Days of the Discoverers | Page 7

go down into the boat.' And indeed no
other way might be found for him to live. Then answered Bjarni
making light of the matter, 'Let it be so, since I see that you are so
anxious to live and so afraid of death; I will return to the ship.' This was
done, and the men rowing away looked back and saw the ship go down
in a great swirl of waves with Bjarni and those who remained.
"This tale my grandmother heard from her father, and he from his, and

so on until the time of that Thorolf Erlandsson who sailed with Bjarni
Grimulfsson and went down into the sea by his side singing, for he
feared nothing but to be a coward."
Thorolf's eyes were as proud and his head as high as were his Viking
forefather's when the worm-riddled galley went to her grave with more
than half her crew, three hundred and forty years before. In the little
silence which followed the fire crackled and whistled, the gusty
rain-drenched wind beat upon the little hut. And then Nils repeated
musingly the ancient saying from the Runes of Odin,
"'Cattle die, Kings die, Kindred die, we also die,-- One thing never dies,
The fair fame of the valiant.'"
Some one knocked at the door. A real Viking in winged helmet and
scale-armor would hardly have surprised them just then. But it was
only a tall man in a traveler's cloak and hat, and they made quickly
room for him to dry himself by the fire, and brought food and drink for
him to refresh himself.
"I thought that I knew the way to the old place," he said, looking about,
"but in this tempest I nearly lost myself. Which of you is Thorolf
Erlandsson?"
The stranger was Syvert Thorolfson, a merchant of Iceland, Thorolf's
uncle. He brought messages from Nikolina's grandmother in Stavanger,
and from the Bishop, who was ready to see that all the children who
had no relatives should be taken care of in Bergen. Within three days
Asgard the Beautiful was left to the lemming and the raven. Yet the
long bright summer lived always in the hearts of the children. Years
after Thorolf remembered the words of the Wind-wife,--
"Make friends with the Skroelings--make friends. Friendship is a rock
to stand on; hatred is a rock to split on. In the land of Klooskap shall
you be Klooskap's guest."
NOTES

[1] In old Norse families names alternated from father to son. For
example, Thorolf Erlandsson (Thorolf the son of Erland) would name
his son after his own father, and the boy would be known as Erland
Thorolfsson. A daughter was known by her given name and her father's,
as Sigrid Erlandsdatter. In the case of the farm being of sufficient
importance for a surname the name might be added, as "Elsie
Tharaldsdatter Ormgrass."
[2] Northern sailors regard the Finns as wizards.
[3] Fladbrod is the coarse peasant-bread of Norway, made from an
unfermented dough of barley and oatmeal rolled out into large thin
cakes and baked. It will keep a long time.
[4] The teredo or shipworm was a serious peril in the days before the
sheathing of ships. Even tar sheathing was not used until the sixteenth
century.

THE VIKING'S SECRET
In the days of jarl and hersir, while yet the world was young, And sagas
of gods and heroes the grim-lipped minstrel sung, With the beak of his
open galley in the sunset's scarlet flame, Over the wild Atlantic the
Norseland Viking came.
Life was a thing to play with,--oh, then the world was wide, With room
for man and mammoth, and a goblin life beside. Now we have slain the
mammoths, and we have driven the ghosts away, And we read the saga
of Vinland in the light of a new-born day.
We have harnessed the deadly lightnings; we have ridden the restless
wave. We have chased the brood of the werewolf back to their noisome
cave. But far in the icy Northland, with weird witch-lights aglow,
Locked in the Greenland glaciers, is a tale we do not know.
Out of Brattahlid's portal, southward from Herjulfsness, They came to
their new-found kingdom, their Vinland to possess. Armored with

careless laughter, strong with a stubborn will, The Vikings found it and
lost it--it is undiscovered still!
Where did they beach their galleys? How were their cabins planned?
Who were the fearful Skroelings? What was the Fürdürstrand? What
were the grapes of Tyrker? For all that is written or said, The Rune
Stones hold the secret of the days of Eric the Red!

II
THE RUNES OF THE WIND-WIFE
Salt and scarred from the northern seas, the Taernan, deep-laden with
herring, nosed in at the Hanse quay in Bergen. Thorolf Erlandsson
looked grimly