Hlýrskógsheiðr (Hlyrskog's Heath)

Hlyrskog's Heath, in Jutland, is where Magnus the Good won his great victory over the heathen Wends — with, the saga says, his dead father St Olaf fighting beside him. Facing a vast Wendish army on Michaelmas eve, the young king dreamed that St Olaf appeared and promised to be with him in the battle; he woke, sounded the war-trumpets, and attacked with the saint's own axe Hel in his hands and a red silk shirt over his mail. The slaughter of the heathen was the greatest, the saga says, ever known in the northern lands since the coming of Christianity. Hlyrskog is the saga's image of the saint's promise made good — the Jutland heath where a dead father fought for his living son, and where the Christianising mission of the Olafs was carried, in a single overwhelming victory, into the third generation.