His friend Koll
Saebjoernson persuades him, however, to abandon this hopeless adventure,
and gives him a ship with which he sails to the Orient, takes part in
many wars, and gains experience and martial renown.
The second part of the trilogy deals with Sigurd's sojourn at the
Orkneys, where he interferes in the quarrel between the Earls Harold
and Paul. The atmosphere of suspicion, insecurity, and gloom which hangs
like a portentous cloud over these scenes is the very same which blows
toward us from the pages of the sagas. Bjoernson has gazed deeply into
the heart of Northern paganism, and has here reproduced the heroic
anarchy which was a necessary result of the code permitting the
individual to avenge his own wrongs. The two awful women, Helga and
Frakark, the mother and the aunt of the earls, are types which are
constantly met with in the saga. It is a long-recognized fact that
women, under lawless conditions, develop the wildest extremes of
ambition, avarice, and blood-thirstiness, and taunt the men with their
weak scruples.
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