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This was thought to be the biggest army that ever met in Norway; "certainly not much fewer than a hundred times a hundred men," according to Snorro; great Bonders several of them, small Bonders very many, all of willing mind, animated with a hot sense of intolerable injuries.
Then old Snorro raised himself and answered Liot in the very words of Eyjolf: "'Lay down the good arms thou bearest, and give up also Auda, thy wife." "'Come and take them like a man, for neither the arms I bear nor the wife I love are fit for any one else!" cried Liot, in reply. And this challenge and valiant answer, though fully expected, charged the crowded room with enthusiasm.
Snorro rises into one of his pictorial fits, seized with enthusiasm at the thought of such a fleet, and reports to us largely in what order Tryggveson's winged Coursers of the Deep, in long series, for perhaps an hour or more, came on, and what the three potentates, from their knoll of vantage, said of each as it hove in sight. The Long Serpent itself did make appearance.
This is the ordinary and best authenticated account of the discovery and settlement of Old Greenland, which rests on the credit of the great northern historian, Snorro Sturleson, judge of Iceland, who wrote in the year 1215.
He various times met angry Bonders and refractory Things with arms in their hand; but by skilful, firm management, perfectly patient, but also perfectly ready to be active, he mostly managed without coming to strokes; and was universally recognized by Norway as its real king. A promising young man, and fit to be a king, thinks Snorro.
This foul treachery done on the brave and honest Harald Greyfell is by some dated about A.D. 969, by Munch, 965, by others, computing out of Snorro only, A.D. 975.
He can look back for the legends and mythology to the "Younger Edda" and the "Heimrskringla" of Snorro Sturleson, to Mallet's "Northern Antiquities," to Ellis's "Metrical Romances," to Asser's "Life of Alfred," and Venerable Bede, and to the researches of Sharon Turner and Palgrave.
The author of the present work has not had the means of tracing this story to its original sources. He gives it on the authority of M. Malte-Brun, and Mr. Forster. The latter extracts it from the Saga or Chronicle of Snorro, who was born in 1179, and wrote in 1215; so that his account was formed long after the event is said to have taken place.
The Icelandic historian, Snorro, in his dramatic narrative of the fight, tells how Harold rode out accompanied with twenty of his housecarls to have speech with Earl Tostig, and offer him peace; and when asked what amends King Hardrada should have for his trouble in coming, replied, "Seven feet of the ground of England, or more perchance, seeing he is taller than other men."
"Could not be reached at all," says Snorro, "except by spears or arrows, and these he warded off with untiring dexterity; no man in Norway, it was said, had ever defended himself so long alone against many," an almost invincible Erling, had his cause been good. Olaf himself noticed Erling's behavior, and said to him, from the foredeck below, "Thou hast turned against me to-day, Erling."
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