s to
watch the latter part of the night, found, on awakening towards morning,
that his sword was gone. He looked after it, and saw it lying on
the flat plain at a distance from him. He got up and took the sword,
thinking that his comrades who had been on watch had taken the sword
from him in a joke; but they all denied it. The same thing happened
three nights. Then he wondered at it, as well as they who saw or heard
of it; and people began to ask him how it could have happened. He said
that his sword was called Hneiter, and had belonged to King Olaf the
Saint, who had himself carried it in the battle of Stiklestad; and he
also related how the sword since that time had gone from one to another.
This was told to the emperor, who called the man before him to whom the
sword belonged, and gave him three times as much gold as the sword was
worth; and the sword itself he had laid in Saint Olaf's church, which
the Varings supported, where it has been ever since over the altar.
There was a lenderman of Norway while Harald Gille's sons, Eystein,
Inge, and Sigurd lived, who was called Eindride Unge; and he was in
Constantinople when these events took place. He told these circumstances
in Norway, according to what Einar Skulason says in his song about King
Olaf the Saint, in which these events are sung.

21. OLAF'S MIRACLE IN FAVOUR OF THE VARINGS.

It happened once in the Greek country, when Kirjalax was emperor there,
that he made an expedition against Blokumannaland. When he came to the
Pezina plains, a heathen king came against him with an innumerable host.
He brought with him many horsemen, and many large waggons, in which
were large loop-holes for shooting through. When they prepared for their
night quarters they drew up their waggons, one by the side of the other,
without their tents, and dug a great ditch without; and all which made a
defence as strong as a castle. The heathen king was blind. Now when the
Greek king came, the heathens drew up their array on the plains before
their waggon-fortification. The Greeks drew up their array opposite, and
they rode on both sides to fight with each other; but it went on so
ill and so unfortunately, that the Greeks were compelled to fly after
suffering a great defeat, and the heathens gained a victory. Then the
king drew up an array of Franks and Flemings, who rode against the
heathens, and fought with them; but it went with them as with the
others, that many were killed, and a