My mother said they should buy me a boat and fair oars, and that I should go abroad with the Vikings, should stand forward in the bows and steer a dear bark, and so wend to the haven and cut down man after man there.
When he grows up the earl's daughter scorns him as a boy who "has never given a warm meal to the wolf," "seen the raven in autumn scream over the carrion draft," or "been where the shell-thin edges" of the blades crossed; whereupon he wins a place by her side by replying:—
I have walked with bloody brand and with whistling spear, with the wound-bird following me. The Vikings made a fierce attack; we raised a furious storm, the flame ran over the dwellings of men, we laid the bleeding corses to rest in the gates of the city.[1]
And at the end, like Ragnar Lodbrok captured and dying in the pit of serpents, he can tell his tale of feeding the eagle and the she-wolf since he first reddened the sword at the age of twenty, and end his life undaunted to the ever-recurring refrain, "We hewed with the sword":
Death has no terrors. I am willing to depart. They are calling me home, the Fays whom Woden the Lord of Hosts has sent me from his hall. Merrily shall I drink ale in my high-seat with the Anses. My life days are done. Laughing will I die.[2]
Politically, Viking society was aristocratic, but an aristocracy in which all the nobles were equal. "We have no lord, we are all equal," said Rollo's men when
