nd lick the blood from their bowls than to board
the "Serpent" under thy weapons.' 'But whose are the ships lying out
yonder on the larboard of the Danes?' 'They pertain,' came the answer,
'to Eirik Hakonson.' Then answered King Olaf, 'Good reason, methinketh,
hath he to meet us, and from that fleet may we await the fiercest of
fights, seeing that they too are of Norway even as we ourselves.'

|| Thereafter separated the Kings one from another for the onset. King
Svein laid his ship against the 'Long Serpent'; and King Olaf the Swede
lay-to farther out & grappled from the prow the outermost ship of King
Olaf Tryggvason; and over against the other side lay Earl Eirik. And
even so there ensued a dire and strenuous conflict. Albeit did Sigvaldi,
the Earl, let his ships fall astern and took he no part in the battle.
Thus saith Skuli Thorsteinnson, he that himself was with Earl Eirik that
day:

'The Frisian wolf I followed
(And in my youth gat honour)
With Sigvaldi, there where the spears whistled
(Now wax I old);
When bloody swords we bore
There off the mouth of the Svold
In the south, in the battle-storm,
And met the hero of wars.'

And Hallfrod too saith of these tidings:

'Methinks full much was missed
(Many to flight did turn them),
That chief who spurred the fight
Was among the men of Throndhjem.
The valiant King alone
'Gainst the two Kings did fight,
(Glorious to tell it now)
And for a third too the Earl.'

|| The battle to them all waxed very fierce & bloody; the forecastle men
of the 'Long Serpent' & the 'Short Serpent' and the 'Crane' threw
anchors and grapplers on to the ships of King Svein, and thus could they
attack them from above so that they cleared every ship unto which they
could cling and thereto hold fast. King Svein and those of his company
who could escape made what way they could to other of his ships and
thereon drew thence out of bow-shot, and so it came to pass that it
fared with this fleet even as King Olaf Tryggvason had foretold.

Then Olaf, he that was King of the Swedes, brought his ships up into the
self-same places left by those of Svein, but natheless hardly was he
come nigh to the big ships than it went with him the same as with the
others; even so that lost he many men and some of his ships, and
thereafter he too drew back. But Earl Eirik laid his bearded ship
alongside the outermost ship of King Olaf & with fierceness cleared it,
and strai