ordered that Egil Ullseerk, and all the men of his army who had fallen, should he laid in the ships, and covered entirely over with earth and stones. King Hakon made many of the ships to be drawn up to the field of battle, and the hillocks over them are to be seen to the present day a little to the south of Freydarberg. At the time when King Hakon was killed, when Glum Geirason, in his song, boasted of King Hakon's fall, Eyvind Skaldaspiller composed these verses on this battle: —
"Our dauntless king with Gamle's gore
Sprinkled his bright sword o'er and o'er;
Sprinkled the gag that holds the mouth
Of the fell demon Fenri's wolf.[1]
Proud swelled our warriors' hearts when he
Drove Eric's sons out to the sea,
With all their Gotland host: hut now
Our warriors weep—Hakon lies low!"
Chapter XXVIII.
News of war comes to King Hakon.
High standing stones[2]mark Egil Ullsserk's grave. When King Hakon, Athelstan's foster-son, had been king for twenty-six years after his brother Eric had left the country, it happened that he was at a feast in the house of Fitiar at Stord, and he had with him at the feast his court and many of the peasants. And just as the king was seated at the supper-table, his watchmen who were outside observed many ships coming sailing along from the south, and not very far from the island. Now, said the one to the other, they should inform the king that they thought an armed force was coming against them; but none thought it
- ↑ The Wolf of Fenri, one of the children of Lok begotten with a giantess, was chained to a rock, and gagged by a sword placed in his mouth, to.prevent him devouring mankind. Fenri's wolf's-gag is a scaldic expression for a sword.
- ↑ The stones set on end in the ground, and 10 or 12 feet high or more, are called standing stones in the Orkney Isles, and other places held by the Scandinavians; and the oblong tumuli found on the coast have very probably been cast over small ships turned bottom up over the bodies of the slain, as described in this chapter, and are called ship mounds, to distinguish them from other mounds, by the Norwegian antiquaries.
