Heimskringla; Or, The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway

48. EARL SVEIN'S FLIGHT.

When the men began to fall on board the earl's ships, and many appeared wounded, so that the sides of the vessels were but thinly beset with men, the crew of King Olaf prepared to board. Their banner was brought up to the ship that was nearest the earl's, and the king himself followed the banner. So says Sigvat:—

     "'On with the king!' his banners waving:
     'On with the king!' the spears he's braving!
     'On, steel-clad men! and storm the deck,
     Slippery with blood and strewed with wreck.
     A different work ye have to share,
     His banner in war-storm to bear,
     From your fair girl's, who round the hall
     Brings the full mead-bowl to us all.'"

Now was the severest fighting. Many of Svein's men fell, and some sprang overboard. So says Sigvat:—

     "Into the ship our brave lads spring,—
     On shield and helm their red blades ring;
     The air resounds with stroke on stroke,—
     The shields are cleft, the helms are broke.
     The wounded bonde o'er the side
     Falls shrieking in the blood-stained tide—
     The deck is cleared with wild uproar—
     The dead crew float about the shore."

And also these lines:—

     "The shields we brought from home were white,
     Now they are red-stained in the fight:
     This work was fit for those who wore
     Ringed coats-of-mail their breasts before.
     Where for the foe blunted the best sword
     I saw our young king climb on board.
     He stormed the first; we followed him—
     The war-birds now in blood may swim."

Now defeat began to come down upon the earl's men. The king's men pressed upon the earl's ship and entered it; but when the earl saw how it was going, he called out to his forecastle-men to cut the cables and cast the ship loose, which they did. Then the king's men threw grapplings over the timber heads of the ship, and so held her fast to their own; but the earl ordered the timber heads to be cut away, which was done. So says Sigvat:—

     "The earl, his noble ship to save,
     To cut the posts loud order gave.
     The ship escaped: our greedy eyes
     Had looked on her as a clear prize.
     The earl escaped; but ere he fled
     We feasted Odin's fowls with dead:—
     With many a goodly corpse that floated
     Round our ship's stern his birds were bloated."

Einar Tambaskelfer had laid his ship right alongside the earl's. They threw an anchor over the bows of the earl's ship, and thus towed her away, and they slipped out of the fjord together. Thereafter the whole of the earl's fleet took to flight, and rowed out of the fjord. The skald Berse Torfason was on the forecastle of the earl's ship; and as it was gliding past the king's fleet, King Olaf called out to him—for he knew Berse, who was distinguished as a remarkably handsome man, always well equipped in clothes and arms—"Farewell, Berse!" He replied, "Farewell, king!" So says Berse himself, in a poem he composed when he fell into King Olaf's power, and was laid in prison and in fetters on board a ship:—

     "Olaf the Brave
     A 'farewell' gave,
     (No time was there to parley long,)
     To me who knows the art of song.
          The skald was fain
          'Farewell' again
     In the same terms back to send—
     The rule in arms to foe or friend.
          Earl Svein's distress
          I well can guess,
     When flight he was compelled to take:
     His fortunes I will ne'er forsake,
          Though I lie here
     In chains a year,
     In thy great vessel all forlorn,
     To crouch to thee I still will scorn:
          I still will say,
          No milder sway
     Than from thy foe this land e'er knew:
     To him, my early friend, I'm true."