
Such men as Orm of Lyra and Kar of Gryting!”
Then to their Temple strode he in,
And loud behind him heard the din
Of his men-at-arms and the peasants fiercely fighting.
There in the Temple, carved
in wood,
The image of great Odin stood,
And other gods, with Thor supreme among them.
King Olaf smote them with
the blade
Of his huge war-axe, gold
inlaid,
And downward shattered to the pavement flung them.
At the same moment rose without,
From the contending crowd,
a shout,
A mingled sound of triumph and of wailing.
And there upon the trampled
plain
The farmer iron-Beard lay
slain,
Midway between the assailed and the assailing.
King Olaf from the doorway
spoke.
“Choose ye between two
things, my folk,
To be baptized or given up to slaughter!”
And seeing their leader stark
and dead,
The people with a murmur said,
“O King, baptize us with thy holy water”;
So all the Drontheim land
became
A Christian land in name and
fame,
In the old gods no more believing and trusting.
And as a blood-atonement,
soon
King Olaf wed the fair Gudrun;
And thus in peace ended the Drontheim Hus-Ting!
