things. No Homer sang of these Norse warriors and sea-kings, but their heroic deeds and wild deaths are the ever-recurring theme of the skalds.
The death of the Norse viking is beautifully described in the following strophe from Professor Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen's poem, entitled Odin's Ravens:
In the prow with head uplifted
Stood the chief like wrathful Thor;
Through his locks the snow-flakes drifted
Bleached their hue from gold to hoar.
Mid the crash of mast and rafter
Norsemen leaped through death with laughter
Up through Valhal's wide-flung door.
Regner Lodbrok thus ends his famous song, the Krákumál:
Cease, my strain! I hear a voice
From realms where martial souls rejoice;
I hear the maids of slaughter call,
Who bid me hence to Odin's hall:
High-seated in their blest abodes
I soon shall quaff the drink of gods.
The hours of life have glided by,
I fall, but smiling shall I die.
And in the death-song of Hakon (Hákonarmál) we find the valkyries Gondul and Skogul in the heat of battle:
The god Tyr sent
Gondul and Skogul
To choose a king
Of the race of Ingve,
To dwell with Odin
In roomy Valhal.
The battle being described, the skald continues:
When lo! Gondul,
Pointing with her spear,
Said to her sister,
