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Updated: May 28, 2025
Yet what I have told from the time when I was baptized in the mead-pot of Tostig Lodbrog I have been compelled to tell in order that you may understand what manner of man rode in through the Jaffa Gate and drew all eyes upon him. Well might they look. They were small breeds, lighter-boned and lighter- thewed, these Romans and Jews, and a blonde like me they had never gazed upon.
Wave after wave came the northern invasions led by such men as Bjorn Ironside, and Ragnar Lodbrog. Charles the Bald, fearing to meet these dreaded warriors, bribed them away from the walls of Paris in the year 875. But they came again twelve years afterwards in search of more of the Frenchmen's gold.
Sharp-bitten into my child imagination are the incidents immediately after my birth, as told me by old Lingaard. Lingaard, too old to labour at the sweeps, had been surgeon, undertaker, and midwife of the huddled captives in the open midships. So I was delivered in storm, with the spume of the cresting seas salt upon me. Not many hours old was I when Tostig Lodbrog first laid eyes on me.
As I see it now, I never learned great talk, such as that of the Jews, learned in their law, nor such as that of the Romans, learned in their philosophy and in the philosophy of the Greeks. Yet have I talked in simplicity and straightness, as a man may well talk who has lived life from the ships of Tostig Lodbrog and the roof of Brunanbuhr across the world to Jerusalem and back again.
Hubba advanced to the castle walls, and, sitting down before them, began to consider what to do. Hubba was the last surviving son of Ragner Lodbrog, whose deeds and adventures were related in a former chapter. He was, like all other chieftains among the Danes, a man of great determination and energy, and he had made himself very celebrated all over the land by his exploits and conquests.
She became cold and motionless, so that I knew there was no woman's love that my arms girdled. For me she was dead. Slowly I let go of her. Slowly she stepped back. As if she did not see me she turned and went away across the quiet room, and without looking back passed through the hangings and was gone. I, Ragnar Lodbrog, never came to read nor write. But in my days I have listened to great talk.
Gently I added: "But why all this fuss and fury for a mere man's life? All men must die. Simple and easy it is to die. To-day, or a hundred years, it little matters. Sure we are, all of us, of the same event in the end." Quick she was, and alive with passion to save as she thrilled within my arms. "You do not understand, Lodbrog. This is no mere man.
We rolled on the deck, and the great bear hounds, captured in the fight with the North Danes just past, sprang upon us. "Ho! ho!" roared Tostig Lodbrog, as the old man and I and the wolfskin were mauled and worried by the dogs. But Lingaard gained his feet, saving me but losing the wolfskin to the hounds.
After Ragnar had thus triumphed the king scanned his dress closely, and saw that he was rough and hairy; but, above all, he laughed at the shaggy lower portion of his garb, and chiefly the uncouth aspect of his breeches; so that he gave him in jest the nickname of Lodbrog. Also he invited him to feast with his friends, to refresh him after his labours.
But the jarl would have it no, and clapped Lodbrog on the shoulder, and asked me as a gift of friendship. And south I went, when the ice passed out of the fjord, in Jarl Agard's ships. I was made drink-boy and sword-bearer to him, and in lieu of other name was called Ragnar Lodbrog. Agard's country was neighbour to the Frisians, and a sad, flat country of fog and fen it was.
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