OLAF I. TRYGGVESSON (969-100o), king of Norway, was born in 969, and began his career in exile. It is even said that he was bought as a slave in Estonia. After a boyhood spent in Novgorod under the protection of King Valdemar, Olaf fought for the emperor Otto III. under the Wendish king Buri"slav, whose daughter he had married. On her death he raided the coasts of France and the British Isles, until he was converted to Chris tianity by a hermit in the Scilly Islands, and his marauding ex peditions ceased since he would not harry those of his new faith. He married Gyda, sister of Olaf Kvaran, king of Dublin, and ad ministered her property in England and Ireland for some time before he sailed for Norway, then restive under its ruler Earl Haakon. He was unanimously accepted as king of Norway (995), and began the conversion of the country to Christianity. Possibly Olaf's ambition was to rule a united, as well as a Christian, Scandinavia. He made overtures of marriage to Sigrid, queen of Sweden, and increased his fleet, but she clung to her heathen faith. He made an enemy of her, and involved himself in a quarrel with King Sveyn of Denmark by marrying his sister Thyre, who had fled from her heathen husband Burislav in defi ance of her brother's authority. Both his Wendish and his Irish
wife had brought Olaf wealth and good fortune, but Thyre brought him ill luck; in an expedition (moo) to wrest her lands from Burislav he was waylaid off the island Svold, near Riigen, by the combined Swedish and Danish fleets, together with the ships of Earl Haakon's sons.
The battle ended in the annihilation of the Norwegians. Olaf fought to the last on his great vessel, the "Long Snake," the mightiest ship in the North, and finally leapt overboard and was no more seen. Full of energy and daring, skilled in the use of every kind of weapon, genial and open-handed to his friends, implacable to his enemies, Olaf's personality was the ideal of the heathendom which he repudiated and oppressed. After his death he remained the hero of his people, who looked for his return. "But however that may be," says the story, "Olaf Tryggvesson never came back to his kingdom in Norway."