e up to
Gilsbank, and prayed his father to ride with him a-wooing out to Burg.

Illugi answered, "Thou art an unsettled man, being bound for faring
abroad, but makest now as if thou wouldst busy thyself with wife-wooing;
and so much do I know, that this is not to Thorstein's mind."

Gunnlaug answers, "I shall go abroad all the same, nor shall I be well
pleased but if thou further this."

So after this Illugi rode with eleven men from home down to Burg,
and Thorstein greeted him well. Early in the morning Illugi said to
Thorstein, "I would speak to thee."

"Let us go, then, to the top of the Burg, and talk together there," says
Thorstein; and so they did, and Gunnlaug went with them.

Then said Illugi, "My kinsman Gunnlaug tells me that he has begun a
talk with thee on his own behalf, praying that he might woo thy daughter
Helga; but now I would fain know what is like to come of this matter.
His kin is known to thee, and our possessions; from my hand shall be
spared neither land nor rule over men, if such things might perchance
further matters."

Thorstein said, "Herein alone Gunnlaug pleases me not, that I find him
an unsettled man; but if he were of a mind like thine, little would I
hang back."

Illugi said, "It will cut our friendship across if thou gainsayest me
and my son an equal match."

Thorstein answers, "For thy words and our friendship then, Helga shall
be vowed, but not betrothed, to Gunnlaug, and shall bide for him three
winters: but Gunnlaug shall go abroad and shape himself to the ways of
good men; but I shall be free from all these matters if he does not then
come back, or if his ways are not to my liking."

Thereat they parted; Illugi rode home, but Gunnlaug rode to his ship.
But when they had wind at will they sailed for the main, and made
the northern part of Norway, and sailed landward along Thrandheim to
Nidaros; there they rode in the harbour, and unshipped their goods.

CHAPTER VII. Of Gunnlaug in the East and the West.

In those days Earl Eric, the son of Hakon, and his brother Svein, ruled
in Norway. Earl Eric abode as then at Hladir, which was left to him by
his father, and a mighty lord he was. Skuli, the son of Thorstein, was
with the earl at that time, and was one of his court, and well esteemed.

Now they say that Gunnlaug and Audun Festargram, and seven of them
together, went up to Hladir to the earl. Gunnlaug was so clad that he
had on a grey kirtle and white long-h