must, since Athalbrand would have it so. The marriage, he said,
should take place at Aar at the time of the Spring feast, and not
before. Meanwhile he held it best we should be apart that we might learn
whether we still clung to each other in absence.

These were the reasons he gave, but I think that he was already somewhat
sorry for what he had done, and reflected that between harvest and
springtime he might find another husband for Iduna, who was more to
his mind. For Athalbrand, as I learned afterwards, was a scheming and a
false-hearted man. Moreover, he was of no high lineage, but one who had
raised himself up by war and plunder, and therefore his blood did not
compel him to honour.

The next scene which comes back to me of those early days is that of the
hunting of the white northern bear, when I saved the life of Steinar, my
foster-brother, and nearly lost my own.

It was on a day when the winter was merging into spring, but the
coast-line near Aar was still thick with pack ice and large floes which
had floated in from the more northern seas. A certain fisherman who
dwelt on this shore came to the hall to tell us that he had seen a great
white bear on one of these floes, which, he believed, had swum from it
to the land. He was a man with a club-foot, and I can recall a vision
of him limping across the snow towards the drawbridge of Aar, supporting
himself by a staff on the top of which was cut the figure of some
animal.

"Young lords," he cried out, "there is a white bear on the land, such a
bear as once I saw when I was a boy. Come out and kill the bear and win
honour, but first give me a drink for my news."

At that time I think my father, Thorvald, was away from home with most
of the men, I do not know why; but Ragnar, Steinar and I were lingering
about the stead with little or nothing to do, since the time of sowing
was not yet. At the news of the club-footed man, we ran for our spears,
and one of us went to tell the only thrall who could be spared to make
ready the horses and come with us. Thora, my mother, would have stopped
us--she said she had heard from her father that such bears were very
dangerous beasts--but Ragnar only thrust her aside, while I kissed her
and told her not to fret.

Outside the hall I met Freydisa, a dark, quiet woman of middle age,
one of the virgins of Odin, whom I loved and who loved me and, save one
other, me only among men, for she had been my nurse.

"Whither now, yo