King Olaf Tryggveson is the first Norseman who is expressly mentioned
to have been in England by our English History books, new or old; and
of him it is merely said that he had an interview with King Ethelred
II. at Andover, of a pacific and friendly nature,--though it is
absurdly added that the noble Olaf was converted to Christianity by
that extremely stupid Royal Person. Greater contrast in an interview
than in this at Andover, between heroic Olaf Tryggveson and Ethelred
the forever Unready, was not perhaps seen in the terrestrial Planet
that day. Olaf or "Olaus," or "Anlaf," as they name him, did "engage
on oath to Ethelred not to invade England any more," and kept his
promise, they farther say. Essentially a truth, as we already know,
though the circumstances were all different; and the promise was to a
devout High Priest, not to a crowned Blockhead and cowardly
Do-nothing. One other "Olaus" I find mentioned in our Books, two or
three centuries before, at a time when there existed no such
individual; not to speak of several Anlafs, who sometimes seem to mean
Olaf and still oftener to mean nobody possible. Which occasions not a
little obscurity in our early History, says the learned Selden.
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