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Updated: May 28, 2025
It was the summer season, when all the channels of the sea were clear of ice, and there were many trading ships abroad which might have been an easy prey had Olaf so chosen to fall upon them. But although he was a viking, and had all the viking's lust for war and plunder, he yet remembered the time when his own mother had been taken by Jarl Klerkon and sold into bondage.
Then, when Olaf came before the tent to make his obeisance, Sigurd saw him, and was very wroth, for he knew that Klerkon the Viking was among the king's guests. Now, when Olaf was thus near, it seemed to Klerkon that the lad was not wholly a stranger to him.
Thorolf and his young son Thorgills, with the boy Olaf, were sold to a viking named Klerkon, who killed Thorolf because he was too old to bring any price as a slave, but kept the boys, whom he soon traded away in Esthonia for a big ram.
The skull was cloven with one clean blow from the crown right down to the red bearded chin. "A wondrous strong blow!" murmured Valdemar. "But I see that it was struck from the front. How came it that Klerkon could not defend himself?"
But Jarl Klerkon was a man whose skill and prowess have made him well known on all the seas where the vikings are wont to do battle, and I think he might easily have defended himself against this child, who, as you have heard, attacked him face to face in the full daylight.
Sigurd pointed outward to the ship that was afar off upon the dim horizon. "Jarl Klerkon, of whom you speak," said he, "is now upon yonder ship." "And well do I know it," returned Olaf. "Today when I stood upon the vessel's gangplank I saw him standing on the lypting; and I knew him by the token that his nose was flat against his face.
The old man Thoralf had fallen to Klerkon's share in the dividing of booty. Thoralf had held little Olaf by the hand as they stood apart on the ship's deck, and Klerkon had come up to them and roughly separated them, flinging Olaf across to where young Thorgils stood.
Then Klerkon fixed his eyes more keenly on the lad, and thought of him as he might be with his fair hair cropped short, and with a slave's white kirtle in place of the fine clothes he now wore. "It is the same!" he answered. "And now I mind that someone told me it was he whom we captured among others many summers ago off Alland isle. It was we who brought him into Esthonia.
He was named Rand the Strong, and the vikings had chosen him as their captain in the place of the dead Jarl Klerkon.
Indeed, had it not been for the long gold hair and the disguise of better clothing, he might have known him to be the same whom he had seen in the last summer playing at the knife feat on the gangplank of the viking ship. But Klerkon only admired the lad's skill with the longbow, and thought what a goodly warrior he would make.
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