The Story of Norway by Hjalmar Hjorth Boysen

The story of Olaf Tryggvesson's youth, as related in the sagas, is so marvellous that it can scarcely claim absolute credibility. The wonder-loving tradition seized upon him from his very birth as its favorite hero, and adorned every incident of his career with a multitude of romantic details. To separate the framework of fact from the embellishments of fiction is, under such circumstances, no easy task. That Olaf's career, even stripped of all fanciful additions, was as remarkable as any romance, there can be no question. We have seen how Queen Gunhild with untiring vigilance tracked him through forests and wildernesses while he was an infant, and how his mother Aastrid finally found a place of refuge with Haakon the Old in Sweden. Her sense of security could scarcely have been increased when Earl Haakon succeeded the sons of Gunhild; for the earl was not of royal blood, and must fear, no less than Gunhild, a scion of the race of Harold the Fairhaired.

Aastrid therefore determined to go with her son to Gardarike, or Russia, where her brother, Sigurd Eriksson, held a position of authority under King Vladimir. She took passage for herself, her son, and their attendants, upon a merchant-ship bound for a Russian port, but the ship was captured by vikings, who killed some of the passengers and sold others as slaves. The young Olaf, his foster-father Thoralf Lousy-Beard, and the latter's son Thorgills, became the property of a viking named Klerkon, who killed Thoralf because he was too old to command any price in the slave-markets. The two boys he bartered away in Esthonia for a big ram.