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86 II. CONVERSION OF SWEDEN (A.D. 8301130).
and observance of holy days and Sundays, and, in parti
cular, the prohibition to eat horse-flesh, were all burden
some. Hitherto the laws of Sweden had been of the
people s own making. Now they had, in part at least, to
be accepted from outside.
That in time all these difficulties were overcome tells
much for the zeal and earnestness of the first preachers of
the faith. Anskar s memory was a precious possession.
None of those who followed were, perhaps, equal to him,
but, whenever they were true to their profession, they made
definite progress. The experience of appeals to Christ in
times of danger evidently had a great effect, and miracles
were certainly believed to have been wrought. The old
faith had little that was beautiful, and much that was re
pulsive about it. It was easy to see that the old gods were
powerless, when a man like the English missionary,
Wolfred, hewed down the idol of Thor (Adam: ch. 97).
But, above all, perhaps, the successes of the two Norwegian
Olafs weighed with the people. They were heroes after
the Scandinavian heart, one with his athletic vigour and
personal charm, the other with his energy and craft.
All their home work had been done as Christians, and their
early deaths did not seem in that age a misfortune,
especially in the case of Haraldson, whose acceptance by
the people as a saint only gave his name fresh power.
Thus God, in one way or another, was working out His
will, and Sweden, having slowly become Christian, may
be supposed, I trust, to have accepted the faith more deeply
and unchangeably than other nations to whom it came more
speedily. On the other hand the fact that Sweden had no
such long connection with the earlier type of Western
Christianity as England, for instance, had, and received
the system of the Church after the development of about
a thousand years had moved it some way from primitive
Christianity, was not to its advantage. It has not had the
same depth or breadth of Christian experience as the older
Western Churches. I venture to think that Swedes on both
sides of the Atlantic are already beginning to feel the wis-
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