Early Travels in Palestine: Comprising the Narratives of Arculf, Willibald, Bernard, Sæwulf, Sigurd, Benjamin of Tudela, Sir John Maundeville, de la Brocquière, and Maundrell
History
Early Travels in Palestine: Comprising the Narratives of Arculf, Willibald, Bernard, Sæwulf, Sigurd, Benjamin of Tudela, Sir John Maundeville, de la Brocquière, and Maundrell
Middle East -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Palestine -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
King Baldwin made a magnificent feast for king Sigurd and many of his
people, and gave him many holy relics. By the orders of king Baldwin and
the patriarch, there was taken a splinter off the holy cross; and on
this holy relic both made oath, that this wood was of the holy cross
upon which God himself had been tortured. Then this holy relic was given
to king Sigurd; with the condition that he, and twelve other men with
him, should swear to promote Christianity with all his power, and erect
an archbishop's seat in Norway if he could; and also that the cross
should be kept where the holy king Olaf reposed, and that he should
introduce tithes, and also pay them himself. After this king Sigurd
returned to his ships at Acre; and then king Baldwin prepared to go to
Syria, to a town called Saet, which some think had been Sidon. This
castle, which belonged to the heathens, he wished to conquer, and lay
under the Christians. On this expedition king Sigurd accompanied him
with all his men, and sixty ships; and after the kings had besieged the
town some time it surrendered[119], and they took possession of it, and
of a great treasure of money; and their men found other booty. King
Sigurd made a present of his share to king Baldwin. So says Halldor
Skualldre:—
"He who for wolves provides the feast
Seized on the city in the east,
The heathen nest; and honour drew,
And gold to give, from those he slew."
Einar Skuleson also tells of it:—
"The Norsemen's king, the scalds relate,
Has ta'en the heathen town of Saet;
The slinging engine, with dread noise,
Gables and roofs with stones destroys.
The town wall totters too,—it falls;
The Norsemen mount the blackened walls.
He who stains red the raven's bill
Has won,—the town lies at his will."
Thereafter king Sigurd went to his ships, and made ready to leave
Palestine. They sailed north to the island of Cyprus; and king Sigurd
staid there awhile, and then went to the Greek country, and came to the
land with all his fleet at Engilsness[120]. Here he lay still for a
fortnight, although every day it blew a breeze for going before the wind
to the north; but Sigurd would wait a side wind, so that the sails might
stretch fore and aft in the ship; for in all his sails there was silk
joined in, before and behind in the sail, and neither those before nor
those behind the ships could see the slightest appearance of this, if
the vessel was before the wind; so they would rather wait a side wind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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