the door of another loft, went into it, and his foot slipping he fell into the vessel of mead, and was drowned. So says Thiodolf of Huine:—
" In Frode's hall the fearful word,
The death-foreboding sound was heard:
The cry of fey[1] denouncing doom,
Was heard at night in Frode's home.
And when brave Frode came, he found
Swithiod's dark chief, Fiolner, drowned.
In Frode's mansion drowned was he,
Drowned in a waveless, windless sea."
Chapter XV.
Of Swgder
Swegder took the kingdom after his father, and he made a solemn vow to seek Godheim and Odin. He went with twelve men through the world, and came to Turkland, and the Great Sweden, where he found many of his connections. He was five years on this journey; and when he returned home to Sweden he remained there for some time. He had got a wife in Vanheim, who was called Vana, and their son was Vanland. Swegder went out afterwards to seek again for Godheim, and came to a mansion on the east side of Sweden called Stein, where there was a stone as big as a large house. In the evening after sunset, as Swegder was going from the drinking-table to his sleeping-room, he cast his eye upon the stone, and saw that a dwarf was sitting under it. Swegder and his man were very drunk, and they ran towards the stone. The dwarf stood in the door, and called to Swegder, and told him to come in, and he should see Odin. Swegder ran into the stone, which instantly closed behind him, and Swegder never came back. Thiodolf of Huine tells of this:—
- ↑ Fey, feig, is used in the same sense in the northern languages as in Scotland, denoting the acts or words or sounds preceding, and supposed to be portending, a sudden death. "The gauger is fey," in Sir Walter Scott's novel "Guy Mannering," is an expression seized by that great painter of Scottish life from the common people, and applied in
its true meaning.
