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The battle horns were blown and both sides shouted a war-cry, and soon the combat raged fiercely, at first with arrows from crossbows and long bows, then with spears and javelins and slings and King Olaf Tryggvasson fought most manfully. King Svein's men turned the prows of many of their ships towards both sides of the Long Serpent. The Danes also attacked the Short Serpent and the Crane.
King Olaf and his men defended themselves with the utmost bravery and manliness; they slew many of their foes, both on the Jarn Bardi and on other ships which lay near theirs. When the defenders of the Long Serpent began to thin out, Erik Jarl boarded it and met with a warm reception. Olaf Tryggvasson shot at him with spears.
The king cried: "I had the Serpent made longer than other ships so that it should be put forward more boldly in battle, but I did not know I had a prow-defender who was faint-hearted!" Ulf replied: "Turn thou, King, no more back in defending the high deck than I will in defending the prow!" Olaf Tryggvasson stood aloft on the high deck of the Long Serpent.
Among them Hyrning, Thorgier, Vikar, and Ulf the Red, and many other brave men who left a famous name behind. The Long Serpent was now cleared of men and captured, but Olaf Tryggvasson was never seen or heard of more. He probably threw himself into the sea not to survive his defeat. "It was a grand fight, Captain Larsen!" I exclaimed, as the narrator concluded his story.
The carnage was great. King Svein made the stoutest onset. King Olaf Tryggvasson made the bravest defence with his men, but they fell one after another. King Olaf fought almost too boldly, shooting arrows and hurling spears; he went forward in hand-to-hand fight, and cleft many a man's skull with his sword.
In the mean time Erik Jarl had come first with the Jarn Bardi alongside the farthest ship of Olaf Tryggvasson on one wing, cleared it, and cut it from the fastenings; he then boarded the next one, and fought until it was cleared of men; and as the men fell on his ship, other Danes and Swedes took their places.
Sigvaldi Jarl, one of Olaf Tryggvasson's commanders, let down the sails on his ship and rowed up towards the island. All waited for Olaf Tryggvasson. When King Olaf saw that his men had lowered their sails and were waiting for him, he steered towards them and asked them why they did not go on.
To us it is interesting to know that King Olaf Tryggvasson, on one of his early Viking expeditions, was baptized in the Scilly Isles, that as his second wife he married an Irish Princess, and that for some time he lived in Dublin.
But Thorgunna said that she would bring up the child, and send him out to Greenland as soon as he was old enough. "I will accept him," Leif said. He sailed, then, as he had intended, and went to Norway. There he fell in with King Olaf Tryggvasson, and was made a Christian.
Olaf Tryggvasson, King of Norway, had left Vindland in the Baltic and was on his way back to Norway with his fleet. Svein, the King of Denmark, Olaf King of Sweden, and Erik Jarl of Norway, his enemies, lay in ambush for him under the island of Svold with all their ships. The three chiefs landed on the island. After a while they espied some ships of the fleet of Olaf.
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