What amount of "property" he had amassed I do not know, but could
prove, were it necessary, that he had acquired some tactical or even
strategic faculty and real talent for war. At Lymfjord, in Jutland,
but some years after this (A.D. 1027), he had a sea-battle with the
great Knut himself,--ships combined with flood-gates, with roaring,
artificial deluges; right well managed by King Olaf; which were within
a hair's-breadth of destroying Knut, now become a King and Great; and
did in effect send him instantly running. But of this more
particularly by and by.

What still more surprises me is the mystery, where Olaf, in this
wandering, fighting, sea-roving life, acquired his deeply religious
feeling, his intense adherence to the Christian Faith. I suppose it
had been in England, where many pious persons, priestly and other,
were still to be met with, that Olaf had gathered these doctrines; and
that in those his unfathomable dialogues with the ever-moaning Ocean,
they had struck root downwards in the soul of him, and borne fruit
upwards to the degree so conspicuous afterwards. It is certain he
became a deeply pious man during these long Viking cruises; and
directed all his strength, when strength and authority were lent him,
to establishing the Christian religion in his country, and suppressing
and abolishing Vikingism there; both of which objects, and their
respective worth and unworth, he, must himself have long known so
well.

It was well on in A.D. 1016 that Knut gained his last victory, at
Ashdon, in Essex, where the earth pyramids and antique church near by
still testify the thankful piety of Knut,--or, at lowest his joy at
having _won_ instead of lost and perished, as he was near doing there.
And it was still this same year when the noble Edmund Ironside, after