Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 2.djvu/348

 340 CHRONICLE OF THE the king fell. Chapter CCXLIX. A miracle on a blind man. The darkness continued from about half-past one to three also. Sigvat the scald speaks thus of the result of the battle : — " The loss was great to England's foes, When their chief fell beneath the blows By his own thoughtless people given, — When the king's shield in two was riven. The people's sovereign took the field, The people clove the sovereign's shield. Of all the chiefs, that bloody day, Dag only came out of the fray." And he composed these : — " Such mighty bonder-power, I ween, With chiefs or rulers ne'er was seen. It was the people's mighty power That struck the king that fatal hour. When such a king, in such a strife, By his own people lost his life, Full many a gallant man must feel The death-wound from the people's steel." The bonders did not spoil the slain upon the field of battle, for immediately after the battle there came upon many of them who had been against the king a kind of dread as it were ; yet they held by their evil inclination, for they resolved among themselves that all who had fallen with the king should not receive the interment which belongs to good men, but reck- oned them all robbers and outlaws. But the men who had power, and had relations on the field, cared little for this, but removed their remains to the churches, and took care of their burial. Thorgils Halmesson and his son Grim went to the field of battle towards evening when it was dusk, took King Olaf's corpse up, and bore it to a little empty houseman's hut which stood on the other side of their farm. They had light and water with them. Then they took the clothes off the body, swathed it in a linen cloth, laid it down in the house, and concealed it under some fire-wood so that nobody could see it, even if people came into the hut. Thereafter they