ck Vikings of Africa. On some of them
"Bersark's gang" would fall--that is, they would become in a way mad,
slaying all and sundry, biting their shields, and possessed with a
furious strength beyond that of men, which left them as weak as children
when it passed away. These Bersarks were outlaws, all men's enemies, and
to kill them was reckoned a great adventure, and a good deed. The women
were worthy of the men--bold, quarrelsome, revengeful. Some were loyal,
like Bergthora, who foresaw how all her sons and her husband were to be
burned; but who would not leave them, and perished in the burning without
a cry. Some were as brave as Howard's wife, who enabled her husband, old
and childless, to overthrow the wealthy bully, the slayer of his only
son. Some were treacherous, as Halgerda the Fair. Three husbands she
had, and was the death of every man of them. Her last lord was Gunnar of
Lithend, the bravest and most peaceful of men. Once she did a mean
thing, and he slapped her face. She never forgave him. At last enemies
besieged him in his house. The doors were locked--all was quiet within.
One of the enemies climbed up to a window slit, and Gunnar thrust him
through with his lance. "Is Gunnar at home?" said the besiegers. "I
know not--but his lance is," said the wounded man, and died with that
last jest on his lips. For long Gunnar kept them at bay with his arrows,
but at last one of them cut the arrow string. "Twist me a string with
thy hair," he said to his wife, Halgerda, whose yellow hair was very long
and beautiful. "Is it a matter of thy life or death?" she asked. "Ay,"
he said. "Then I remember that blow thou gavest me, and I will see thy
death." So Gunnar died, overcome by numbers, and they killed Samr, his
hound, but not before Samr had killed a man.

So they lived always with sword or axe in hand--so they lived, and
fought, and died.

Then Christianity was brought to them from Norway by Thangbrand, and if
any man said he did not believe a word of it, Thangbrand had the
schoolboy argument, "Will you fight?" So they fought a duel on a _holm_
or island, that nobody might interfere--holm-gang they called it--and
Thangbrand usually killed his man. In Norway, Saint Olaf did the like,
killing and torturing those who held by the old gods--Thor, Odin, and
Freya, and the rest. So, partly by force and partly because they were
somewhat tired of bloodshed, horsefights, and the rest, they received the