[1] In old Norse families names alternated from father to son. For example, Thorolf Erlandsson (Thorolf the son of Erland) would name his son after his own father, and the boy would be known as Erland Thorolfsson. A daughter was known by her given name and her father's, as Sigrid Erlandsdatter. In the case of the farm being of sufficient importance for a surname the name might be added, as "Elsie Tharaldsdatter Ormgrass." [2] Northern sailors regard the Finns as wizards. [3] Fladbrod is the coarse peasant-bread of Norway, made from an unfermented dough of barley and oatmeal rolled out into large thin cakes and baked. It will keep a long time. [4] The teredo or shipworm was a serious peril in the days before the sheathing of ships. Even tar sheathing was not used until the sixteenth century. THE VIKING'S SECRET In the days of jarl and hersir, while yet the world was young, And sagas of gods and heroes the grim-lipped minstrel sung, With the beak of his open galley in the sunset's scarlet flame, Over the wild Atlantic the Norseland Viking came. Life was a thing to play with,--oh, then the world was wide, With room for man and mammoth, and a goblin life beside. Now we have slain the mammoths, and we have driven the ghosts away, And we read the saga of Vinland in the light of a new-born day. We have harnessed the deadly lightnings; we have ridden the restless wave. We have chased the brood of the werewolf back to their noisome cave. But far in the icy Northland, with weird witch-lights aglow, Locked in the Greenland glaciers, is a tale we do not know. Out of Brattahlid's portal, southward from Herjulfsness, They came to their new-found kingdom, their Vinland to possess. Armored with careless laughter, strong with a stubborn will, The Vikings found it and lost it--it is undiscovered still! Where did they beach their galleys? How were their cabins planned? Who were the fearful Skroelings? What was the Fuerduerstrand? What were the grapes of Tyrker? For all that is written or said, The Rune Stones hold the secret of the days of Eric the Red! II THE RUNES OF THE WIND-WIFE Salt and scarred from the northern seas, the _Taernan_, deep-laden with herring, nosed in at the Hanse quay in Bergen. Thorolf Erlandsson looked grimly up at the huge warehouses. Since the Hanseatic League secured a foothold in Norway, in 1343, most Norwegian ports had been losing trade, and Bergen, or rather the Hanse merchants in Bergen, had been getting it. Between the Danes and the Germans it looked rather as if Norwegians were to be crowded out of their own country.