Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 3.djvu/28

 16 CHRONICLE OF THE SAGA IX. Chapter XVI. Of King Ha raid. fast athwart the chain, split in two, by which many men were lost ; but some were taken up out of the sound. Thus Harald escaped out of Constantinople, and sailed thence into the Black Sea ; but before he left the land he put the lady ashore, and sent her back with a good escort to Constantinople, and bade her tell her relation, the empress Zoe, how little power she had over Harald, and how little the empress could have hindered him from taking the lady. Harald then sailed northwards in the EUepallta*, and then all round the Eastern empire. f On this voyage Harald composed sixteen songs for amusement, and all ending with the same words. This is one of them : — A dauntless, never-wearied crew ; Our viking steed rushed through the sea, As viking-like fast, fast sailed we. Never, I think, along this shore Did Norseman ever sail before ; Yet to the Russian queen, I fear. My gold-adorned, I am not dear." With this he meant EUisof, daughter of King Jarisleif in Novogorod. When Harald came to Novogorod, King Jarisleif received him in the most friendly way, and he re- mained there all winter. Then he took into his own keeping all the gold, and the many kinds of precious things which he had sent there from Constantinople, and which together made up so vast a treasure, that no man in the northern lands ever saw the like of it in one man's possession. Harald had been three times in the Polota-svarf J while he was in Constantinople. mean the sea of Asoph, if Harald sailed north through the Black Sea. f This East kingdom, or empire, may have been the country about Kiev, then an independent sovereignty. is whatever is taken from the palaces. The custom is descriptive of the state of the emperors at Constantinople and their guards.
 * ' Past Sicily's wide plains we flew,
 * Ellepallta appears a corruption of the Hellespont; but must here
 * {; Polota is supposed to be a corruption of Palatium, and polota-svarf