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Grettir tackled them each in turn, now thrusting with the spear, now hewing with the sword, while they defended themselves with logs lying on the ground or with anything else which they could get. It was a terrible trial of a man's prowess to deal with men of their strength, even unarmed. Grettir slew two of the Halogaland men there in the enclosure. Four of the serving-men then came up.
Now Earl Hakon greatly feared the vikings of Jomsburg, and on hearing this news he sent abroad the war arrow all about the Thrandheim country, and to Mere and Raumsdale, north also into Naumdale and Halogaland; and in answer to this summons there assembled a vast fleet of warships to the number of one hundred and eighty keels, and a force amounting to eleven thousand men.
They came from Halogaland and were bigger and stronger than other men. When angry they used to fall into the berserk's fury, and nothing escaped that was before them. They used to carry off men's wives, keep them for a week or two and then send them back. Wherever they came they committed robberies and other acts of violence. Jarl Eirik had declared them outlaws throughout Norway.
He called her in and asked her whether she felt a liking for her wooer; and when she assented he promised Helgi her hand. In this way Hother, by the sweet sounds of his fluent and well-turned oratory, opened the ears of Kuse, which were before deaf to the suit he urged. While this was passing in Halogaland, Balder entered the country of Gewar armed, in order to sue for Nanna.
Now it was in this part of Norway that Earl Hakon's power had always been greatest, and so zealous had Hakon been in the keeping up of pagan customs that many of the chief men of those parts withstood all King Olaf's efforts to win them over to Christianity, and during his absence in Halogaland these men did all they could to undo the good work that he had done in the earliest days of his reign.
Many whom he had never set eyes on before greeted him warmly because of his exploit in killing the vikings, and several of the leading men invited him to stay with them, but he preferred to return to his friend Thorfinn. So he took his passage in a trading ship belonging to one Thorkell, a man of some consideration in Salfti in Halogaland.
Surely every live man fades among the dead." Frode had by this taken his fleet over to Halogaland; and here, in order to learn the numbers of his host, which seemed to surpass all bounds and measure that could be counted, he ordered his soldiers to pile up a hill, one stone being cast upon the heap for each man.
When the sails were aloft they took the form of dragon's wings. The king named the ship the Serpent. While Olaf was in Halogaland he deemed it well to sail yet farther north; so he fared out to the Lafoden Isles, and thence along the coasts of Finmark as far even as the North Cape. He baptized all those regions and destroyed many heathen temples and established Christianity far and wide.
In Thrandheim the folk are dying for lack of corn and fish, and in Halogaland the snow has lain over the valleys nigh until midsummer, so that all the livestock have been bound in stall and fed upon birch buds. Men lay the famine to the account of Gunnhild's sons, who are over greedy of money and deal hardly with the husbandmen.
Now he took ship in a bark that was owned of a man hight Thorkel, who dwelt in Salft in Halogaland, and was a high-born man. But when Grettir came to Thorkel he welcomed him right heartily, and bade Grettir abide with him that winter, and laid many words thereto. This offer Grettir took, and was with Thorkel that winter in great joyance and fame. <i>Of Grettir and Biorn and the Bear</i>.
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