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Gunhild, the daughter of Councillor Clementsson, lifted up her hands in ecstasy, and tears streamed down her face. "I, too, am going," she cried. "God's voice calls me." Whereupon Krister Larsson and his wife said, almost in the same breath: "It cries into my ear that I must go. I can hear God's voice calling me!"
The young Icelander's hot temper soon brewed trouble. Sickness kept him from going with Thorolf to the house of Björn the Yeoman, whose daughter, Aasgard, he was to marry; but he soon got well and went on a visit to Baard, a steward of the king. As fortune decreed he met there King Erik and Queen Gunhild. Egil was not the man to play the courtier and his hot blood was under little control.
Ingmar, meanwhile, had not opened the sluice gate, for with the saws going he could not have heard a word. The old man eyed him questioningly. Ingmar smiled a little. "You always manage somehow to have your own way," he said. "It was that silly goose, Gunhild, Councillor Clementsson's daughter, who " "She's no silly goose!" Ingmar broke in.
There were people standing on every doorstep and leaning out of every window; they sat upon the low stone hedges all along the way, and those who lived farther off stood on mounds and hills waving a last farewell. The long procession moved slowly past all these people until it came to the home of Councilman Lars Clementsson, where it halted. Here Gunhild got down to say good-bye to her folks.
Gray alder and green birch were enveloped by the shimmer, flashing red one instant, the next taking on their natural hues. Suddenly Ingmar stopped, and broke off in the middle of something he was telling. "What's the matter, Ingmar?" asked Gunhild. Ingmar, pale as a ghost, stood gazing at something in front of him.
Erik died in battle many years earlier, and Gunhild then went to Denmark with her sons. She was to make more trouble for Norway before she died. From the word vik, or bay, comes the word viking, long used to designate the sea-rovers of the Northland, the bold Norse wanderers who for centuries made their way to the rich lands of the south on plundering raids.
She knocked several times, but as no one came she pulled the door toward her, inserted a stick in the crack, and lifted the hook. So she finally got in. There was no one in the kitchen, nor was there any one in the living-room, nor yet in the inner room. Gunhild did not want to go away without letting her parents know that she had been to say good-bye to them.
It flashed upon Gunhild that her mother must have been made so happy on receiving a letter from her daughter telling of her safety, that she had taken everything else out of the casket, and placed the letter there as her most priceless treasure. Gunhild turned as pale as death; her heart was being wrung.
Hakon had from necessity, and much against his inclination, become one of Harald Fairhair's jarls. During the feast of which we write, he sat on the King's left hand. After filling Hake's tankard Gunhild retired, but remained within earshot.
No, only herself; the others had true Christians in their own homes. Now Clementsson is a pretty good sort, as you know, and both he and his wife tried to reason with Gunhild in all kindness, but she stood firm. At last her father became so exasperated that he just took her and locked her up in her room, telling her she'd have to stay there till this crazy fit had passed."
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