Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/344

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CHRONICLE OF THE

desire of the head-people, as well as of the multitude. Hereafter we may find a good way to manage it." And in this resolution the king and earl agreed.

Chapter XVIII.
The peasants force King Hakon to offer sacrifices.

The harvest thereafter, towards the winter season, there was a festival of sacrifice at Lade, and the king came to it. It had always been his custom before, when he was present at a place where there was sacrifice, to take his meals in a little house by himself, or with some few of his men; but the bonders grumbled that he did not seat himself on his throne at these the most joyous of the meetings of the people. The earl said that the king should do so this time. The king accordingly sat upon his throne. Now when the first full goblet was filled, Earl Sigurd spoke some words over it, blessed it in Odin's name, and drank to the king out of the horn; and the king then took it, and made the sign of the cross over it. Then said Kaare of Gryting, "What does the king mean by doing so? Will he not sacrifice?" Earl Sigurd replies, "The king is doing what all of you do, who trust to your power and strength. He is blessing the full goblet in the name of Thor, by making the sign of his hammer over it before he drinks it." On this there was quietness for the evening. The next day, when the people sat down to table, the bonders pressed the king strongly to eat of horse-flesh^[1]; and as he would on no account do so, they wanted him to drink of the soup; and as he would not do this, they insisted he should at least taste the gravy; and on his refusal they were going to lay hands on him. Earl Sigurd

↑ This eating of horse-flesh at these religious festivals was considered the most direct proof of paganism in the following times, and was punished by death or mutilation by Saint Olaf. It was a ceremony apparently commemorative of their Asiatic origin and ancestors. In Norway, or in Iceland, where horse-flesh also was eaten at these pagan festivals, the horse is not an animal that could ever have been in common use for food, as in the plains of Asia; because it cannot, as in Asia, he easily reared and subsisted. This is perhaps the strongest proof of the truth of the saga tradition of Odin having come into Scandinavia from the hanks of the Don—the Tanais.

[1] This eating of horse-flesh at these religious festivals was considered the most direct proof of paganism in the following times, and was punished by death or mutilation by Saint Olaf. It was a ceremony apparently commemorative of their Asiatic origin and ancestors. In Norway, or in Iceland, where horse-flesh also was eaten at these pagan festivals, the horse is not an animal that could ever have been in common use for food, as in the plains of Asia; because it cannot, as in Asia, he easily reared and subsisted. This is perhaps the strongest proof of the truth of the saga tradition of Odin having come into Scandinavia from the hanks of the Don—the Tanais.

[1]