would be her ornaments when first she appeared at court as his queen. In spite of their uncongenial attitude, the Norwegians could not but feel a certain pleasant excitement over the king’s wedding. Then the stir of the preparations gave an impetus to the trade of the little capital that could not be otherwise than agreeable. When Olaf’s people felt more than usually reconciled to the matter, they could not but wish that the bride were less proud and cold. The more hopeful would argue that when Gudrun was the wife of their own genial Olaf, his sunny nature would melt the ice bonds that restrained her from any girlish show of feeling during the days of her betrothal. Besides, the matrons would say to the maids when they chatted over the wedding, it were better for a maiden to be too reserved than to be overbold, even at a king’s wooing. The younger minds would receive this implied counsel with respectful attention, but each resolved in her own mind that she would not like to be as cold and loveless to her future lord as Gudrun seemed to be to King Olaf.
Thus it was with varying opinions, and a hostility softened by that reconciliation with the inevitable that marks our human nature in its disappointments, that the people of Norway greeted the morning of Olaf’s marriage,—a clear, cold, cloudless spring morning, when Bishop Sigurd made the dark, unsmiling Gudrun the wife of the great sea-king, and the Queen of Norway, in the presence of all the thanes and their
