



Produced by Bryan Ness, Stephen Blundell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









VIKING TALES


[Decoration]


[Illustration: _A map showing the journeys of the Vikings_]




          VIKING TALES
              _by_
          JENNIE HALL
 _The Francis W. Parker School_
          _Chicago_


         [Illustration]


          ILLUSTRATED
              _by_
           VICTOR R.
            LAMBDIN


       RAND McNALLY & CO

      _Chicago_ _New York_
            _London_




 _Copyright, 1902,_
   By JENNIE HALL

      [Device]
   Made in U.S.A.




Transcriber's Note:

    Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
    Diacritical marks, found in the _Pronouncing Index_, are represented
    as follows:

      [=x] any character with upper macron
      [)x]... with upper breve
      [.x]... with upper dot
      [x:]... with lower diaeresis
      [~x]... with upper tilde
      [+x]... with upper up tack




_The_ Table _of_ Contents


                                     PAGE
 _A List of the Illustrations_          8
 _What the Sagas Were_                  9


PART I.

_IN NORWAY_

 The Baby                              15
 The Tooth Thrall                      19
 Olaf's Farm                           27
 Olaf's Fight with Havard              40
 Foes'-fear                            47
 Harald is King                        53
 Harald's Battle                       62
 Gyda's Saucy Message                  71
 The Sea Fight                         81
 King Harald's Wedding                 89
 King Harald Goes West-Over-Seas       95


PART II.

_WEST-OVER-SEAS_

 Homes in Iceland                     103
 Eric the Red                         143
 Leif and His New Land                161
 Wineland the Good                    174

 _Descriptive Notes_                  194
 _Suggestions to Teachers_            200
 _A Reading List_                     204
 _A Pronouncing Index_                207




A List of the Illustrations


                                                                    PAGE

 _A map showing the journeys of the Vikings_                Frontispiece

 "_I own this baby for my son. He shall be called Harald_"            17

 "_He threw back his cape and drew a little dagger from his
     belt_"                                                           22

 "_I struck my shield against the door so that it made a
     great clanging_"                                                 31

 "_Then he turned to the shore and sang out loudly_"                  45

 "_He drove it into the wolf's neck_"                                 51

 "_I vow that I will grind my father's foes under my heel_"           59

 "_King Haki fell dead under 'Foes'-fear'_"                           68

 "_I will not be his wife unless he puts all of Norway
     under him for my sake_"                                          73

 "_Then he leaped into King Arnvid's boat_"                           87

 "_I, Harald, King of Norway, take you, Gyda, for my wife_"           91

 "_In Norway they left burning houses and weeping women_"             97

 "_Then he saw that Leif's ship was being driven afar off_"          125

 "_Those Icelanders clapped them on the shoulders_"                  137

 "_He looked straight ahead of him and scowled_"                     145

 "_More than half the men in the hall jumped to their feet_"         147

 "_It is a bigger boat than I ever saw before_"                      153

 "_He pointed to the woods and laughed and rolled his eyes_"         167

 "_The chief held them out to Thorfinn and hugged the cloak
     to him_"                                                        187




What _the_ Sagas Were


Iceland is a little country far north in the cold sea. Men found it and
went there to live more than a thousand years ago. During the warm
season they used to fish and make fish-oil and hunt sea-birds and gather
feathers and tend their sheep and make hay. But the winters were long
and dark and cold. Men and women and children stayed in the house and
carded and spun and wove and knit. A whole family sat for hours around
the fire in the middle of the room. That fire gave the only light.
Shadows flitted in the dark corners. Smoke curled along the high beams
in the ceiling. The children sat on the dirt floor close by the fire.
The grown people were on a long narrow bench that they had pulled up to
the light and warmth. Everybody's hands were busy with wool. The work
left their minds free to think and their lips to talk. What was there to
talk about? The summer's fishing, the killing of a fox, a voyage to
Norway. But the people grew tired of this little gossip. Fathers looked
at their children and thought:

"They are not learning much. What will make them brave and wise? What
will teach them to love their country and old Norway? Will not the
stories of battles, of brave deeds, of mighty men, do this?"

So, as the family worked in the red fire-light, the father told of the
kings of Norway, of long voyages to strange lands, of good fights. And
in farmhouses all through Iceland these old tales were told over and
over until everybody knew them and loved them. Some men could sing and
play the harp. This made the stories all the more interesting. People
called such men "skalds," and they called their songs "sagas."

Every midsummer there was a great meeting. Men from all over Iceland
came to it and made laws. During the day there were rest times, when no
business was going on. Then some skald would take his harp and walk to a
large stone or a knoll and stand on it and begin a song of some brave
deed of an old Norse hero. At the first sound of the harp and the
voice, men came running from all directions, crying out:

"The skald! The skald! A saga!"

They stood about for hours and listened. They shouted applause. When the
skald was tired, some other man would come up from the crowd and sing or
tell a story. As the skald stepped down from his high position, some
rich man would rush up to him and say:

"Come and spend next winter at my house. Our ears are thirsty for song."

