Hlaðir (Lade)

Lade — Hlaðir — is the great heathen temple-seat near Trondheim where the powerful earls of Lade held the sacrifices, and where the bonders forced the Christian Hakon the Good to partake of the heathen rite. At its sacrificial feast the people, distrusting their Christian king, pressed him step by step — to sit in the high-seat, to drink the toasts to the gods, and at last, when he would not eat the sacrificial horse-flesh, to open his mouth over the steam of the kettle — so that he partook of the offering after all, his faith bent to his people's. Lade is the saga's image of the heathen heartland — the temple-seat of the mighty earls, the centre of the old religion's power in the north, the place where a Christian king's attempt to convert his people failed, and his people, in a single forced meal, converted him.