In other cases, though a friend to strong measures, he had to hold in,
and await the favorable moment. Thus once, in beginning a
parliamentary address, so soon as he came to touch upon Christianity,
the Bonders rose in murmurs, in vociferations and jingling of arms,
which quite drowned the royal voice; declared, they had taken arms
against king Hakon the Good to compel him to desist from his Christian
proposals; and they did not think King Olaf a higher man than him
(Hakon the Good). The king then said, "He purposed coming to them
next Yule to their great sacrificial feast, to see for himself what
their customs were," which pacified the Bonders for this time. The
appointed place of meeting was again a Hakon-Jarl Temple, not yet done
to ruin; chief shrine in those Trondhjem parts, I believe : there
should Tryggveson appear at Yule. Well, but before Yule came,
Tryggveson made a great banquet in his palace at Trondhjem, and
invited far and wide, all manner of important persons out of the
district as guests there. Banquet hardly done, Tryggveson gave some
slight signal, upon which armed men strode in, seized eleven of these
principal persons, and the king said: "Since he himself was to become
a heathen again, and do sacrifice, it was his purpose to do it in the
highest form, namely, that of Human Sacrifice; and this time not of
slaves and malefactors, but of the best men in the country!" In which
stringent circumstances the eleven seized persons, and company at
large, gave unanimous consent to baptism; straightway received the
same, and abjured their idols; but were not permitted to go home till
they had left, in sons, brothers, and other precious relatives,
sufficient hostages in the king's hands.
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