s after King Sigurd returned home,
and seven years before. King Olaf was seventeen years old when he died,
and it happened on the 24th of December.

24. MAGNUS THE BLIND; HIS BIRTH.

King Eystein had been about a year in the east part of the country at
that time, and King Sigurd was then in the north. King Eystein remained
a long time that winter in Sarpsborg. There was once a powerful and rich
bonde called Olaf of Dal, who dwelt in Great Dal in Aumord, and had two
children,--a son called Hakon Fauk, and a daughter called Borghild, who
was a very beautiful girl, and prudent, and well skilled in many things.
Olaf and his children were a long time in winter in Sarpsborg, and
Borghild conversed very often with King Eystein; so that many reports
were spread about their friendship. The following summer King Eystein
went north, and King Sigurd came eastward, where he remained all
winter, and was long in Konungahella, which town he greatly enlarged and
improved. He built there a great castle of turf and stone, dug a great
ditch around it, and built a church and several houses within the
castle. The holy cross he allowed to remain at Konungahella, and therein
did not fulfill the oath he had taken in Palestine; but, on the other
hand, he established tithe, and most of the other things to which he had
bound himself by oath. The reason of his keeping the cross east at the
frontier of the country was, that he thought it would be a protection to
all the land; but it proved the greatest misfortune to place this relic
within the power of the heathens, as it afterwards turned out.

When Borghild, Olaf's daughter, heard it whispered that people talked
ill of her conversations and intimacy with King Eystein, she went to
Sarpsborg; and after suitable fasts she carried the iron as proof of her
innocence, and cleared herself thereby fully from all offence. When
King Sigurd heard this, he rode one day as far as usually was two days'
travelling, and came to Dal to Olaf, where he remained all night, made
Borghild his concubine, and took her away with him. They had a son,
who was called Magnus, and he was sent immediately to Halogaland, to
be fostered at Bjarkey by Vidkun Jonson; and he was brought up there.
Magnus grew up to be the handsomest man that could be seen, and was very
soon stout and strong.

25. COMPARISON BETWEEN THE TWO KINGS.

King Eystein and King Sigurd went both in spring to guest-quarters
in the Uplands; and