sent a message-token over all the fiord, calling the people of eight different districts to a Thing; hut the bonders changed the Thing-token into a war-token, and called together all men, free and unfree[1] in all the Drontheim land. Now when the king met the Thing, the whole people came fully armed. After the Thing was seated, the king spoke, and invited them to adopt Christianity; but he had only spoken a short time when the bonders called out to him to be silent, or they would attack him and drive him away. "We did so" said they, "with Hakon foster-son of Athelstan, when he brought us the same message, and we held him in quite as much respect as we hold thee." When King Olaf saw how incensed the bonders were, and that they had such a war force that he could make no resistance, he turned his speech as if he would give way to the bonders, and said, "I wish only to be in a good understanding with you as of old; and I will come to where ye hold your greatest sacrifice festival, and see your customs, and thereafter we shall consider which to hold by." And in this all agreed; and as the king spoke mildly and friendly with the bonders, their anger was appeased, and their conference with the king went off peacefully. At the close of it a midsummer sacrifice was fixed to take place in Mære[2], and all chiefs and great bonders were to attend it as usual. The king was to be at it.
- ↑ "Thegn oc Thrael" is the expression in the Icelandic text; and the term Thegn or Thane occurs rarely, if at all, in any other passage of the early sagas. Bonde, it is evident, was a word applied only to landowners; and to this general meeting all men of the highest and of the lowest class, and not merely the men having right as bonders to sit in the Law Things, were summoned by the bonders. Thegn has been a more comprehensive term than Bonde, and means here a free proprietor of any kind of property. The bonders or landed proprietors only are spoken of at Law Things, and no mention of thegns is made at Things, or on any other occasion.
- ↑ At Mære, the site of the ancient temple in the Drontheim district, a large mound still remains with the name Mære.
