Swan's Path

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  EARLIER BY FAR had Swanhild and Skarphedin risen and left that hall. Swanhild had some low words with Rannveig; then they whistled down their ponies, and when they were all ‘boun,’ then they set out.

  But Swanhild halted by the home-field gate and looked back to the low turf halls, that were huddled in rows snug into the hillside, and seemed asleep. Her mouth gaped in her thin face, not like to cry out but like to say somewhat. But she said never a word, but only shut up her mouth again.

  So those two went out of the garth and left Hof of the Side behind them.

  That day they crossed the Skeidar-sands. They went briskly enough. The sky was cloudy and a few drops fell, but no real rain. Swanhild went foremost across the bogs and marshes; skuas swarmed about them in the hundreds, and made great cry.

  They came out from the Sands that afternoon and went on westaway. They came under a dark hall, and that was Sigfus Bjarni’s son’s. Then they were going into the monks’ lands. The first settlers, foremost of the Land-naming-men, had slain those Irish monks a hundred years before; since then men said that none but Christ’s-men had been able to abide in those lands. They bated their horses in a dale below Kirkjubaer-cluster, some time before mid-even; and then a great slumber came over them.