take, nor dread
what was awful to look upon, though they should find themselves amidst
abundance of both these things. If they did, their greedy hands would
suddenly be bound fast, unable to tear themselves away from the thing
they touched, and knotted up with it as by inextricable bonds. Moreover,
they should enter in order, four by four.

Broder and Buchi (Buk?) were the first to show courage to attempt to
enter the vile palace; Thorkill with the king followed them, and the
rest advanced behind these in ordered ranks.

Inside, the house was seen to be ruinous throughout, and filled with
a violent and abominable reek. And it also teemed with everything that
could disgust the eye or the mind: the door-posts were begrimed with the
soot of ages, the wall was plastered with filth, the roof was made up of
spear-heads, the flooring was covered with snakes and bespattered with
all manner of uncleanliness. Such an unwonted sight struck terror into
the strangers, and, over all, the acrid and incessant stench assailed
their afflicted nostrils. Also bloodless phantasmal monsters huddled
on the iron seats, and the places for sitting were railed off by leaden
trellises; and hideous doorkeepers stood at watch on the thresholds.
Some of these, armed with clubs lashed together, yelled, while others
played a gruesome game, tossing a goat's hide from one to the other with
mutual motion of goatish backs.

Here Thorkill again warned the men, and forbade them to stretch forth
their covetous hands rashly to the forbidden things. Going on through
the breach in the crag, they beheld an old man with his body pierced
through, sitting not far off, on a lofty seat facing the side of the
rock that had been rent away. Moreover, three women, whose bodies were
covered with tumours, and who seemed to have lost the strength of their
back-bones, filled adjoining seats. Thorkill's companions were very
curious; and he, who well knew the reason of the matter, told them that
long ago the god Thor had been provoked by the insolence of the giants
to drive red-hot irons through the vitals of Geirrod, who strove with
him, and that the iron had slid further, torn up the mountain, and
battered through its side; while the women had been stricken by the
might of his thunderbolts, and had been punished (so he declared) for
their attempt on the same deity, by having their bodies broken.

As the men were about to depart thence, there were disclosed to them
seven