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saga) with Jarl Rognvald acting once again as intermediary and himself escorting the bride to Norway for her wedding in the first months of 1019. Rognvald thus incurred his own king’s grievous displeasure and on his return Olaf of Sweden would have had him hanged for his ‘treason’ had it not been for Ingigerd’s insistence that he escort her on her bridal journey into Russia and never again return to her father’s kingdom. So it was that Rognvald Ulfsson came to settle in Russia, where he was endowed with the lordship of Staraja Ladoga on the Gulf of Finland, and it was there, some dozen years later, that his son Eilif was to be a comrade-in-arms to the Norwegian Olaf’s kinsman, the young Harald Sigurdsson.
    In Norway, meanwhile, marriage would appear to have placed little restraint on Olaf’s ‘besetting sin’ when the mother of his son born around 1024 was not his queen but one Alfhild, described in the saga as ‘the king’s hand-maiden . . . although of good descent’. Once again Sigvat the skald was on hand, because it is he whom the saga credits with the choice of Magnus – in honour of Karl Magnus , the Norse name-form of the ninth-century Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne – as the baptismal name of the new-born prince. In so doing, though, the skald might simply have been anticipating his lord’s own wishes, because Olaf so greatly revered Karl Magnus that he had his portrait carved onto the figurehead of his own warship which was thus named the ‘Karl’s Head’.
    That passing saga reference to ‘other things spoken of . . .’ in the course of Sigvat’s negotiations with Rognvald in Gautland has already suggested a political dimension to Olaf’s quest for a Swedish queen, and the marriage does appear to have eased his formerly hostile relations with Sweden through the early 1020s. The Swedish king Olaf was becoming increasingly unpopular at home, as a result of his attempts to impose Christianity on his people according to the saga, although just as possibly because of his allegiance to a Danish overlord. Olaf Eriksson is often known as Skötkonung, a cognomen which has been variously interpreted by historians but might well indicate that he rendered some form of tribute – or skatt – to Svein Forkbeard, and some similar obligation to Cnut when he succeeded Svein. Whatever the true reason, Olaf Skötkonung was eventually forced to share the kingship with his son, whom he had christened Jacob but who was to adopt the Scandinavian name of Onund before he succeeded to full sovereignty on the death of his father in 1022. Sweden’s new king evidently had no inclination to accept a Danish overlord, and neither did he share his father’s hostility to Olaf of Norway with whom he was soon to find himself in an aggressive alliance against Denmark.
    By the mid-1020s, and thus within a decade of his return to Norway, Olaf Haraldsson had achieved the high point of his reign. He had once again restored national sovereignty, however short-lived, to Norway and effectively accomplished its conversion to Christianity. He had also affirmed his influence in the North Atlantic colonies, most importantly in the jarldom of Orkney where he apportioned disputed territories between the brothers Thorfinn and Brusi – sons of the formidable Jarl Sigurd slain at Clontarf in 1014 – and brought Brusi’s son Rognvald to take up residence at his court. Friendly relations were extended still further west-over-sea to Greenland, the Faroes and especially to Iceland, whence a number of skalds and fighting-men came to the Norwegian court. Still more impressive was Olaf’s achievement as a law-maker, when he revived and revised the law code of Harald Fair-hair’s time with such just and equal application to all ranks of society that the skald Sigvat could claim that he had ‘established the law of the nation which stands