How Queen Hiordis is known; and how she abideth in the house of Elf the son of the Helper.

Then Elf asked of the two women where they would go, and they prayed that he would take them to his land, where they dwelt for long in all honour.

But the old queen, the mother of Elf, was indeed a woman wise above many, and fain would she know why the less noble of the two was dressed the more richly and why the handmaid gave always wiser counsel than her mistress.  So she bade her son to speak suddenly and to take them unawares.

Then he asked the gold-clad one how she knew in the dark winter night that the dawn was near.  She answered that ever in her youth she awoke at the dawn to follow her daily work, and always was she wont to drink of whey, and now, though the times were changed, she still woke athirst near the dawning.

To Elf it seemed strange that a fair queen in her youth had need to arise to follow the plough in the dark of the winter morning, and turning to the handmaid he asked of her the same question.  She replied that in her youth her father had given her the gold ring she still wore, and which had the magic power of growing cold as the hours neared daybreak, and such was her dawning sign.

Then did Elf know of their exchange, and he told Hiordis that long had he loved her and felt pity for her sorrow, and that he would make her his wife.  So that night she sat on the high-seat with the crown on her head, and dreamt of what had been and what was to be.

  So passeth the summer season, and the harvest of the year,
  And the latter days of the winter on toward the springtide wear.

BOOK II.

Regin.

Of the birth of Sigurd the son of Sigmund.

  Peace lay on the land of the Helper and the house of Elf his son;
  There merry men went bedward when their tide of toil was done,
  And glad was the dawn’s awakening, and the noontide fair and glad: 
  There no great store had the franklin, and enough the hireling had;
  And a child might go unguarded the length and breadth of the land
  With a purse of gold at his girdle and gold rings on his hand. 
  ’Twas a country of cunning craftsmen, and many a thing they wrought,
  That the lands of storm desired, and the homes of warfare sought. 
  But men deemed it o’er-well warded by more than its stems of fight,
  And told how its earth-born watchers yet lived of plenteous might. 
  So hidden was that country, and few men sailed its sea,
  And none came o’er its mountains of men-folk’s company. 
  But fair-fruited, many-peopled, it lies a goodly strip,
  ’Twixt the mountains cloudy-headed and the sea-flood’s surging lip,
  And a perilous flood is its ocean, and its mountains, who shall tell
  What things, in their dales deserted and their wind-swept heaths may dwell.