Óláfr trételgja (the Tree-feller)

Olaf the Tree-feller is the hinge by which the Yngling line crosses from Sweden into Norway. Son of the cruel Ingjald, he was driven out when all Sweden rose against his father's house, and fled west through the great forests with the men who chose to follow him, settling in the wilderness of Värmland. There he cleared and burned the woods to make farmland — earning his by-name, the Tree-feller — until so many came to him that the cleared country could not feed them all. It is a quiet, pioneering chapter after all his father's burning halls: the exiled prince become a forest-clearer, replanting a dying dynasty in raw western ground. From Olaf the god-descended Yngling blood runs down through the petty kings of the Norwegian uplands toward Halfdan the Black and Harald Fairhair. The man whose axe-work in the forests of the west turned a Swedish royal house into the founders of Norway.