mother looked admiringly at the great man for whom her boy was named and said:
“I would I could see him such a king as thou art.”
“May he be as noble a man as thy lord,” replied Olaf.
“Nay! nay!” protested the ambitious woman, “my lord hath led a peaceful, deedless life. I would my son had a life as full of deeds of daring as thine, that his way was a glorious even if it was but a short path.”
They feasted the king for some days, and Sigurd Syr gathered together all the shire kings of the Oplands, who were descended from Harold Fairhaired; and secured their allegiance to King Olaf, and their promise of assistance in the work that lay so close to the viking’s heart, the conversion of all Norway to the Christian faith.
If King Olaf, when he stood at the baptism of Aasta’s little lad, and gave him his own name, could have looked down the future for a score of years, he would have seen the boy Olaf in the just, wise Christain king, Olaf Haroldsson, whom the Norse sagas love to sing of under the title of “Olaf the Saint.” Or even, looking closer, could Olaf have seen how, a few years later, the haughty Queen Sigrid, of whom he spoke to Bishop Sigurd, would bring disaster to himself in revenge for his scorn of her, and his impetuous blow upon her royal countenance.
