Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/156

 146 EARLY KINGS OF NORWAY. it, too, brought home in every particular to one's imagination, so that it stands out ahnost as a thing one actually saw. Olaf had about three thousand men with him; gathered mostly as he fared along through Norway. Four hundred, raised by one Dag, a kinsman whom he had found in Sweden and persuaded to come with him, marched usually in a separate body ; and were, or might have been, rather an important element. Learning that the Bonders were all arming, especially in Trondhjem country, Olaf streamed down towards them in the closest order he could. By no means very close, subsistence even for three thousand being diffi- cult in such a country. His speech was almost always free and cheerful, though his thoughts always natu- rally were of a high and earnest, almost sacred tone ; devout above all. Stickelstad, a small poor hamlet still standing where the valley ends, was seen by Olaf, and tacitly by the Bonders as well, to be the natural place for offering battle. There Olaf issued out from the hills one morning : drew himself up according to the best rules of Norse tactics, — rules of little com- plexity, but perspicuously true to the facts. I think