Bård Bratte.
You have good store of cunning, King Skule. Your foemen have never warning ere you fall upon them, and you are ever there where they least await you.
Paul Flida.
'Tis therefore that the Birchlegs call us Vårbælgs.[1]
King Skule.
Others say Vargbælgs; but this I swear, that when next we meet, the Birchlegs shall learn how hard it is to turn such Wolf-skins inside out.
Bård Bratte.
With their good will shall we never meet-'twill be a chase the whole country round.
King Skule.
Ay, that it shall be. First we must purge Viken, and make sure of all these eastward parts; then will we get our ships together, and sail round the Naze and up the coast to Nidaros.
Bård Bratte
And when you come in such wise to Nidaros, I scare think the monks will deny to move
- ↑ The derivation of this word is doubtful. In the form Vargbælg it means Wolf-skin, from Icelandic Vargr = a wolf, and Belgr—the skin of an animal taken off whole. The more common form, however, is Varbelg, which, as P. A. Munch suggests ("Det Norske Folks Historie," iii. 219), may possibly come from var (our word "ware"), a covering, and may be an allusion to the falsity and cunning of the faction. What Ibsen understands by the form Vårbælg I cannot discover. Vår (Icelandic Vâr) means the springtide. The nick-name had been applied to a political faction as early as 1190, and was merely revived as a designation for Skule's adherents.
