upon to come true. She begged Toste, therefore, to listen to her earnest prayer and not to expose their son’s life to unnecessary peril, but to allow him to remain at home with her for this one summer; for she believed that danger threatened him in the very near future and that, if he could only survive this immediate hazard, the risk would subsequently decrease.
Orm asked her whether she could see in her dream in which part of his body he was wounded. Asa replied that, each time she dreamed this dream, the sight of him lying thus had awakened her in a cold terror; but she had seen his hair bloody and his face pale, and the vision had weighed heavily upon her, the more so each time that it returned, although she had not previously wished to speak of it.
Toste sat silent for a while, pondering over what she had said; then he remarked that he knew little about dreams, and had never himself paid much attention to them.
‘For the Ancients used to observe,’ he said, ‘that, as the Spinstress spinneth, so shall it be. If, though, you, Asa, have dreamed the same dream thrice, then it may be that this is intended to serve as a warning to us; and, in truth, we have already lost our share of sons. Therefore, I shall not oppose your will in this matter, and Orm shall remain at home this summer, if it is also his wish. For my own part, I begin to feel that I should not mind sailing once more to the west; so, perhaps, after all, your suggestion may turn out to be the best solution for us all.’
Odd concurred with Toste, for he had several times noticed that Asa’s dreams foretold the future correctly. Orm was not overjoyed at their decision, but he was accustomed to obey Asa’s will in important matters; so nothing more was said.
When spring came, and sufficient men had been hired from the hinterland to fill the gaps in their crew, Toste and Odd sailed away as usual, while Orm remained at home. He behaved somewhat sulkily towards his mother, and sometimes pretended to be sick in order to frighten her, but, as soon as she began to fuss over him and dose him with medicines, he would find himself believing that he was in fact ill, so that he gained but little pleasure from his game. Asa could not bring herself to forget her dream and, despite all the worry he caused her, it comforted her to have him safe with her at home.
Nevertheless, and in spite of his mother, he sailed forth that summer on his first voyage.
Concerning Krok’s expedition: and how Orm set forth on his first voyage
In the fortieth year of King Harald Bluetooth’s reign, six summers before the Jomsvikings’ expedition to Norway, three ships, fitted with new sails and boldly manned, set sail from the Listerland and headed southwards to plunder the country of the Wends. They were commanded by a chieftain called Krok. He was a dark-complexioned man, tall and loose-limbed and very strong; and he had a great name in his part of the country, for he possessed a talent for evolving audacious plans, and enjoyed deriding men whose enterprises had gone astray and telling them what he would have done if he had been in their shoes. He had never in fact achieved anything of note, for he preferred to talk of the feats he intended to perform in the near future; but at length, he had so fired the young men of the district with his talk of the booty that brave warriors might win in the course of a properly conducted expedition against the Wends, that they had got together and fitted out ships and had chosen him to be their chieftain. There was, he had told them, much treasure to be found in Wendland; above all, one could be certain of a fine haul of silver, amber and slaves.
Krok and his men reached the Wendish coast and discovered the mouth of a river, up which they rowed against a strong current until they came to a wooden fortress, with piles forming a boom across the river. Here they went ashore in a grey dawn twilight, and attacked the Wends, having first slipped through their outlying defences. But the fortress was strongly manned, and its defenders shot arrows at them cunningly, and Krok’s men were tired with their heavy rowing, so there was a bitter struggle before the Wends were finally put to flight. In the course of it, Krok lost many good men; and, when the booty was examined, it was found to consist of a few iron kettles and some sheepskin coats. They rowed back down the river, and made an attempt on another village farther to the west, but it, too, was well defended and, after another sharp struggle, in which they sustained further losses, they won a few sides of smoked pork, a torn chain-shirt and a necklace of small, worn silver coins.
They buried their dead on the shore, and held counsel, and Krok had some difficulty in explaining to them why the expedition had not turned out as he had foretold. But he succeeded in calming their temper with well-chosen words, reminding them that no man could insure against bad luck or the whims of circumstance, and that no true Viking allowed himself to become dispirited by a little adversity. The Wends, he explained, were becoming redoubtable adversaries; and he had a good plan to put to them which would certainly redound to the advantage of them all. This was that they should make an attempt against Bornholm, for the richness of that island’s inhabitants was well known to them all, and it would be weakly defended, many of its warriors having recently gone to England. A shore-thrust here would meet with little opposition, and would be sure to yield a rich harvest of gold, brocades and fine weapons.
They found this well spoken, and their spirits rose again; so they set sail and headed for Bornholm, which they reached early one morning. They rowed along the eastern coast of the island in a calm sea and a rising haze, searching for a good landing-place, pulling briskly and keeping well together, for they were in high good humour; but they kept silence, for they hoped to land unobserved. Suddenly, they heard ahead of them the clank of rowlocks and the plash of oar-blades dipping evenly, and out of the haze appeared a single long ship approaching round a headland. It made towards them, without slackening its stroke, and they all stared at it, for it was large and splendid to behold, with a red dragon-head at its prow, and twenty-four pairs of oars; and they were glad that it was unaccompanied. Krok ordered all his men who were not engaged at the oars to take up their weapons and stand ready for boarding; for here there was plainly much to be won. But the lone ship headed straight towards them, as though its helmsman had not observed their presence; and a stoutly built man, standing in the prow, with a broad beard visible beneath his bossed helmet, cupped his hand to his mouth as they approached and roared in a harsh voice: ‘Get out of our way, unless you want to fight!’
Krok laughed, and his men laughed with him; and he shouted back: ‘Have you ever seen three ships give way to one?’
‘Ay, and more than three!’ roared the fat man impatiently. ‘For most men give way to Styrbjörn. But be quick about it and make your choice. Get out of our way or fight!’
When Krok heard the fat man’s words, he made no reply, but silently turned his ship aside; and his men rested their oars while the lone ship rowed past them, nor did any of them unsheath his sword. They saw a tall young man in a blue cloak, with fair down lining his jaw, rise from his resting-place beside the helmsman and stand surveying them with sleepy eyes, grasping a spear in his hand. He yawned broadly, dropped his spear and laid himself again to rest; and Krok’s men realized that this was Björn Olofsson, commonly called Styrbjörn, the banished nephew of King Erik of Uppsala, who seldom sought refuge from storm and never from battle, and whom few men willingly encountered at sea. His ship proceeded on its course, its long oars sweeping evenly, and disappeared southwards into the haze. But Krok and his men found their previous high spirits difficult to recover.
They rowed to the eastern skerries, which were uninhabited, and there they landed and cooked a meal, and held long counsel. Many of them thought that they would do best to turn for home, seeing that bad luck had followed them even to Bornholm. For, if Styrbjörn was in these waters, the island was sure to be swarming with Jomsvikings, in which case there would be nothing left for any other raiders. Some of them said that there was little use in going to sea with the sort of chieftain who gave way to a single ship.
Krok was at first less eloquent than usual; but he had ale brought ashore for them all and, after they had drunk, he delivered a speech of encouragement. In one sense, he was ready to admit, it might be considered