So the best skalds traveled much and visited many people. Their songs
made them welcome everywhere. They were always honored with good seats
at a feast. They were given many rich gifts. Even the King of Norway
would sometimes send across the water to Iceland, saying to some famous
skald:

"Come and visit me. You shall not go away empty-handed. Men say that the
sweetest songs are in Iceland. I wish to hear them."

These tales were not written. Few men wrote or read in those days.
Skalds learned songs from hearing them sung. At last people began to
write more easily. Then they said:

"These stories are very precious. We must write them down to save them
from being forgotten."

After that many men in Iceland spent their winters in writing books.
They wrote on sheepskin; vellum, we call it. Many of these old vellum
books have been saved for hundreds of years, and are now in museums in
Norway. Some leaves are lost, some are torn, all are yellow and
crumpled. But they are precious. They tell us all that we know about
that olden time. There are the very words that the men of Iceland wrote
so long ago--stories of kings and of battles and of ship-sailing. Some
of those old stories I have told in this book.




_PART I_

[Illustration]

_IN_ NORWAY


[Decoration]




[Illustration]

The Baby


King Halfdan lived in Norway long ago. One morning his queen said to
him:

"I had a strange dream last night. I thought that I stood in the grass
before my bower.[1] I pulled a thorn from my dress. As I held it in my
fingers, it grew into a tall tree. The trunk was thick and red as blood,
but the lower limbs were fair and green, and the highest ones were
white. I thought that the branches of this great tree spread so far that
they covered all Norway and even more."

"A strange dream," said King Halfdan. "Dreams are the messengers of the
gods. I wonder what they would tell us," and he stroked his beard in
thought.

Some time after that a serving-woman came into the feast hall where King
Halfdan was. She carried a little white bundle in her arms.

"My lord," she said, "a little son is just born to you."

"Ha!" cried the king, and he jumped up from the high seat and hastened
forward until he stood before the woman.

"Show him to me!" he shouted, and there was joy in his voice.

The serving-woman put down her bundle on the ground and turned back the
cloth. There was a little naked baby. The king looked at it carefully.

"It is a goodly youngster," he said, and smiled. "Bring Ivar and
Thorstein."[2]

They were captains of the king's soldiers. Soon they came.

"Stand as witnesses," Halfdan said.

Then he lifted the baby in his arms, while the old serving-woman brought
a silver bowl of water. The king dipped his hand into it and sprinkled
the baby, saying:

"I own this baby for my son. He shall be called Harald. My naming gift
to him is ten pounds of gold."

Then the woman carried the baby back to the queen's room.

[Illustration: "_I own this baby for my son. He shall be called
Harald_"]

"My lord owns him for his son," she said. "And no wonder! He is perfect
in every limb."

The queen looked at him and smiled and remembered her dream and thought:

"That great tree! Can it be this little baby of mine?"

[Decoration]


FOOTNOTES:

[1] See note about house on page 194.

[2] See note about names on page 194.




[Illustration]

The Tooth Thrall


When Harald was seven months old he cut his first tooth. Then his father
said:

"All the young of my herds, lambs and calves and colts, that have been
born since this baby was born I this day give to him. I also give to him
this thrall, Olaf. These are my tooth-gifts to my son."

The boy grew fast, for as soon as he could walk about he was out of
doors most of the time. He ran in the woods and climbed the hills and
waded in the creek. He was much with his tooth thrall, for the king had
said to Olaf:

"Be ever at his call."

Now this Olaf was full of stories, and Harald liked to hear them.

"Come out to Aegir's Rock, Olaf, and tell me stories," he said almost
every day.

So they started off across the hills. The man wore a long, loose coat of
white wool, belted at the waist with a strap. He had on coarse shoes
and leather leggings. Around his neck was an iron collar welded together
so that it could not come off. On it were strange marks, called runes,
that said:

"Olaf, thrall of Halfdan."

But Harald's clothes were gay. A cape of gray velvet hung from his
shoulders. It was fastened over his breast with great gold buckles. When
it waved in the wind, a scarlet lining flashed out, and the bottom of a
little scarlet jacket showed. His feet and legs were covered with gray
woolen tights. Gold lacings wound around his legs from his shoes to his
knees. A band of gold held down his long, yellow hair.

It was a wild country that these two were walking over. They were
climbing steep, rough hills. Some of them seemed made all of rock, with
a little earth lying in spots. Great rocks hung out from them, with
trees growing in their cracks. Some big pieces had broken off and rolled
down the hill.

"Thor broke them," Olaf said. "He rides through the sky and hurls his
hammer at clouds and at mountains. That makes the thunder and the
lightning and cracks the hills. His hammer never misses its aim, and it
always comes back to his hand and is eager to go again."

When they reached the top of the hill they looked back. Far below was a
soft, green valley. In front of it the sea came up into the land and
made a fiord. On each side