in the revolution of 1868, the effect of his opinions exercised no slight weight in the struggle. Already he was a marked man, and no sooner was the government reorganized, with the mikado as the sole wielder of power, than he was appointed chief assistant in the department of foreign affairs. In 1869 he succeeded to the post of secretary of the joint departments of the interior and of finance, and for the next fourteen years he devoted himself wholly to politics. In 1870 he was made a councillor of state, and a few months later he accepted the office of president of the commission which represented the Japanese government at the Vienna Exhibition. In 1872 he was again appointed minister of finance, and when the expedition under General Saigô was sent to Formosa (1874) to chastise the natives of that island for the murder of some shipwrecked fishermen, he was nominated president of the commission appointed to supervise the campaign. By one of those waves of popular feeling to which the Japanese people are peculiarly liable, the nation which had supported him up to a certain point suddenly veered round and opposed him with heated violence. So strong was the feeling against him that on one occasion a would-be assassin threw at him a dynamite shell, which blew off one of his legs. During the whole of his public life he recognized the necessity of promoting education. When he resigned office in the early ’eighties he established the Semmon Gako, or school for special studies, at the cost of the 30,000 yen which had been voted him when he received the title of count, and subsequently he was instrumental in founding other schools and colleges. In 1896 he joined the Matsukata cabinet, and resigned in the following year in consequence of intrigues which produced an estrangement between him and the prime minister. On the retirement of Marquis Ito in 1898 he again took office, combining the duties of premier with those of minister of foreign affairs. But dissensions having arisen in the cabinet, he resigned a few months later, and retired into private life, cultivating his beautiful garden at Waseda near Tôkyô.
OLAF, the name of five kings of Norway.
Olaf I. Tryggvessön (969–1000) was born in 969, and began his meteoric career in exile. It is even said that he was bought as a slave in Esthonia. After a boyhood spent in Novgorod under the protection of King Valdemar, Olaf fought for the emperor Otto III. under the Wendish king Burislav, whose daughter he had married. On her death he followed the example of his countrymen, and harried in France and the British Isles, till, in a good day for the peace of those countries, he was converted to Christianity by a hermit in the Scilly Islands, and his marauding expeditions ceased since he would not harry those of his new faith. In England he married Gyda, sister of Olaf Kvaran, king of Dublin, and it was only after some years spent in administering her property in England and Ireland that he set sail for Norway, fired by reports of the unpopularity of its ruler Earl Haakon. Arriving in Norway in the autumn of 995, he was unanimously accepted as king, and at once set about the conversion of the country to Christianity, undeterred by the obstinate resistance of the people. It has been suggested that Olaf’s ambition was to rule a united, as well as a Christian, Scandinavia, and we know that he made overtures of marriage to Sigrid, queen of Sweden, and set about adding new ships to his fleet, when negotiations fell through owing to her obstinate heathenism. He made an enemy of her, and did not hesitate to involve himself in a quarrel with King Sveyn of Denmark by marrying his sister Thyre, who had fled from her heathen husband Burislav in defiance of her brother’s authority. Both his Wendish and his Irish wife had brought Olaf wealth and good fortune, but Thyre was his undoing, for it was on an expedition undertaken in the year 1000 to wrest her lands from Burislav that he was waylaid off the island Svöld, near Rügen, by the combined Swedish and Danish fleets, together with the ships of Earl Haakon’s sons. The battle ended in the annihilation of the Norwegians. Olaf fought to the last on his great vessel, the “Long Snake,” the mightiest ship in the North, and finally leapt overboard and was no more seen. Full of energy and daring, skilled in the use of every kind of weapon, genial and open-handed to his friends, implacable to his enemies, Olaf’s personality was the ideal of the heathendom he had trodden down with such reckless disregard of his people’s prejudices, and it was no doubt as much owing to the popularity his character won for him as to the strength of his position that he was able to force his will on the country with impunity. After his death he remained the hero of his people, who whispered that he was yet alive and looked for his return. “But however that may be,” says the story, “Olaf Tryggvessön never came back to his kingdom in Norway.”
Olaf (II.) Haraldssön (995–1030), king from 1016–1029, called during his lifetime “the Fat,” and afterwards known as St Olaf, was born in 995, the year in which Olaf Tryggvessön came to Norway. After some years' absence in England, fighting the Danes, he returned to Norway in 1015 and declared himself king, obtaining the support of the five petty kings of the Uplands. In 1016 he defeated Earl Sveyn, hitherto the virtual ruler of Norway, at the battle of Nesje, and within a few years had won more power than had been enjoyed by any of his predecessors on the throne. He had annihilated the petty kings of the South, had crushed the aristocracy, enforced the acceptance of Christianity throughout the kingdom, asserted his suzerainty in the Orkney Islands, had humbled the king of Sweden and married his daughter in his despite, and had conducted a successful raid on Denmark. But his success was short-lived, for in 1029 the Norwegian nobles, seething with discontent, rallied round the invading Knut the Great, and Olaf had to flee to Russia. On his return a year later he fell at the battle of Stiklestad, where his own subjects were arrayed against him. The succeeding years of disunion and misrule under the Danes explain the belated affection with which his countrymen came to regard him. The cunning and cruelty which marred his character were forgotten, and his services to his church and country remembered. Miracles were worked at his tomb, and in 1164 he was canonized and was declared the patron saint of Norway, whence his fame spread throughout Scandinavia and even to England, where churches are dedicated to him. The Norwegian order of knighthood of St Olaf was founded in 1847 by Oscar I., king of Sweden and Norway, in memory of this king.
The three remaining Norwegian kings of this name are persons of minor importance (see Norway: History).
OLAF, or Anlaf (d. 981), king of the Danish kingdoms of Northumbria and of Dublin, was a son of Sitric, king of Deira, and was related to the English king Æthelstan. As his name indicates he was of Norse descent, and he married a daughter of Constantine II., king of the Scots. When Sitric died about 927 Æthelstan annexed Deira, and Olaf took refuge in Scotland and in Ireland until 937, when he was one of the leaders of the formidable league of princes which was destroyed by Æthelstan at the famous battle of Brunanburh. Again he sought a home among his kinsfolk in Ireland, but just after Æthelstan’s death in 940 he or Olaf Godfreyson was recalled to England by the Northumbrians. Both crossed over, and in 941 the new English king, Edmund, gave up Deira to the former. The peace between the English and the Danes did not, however, last long. Wulfstan, archbishop of York, sided with Olaf; but in 944 this king was driven from Northumbria by Edmund, and crossing to Ireland he ruled over the Danish kingdom of Dublin. From 949 to 952 he was again king of Northumbria, until he was expelled once more, and he passed the remainder of his active life in warfare in Ireland. But in 980 his dominion was shattered by the defeat of the Danes at the battle of Tara. He went to Iona, where he died probably in 981, although one account says he was in Dublin in 994. This, however, is unlikely. In the sagas he is known as Olaf the Red.
This Olaf must not be confused with his kinsman and ally, Olaf (d. 941), also king of Northumbria and of Dublin, who was a son of Godfrey, king of Dublin. The latter Olaf became king of Dublin in 934; but he was in England in 937, as he took part in the fight at Brunanburh. After this event he returned to Ireland, but he appears to have acted for a very short
