It was strange for Hacon to wake up to find himself lying on soft
cushions, and broad beams over his head instead of the stars, or the
brilliant, rushing, Northern Lights. Sometimes he would raise himself on
his elbow and listen with bent head, dreaming that he heard the soft pad
of a wolf's foot, or that if he looked he would see a pair of bright
eyes staring at him from behind a bush, as he had often done in the
mountain forests. Then he remembered that wolves did not come into
palaces, and, curling himself up comfortably, went to sleep again. All
that winter and the next he stayed in Drontheim, and every day the
Birchlegs visited him and told him stories of his father and
grandfather, which the boy liked to hear, but sometimes found beyond his
understanding. But in the second spring after his coming, earl Hacon,
brother of Ingi, took him to his castle at Bergen, and he loved him
greatly, and would say to his men that little Hacon was in truth king of
Norway. That summer, while earl Hacon was away, the Croziermen under
their new king Philip besieged Bergen, and the boy fell into their
hands, and some thought of making him king instead of Philip. Most
likely Philip knew of this, and it would have been quite easy for him to
kill Hacon, as King John across the seas would have done. Yet the
Norsemen, though fierce in battle, were not apt to slay children, so he
treated Hacon kindly, and in three days yielded him up to Thorir the
archbishop. With him Hacon lived till his kinsman the earl came back
from fighting; then he went again to his house, and remained with him
always either on land or sea.
Of the two, Hacon loved best being on the sea, and when he was four the
earl built a splendid ship, larger than any which had sailed in those
waters. Its prow was high out of the water and carved with a raven's
head, and inside there were thirty-one benches for the rowers to sit on,
who wielded the great long oars. Of course it was very important to find
a good name for such a splendid vessel, and Hacon and the earl consulted
daily about it, but at length they agreed that none was so fitting as
Olaf's Clinker. So 'Olaf's Clinker' it was called, and in the autumn the
two Hacons sailed in it to the Seljar Isles, and lay there all through
the great frost. Food they had in plenty, but it was very hard to use
it; their drink was a solid lump of ice, and their butter was frozen so
tight that many a knife broke its blade in two before it could cut off a
morsel for little Hacon to eat, for the men gave him of the best always.
One day the earl bade the cook bake the child a soft, thick cake of
flour, and it was brought to him where he stood listening to the tales
of the king's guard. They also were eating their food, and he watched
them biting morsels of the hard bread and after of the frozen butter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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