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Updated: May 15, 2025
So she sent a goodly company east to the Swede king with good gifts and fair words, asking that he might send Olaf Triggvison back with them into Norway, where Gunnhild would foster me, and bring me up as became a king's son. And the king sent to Ofrestead.
He told how Queen Astrid, leaving her two daughters at Ofrestead, had fared east away into Sweden, and of what privations she had borne for her son's sake, and of how, still pursued by her enemies, she had at length taken safe refuge with Hakon Gamle, a friend of her father's. "But even here," continued Sigurd, "Queen Gunnhild's enmity followed her.
And after many hardships and dangers she came to Ofrestead, her father's dwelling, and there we abode through the winter. "Little do I remember of these matters, which befell while yet I was a babe in arms.
The first was that Triggvi was passing content in the place where he was living, away in the Uplands, for there he had become the friend of a great earl who had most fruitful lands at Ofrestead, and he had won the love of the earl's daughter, Astrid, the most beautiful maid in all Norway. Her he had wedded, and they were very happy together and free from all the cares of state and war.
This do I know full well," added Sigurd, addressing Allogia, "for Queen Astrid was my own dear sister, and Earl Erik of Ofrestead was my own father." "Then," said Queen Allogia, "it must be that Astrid was the mother of this boy whose cause you are now pleading; and in that case you yourself must be our young Ole's uncle?" "It is even so," replied Sigurd.
But my mother bade me ever remember that I was a king's son, and to make myself worthy. Astrid was the name of my mother. She was the daughter of Erik Biodaskalli, who dwelt at Ofrestead, in the Uplands, a mighty man. Now, after the slaying of Triggvi, Queen Astrid was forced to fly from the realm of Viken, lest she too should fall into the hands of Gunnhild and her wicked sons and be slain.
I will send messengers to Ofrestead, and my father, Earl Erik, will surely find her if she is to be found." Now when Olaf returned to Holmgard it was with the resolve that he would not long remain in this foreign land, but would take his first chance to go west over sea to the country of his birth.
"Yester eve," said Sigurd, "when you told me that you were the son of King Triggvi Olafson, I could not easily believe your tale. But when you spoke your mother's name and told me that she was from Ofrestead, in the Uplands of Norway, then I knew very well that you were telling me the truth.
Neither did Olaf whisper, even to his foster brother, any word of his close kinship with their new master. Thorgils, who had not forgotten the name of Queen Astrid's brother, might indeed have discovered Olaf's secret. But it so chanced that the king's steward was spoken of only by his title as the Hersir Sigurd, and not as the son of Erik of Ofrestead.
So Sigurd told how Queen Astrid journeyed farther into the Uplands until she came to her father's manor at Ofrestead; how, dwelling there, she had been at last discovered by Gunnhild's spies, and been forced to take flight that she might save young Olaf from their murderous hands.
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