2 31. THE CHRLSTIANIZATION OF NORWAY. 123
the heathen gods it would be necessary for him to make some great and awful sacrifice, and accordingly he seized twelve of the most prominent men present and prepared to sacrifice them to Tlior. They were rescued, however, when the whole assembly accepted Christianity and were baptized. In the year 1000, he fell in a battle against the united Danish and Swedish kings, but though he reigned only five years, he nevertheless succeeded in establishing Christianity as the religion of Norway and, what is still more remarkable, no general relapse into heathenism seems to have taken place after his death.
During the reign of Olaf the Saint, who ruled from A. D. 1014-'30, the Christianization of the country was completed. His task it was to uproot heathenism wherever it was still found lurking, and to give the Christian religion an ecclesiastical orga nization. Like his predecessors, he used craft and violence to reach his goal. Heathen idols and altars disappeared, heathen customs and festivals were suppressed, the civil laws were brought into conformity with the rules of Christian morals. The country was divided into dioceses and parishes, churches were built, and regular revenues were raised for the sustenance of the clergy. For the most part he employed English monks and priests, but with the consent of the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, under whose authority he placed the Norwegian church. After his death, in the battle of Stiklestad, July 29, 1030, he was canonized and became the patron saint of Norway.
To Norway belonged, at that time, ICELAND. From Icelandic tradition as well as from the " De Mensura Orbis " by Dicuilus, an Irish monk in the beginning of the ninth century, it ap pears that Culdec anchorites used to retire to Iceland as earlv as the beginning of the eighth century, while the island was still uninhabited. These anchorites, however, seem to have had no influence whatever on the Norwegian settlers who, flying from the tyranny of Harald Haarfagr, came to Iceland in the latter part of the ninth century and began to people the country. The new-comers were heathen, and they looked with amazement at
124 FOUKTH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
Auda the Rich, the widow of Olaf the White, king of Dublin, who in 892 took up her abode in Iceland and reared a lofty cross in front of her house. But the Icelanders were great travellers, and one of them, Thorvald Kodranson, who in Saxony had embraced Christianity, brought bishop Frederic home to Iceland. Frederic stayed there for four years, and his preaching found easy access among the people. The mission of Thangbrand in the latter part of the tenth century failed, but when Norway, or at least the Norwegian coast, became Christian, the intimate relation between Iceland and Norway soon brought the germs which Frederic had planted, into rapid growth, and in the year 1000 the Icelandic Althing declared Christianity to be the established religion of the country. The first church was built shortly after from timber sent by Olaf the Saint from Norway to the treeless island.
IV. THE CHEISTIANIZATION OF THE SLAVS. § 32. General Survey.
A. REGENVOLSCIUS : Systema hist, chronol. Ecdesiarum Slavonic. Traj.
ad Rhen., 1652.
A. WENGERSCIUS : Hist, ecclesiast. Ecdesiarum Slavonic. Amst., 1689. KOHLITJS : Introductio in Hist. Slavorum imprimis sacram. Altona, 1704. J. CH. JORDAN: Origines Slavicce. Vindob., 1745. S. DEBOHTJSZ: Recherches hist, sur I'origine des Sarmates, des Esclavons,
et des Slaves, et sur les epoques de la conversion de ces peuples. St.
Petersburg and London, 1812.
P. J. SCHAFABIK : Slavische Alterthumer. Leipzig, 1844, 2 vols. HORVAT: Urgeschichte der Slaven. Pest, 1844. W. A. MACIEJOWSKY: Essai hist, sur I'eglise ehret. primitive de deux rites
chez les Slaves. Translated from Polish into French by L. F. Sauvet,
Paris, 1846.
At what time the Slavs first made their appearance in Europe is not known. Latin and Greek writers of the second half of the sixth century, such as Procopius, Jornandes, Agathias, the emperor Mauritius and others, knew only those Slavs who