Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/281

 Ragnhild, who was wise and intelligent, dreamt great dreams. She dreamt, for one, that she was standing out in her herb-garden, and she took a thorn out of her shift; but while she was holding the thorn in her hand it grew so that it became a great tree, one end of which struck itself down into the earth, and it became firmly rooted; and the other end of the tree raised itself so high in the air that she could scarcely see over it, and it became also wonderfully thick. The under part of the tree was red with blood, but the stem upwards was beautifully green, and the branches white as snow. There were many and great limbs to the tree, some high up, others low down; and so vast was the tree's foliage that it seemed to her to cover all Norway, and even much more.

King Halfdan never had dreams, which appeared to him an extraordinary circumstance; and he told it to a man called Thorlief the Wise, and asked him what his advice was about it. Thorlief said that what he himself did, when he wanted to have any revelation by dream, was to take his sleep in a swine-stye, and then it never failed that he had dreams. The king did so, and the following dream was revealed to him. He thought he had the most beautiful hair, which was all in ringlets; some so long as to fall upon the ground, some reaching to the middle of his legs, some to his knees, some to his loins or the middle of his sides, some to his neck, and some were only as knots springing from his head. These ringlets were of various colours; but one ringlet surpassed all the others in beauty, lustre, and size. This dream he told to Thorlief, who interpreted it thus:—There should be a great posterity from him, and his descendants should rule over countries with great, but not all with equally great honour; but one of his face should be more celebrated than all the others. It was the opinion