very prudent man.
Ha'vama'l

In accordance with the fashion of the day, Brattahlid was a hall not
only in the sense of being a large room, but in being a building by
itself,--and a building it was of entirely unique appearance. Instead of
consisting of huge logs, as Norse houses almost invariably did, three
sides of it had been built of immense blocks of red sandstone; and for
the fourth side, a low, perpendicular, smooth rock had been used, so
that one of the inner walls was formed by a natural cliff between ten
and twelve feet high. Undoubtedly it was from this peculiarity that the
name Brattahlid had been bestowed upon it, Brattahlid signifying 'steep
side of a rock.' Its style was the extreme of simplicity, for a square
opening in the roof took the place of a chimney, and it had few windows,
and those were small and filled with a bladder-like membrane instead of
glass; yet it was not without a certain impressiveness. The hall was so
large that nearly two hundred men could find seats on the two benches
that ran through it from end to end. Its walls were of a symmetry and
massiveness to outlast the wear of centuries; and the interior had even
a certain splendor.

To-night, decked for a feast, it was magnificent to behold. Gay-hued
tapestries covered the sides, along which rows of round shields
overlapped each other like bright painted scales. Over the benches were
laid embroidered cloths; while the floor was strewn with straw until it
sparkled as with a carpet of spun gold. Before the benches, on either
side of the long stone hearth that ran through the centre of the hall,
stood tables spread with covers of flax bleached white as foam. The
light of the crackling pine torches quivered and flashed from gilded
vessels, and silver-covered trenchers, and goblets of rarely beautiful
glass, ruby and amber and emerald green.

"I have nowhere seen a finer hall," Alwin admitted to Sigurd, as they
pushed their way in through the crowd. "If the high-seats were
different, and the fire-place was against the wall, and there were reeds
upon the floor instead of straw, it would not be unlike what my father's
castle was."

"If I were altogether different, would I look like a Saxon maiden also?"
Helga's voice laughed in his ear. She had come in through the women's
door, with Thorhild and a throng of high-born women. Already she was
transformed. A trailing gown of blue made her seem to have grown a head
taller. Bits of fi