Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/71

 REIGN OF OLAF TRYGGVESON. CI ill a peaceable or even friendly capacity. In the Southampton country he came in contact with the tin 11 Bishop of Winchester, afterwards Archbishop of iterbury, excellent Elphegus, still dimly decipher- atle to us as a man of great natural discernment, piety, and inborn veracity ; a hero-soul, probably of rcul brotherhood with Olaf s own. He even made court visits to King Ethelred; one visit to him at Andover of a very serious nature. By Elphegus, as we can discover, he was introduced into the real depths of the Christian faith. Elphegus, with due solemnity of apparatus, in presence of the king, at Andover, baptised Olaf anew, and to him Olaf engaged that he would never plunder in England any more ; which promise, too, he kept. In fact, not long after, Svein's conquest of England being in an evi- dently forward state, Tryggveson (having made, withal, a great English or Irish marriage, — a dowager Princess, who had voluntarily fallen in love with him, — ^see Snorro for this fine romantic fact !) mainly resided in our island for two or three years, or else in i Dublin, in the precincts of the Danish Court there in I the Sister Isle. Accordingly it was in Dublin, as