Norse Legends. Snorri Sturluson

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       The war-birds now in blood may swim."

      Now defeat began to come down upon the earl's men. The king's men pressed upon the earl's ship and entered it; but when the earl saw how it was going, he called out to his forecastle-men to cut the cables and cast the ship loose, which they did. Then the king's men threw grapplings over the timber heads of the ship, and so held her fast to their own; but the earl ordered the timber heads to be cut away, which was done. So says Sigvat:—

      "The earl, his noble ship to save,

       To cut the posts loud order gave.

       The ship escaped: our greedy eyes

       Had looked on her as a clear prize.

       The earl escaped; but ere he fled

       We feasted Odin's fowls with dead:—

       With many a goodly corpse that floated

       Round our ship's stern his birds were bloated."

      Einar Tambaskelfer had laid his ship right alongside the earl's. They threw an anchor over the bows of the earl's ship, and thus towed her away, and they slipped out of the fjord together. Thereafter the whole of the earl's fleet took to flight, and rowed out of the fjord. The skald Berse Torfason was on the forecastle of the earl's ship; and as it was gliding past the king's fleet, King Olaf called out to him—for he knew Berse, who was distinguished as a remarkably handsome man, always well equipped in clothes and arms—"Farewell, Berse!" He replied, "Farewell, king!" So says Berse himself, in a poem he composed when he fell into King Olaf's power, and was laid in prison and in fetters on board a ship:—

      "Olaf the Brave

       A 'farewell' gave,

       (No time was there to parley long,)

       To me who knows the art of song.

       The skald was fain

       'Farewell' again

       In the same terms back to send—

       The rule in arms to foe or friend.

       Earl Svein's distress

       I well can guess,

       When flight he was compelled to take:

       His fortunes I will ne'er forsake,

       Though I lie here

       In chains a year,

       In thy great vessel all forlorn,

       To crouch to thee I still will scorn:

       I still will say,

       No milder sway

       Than from thy foe this land e'er knew:

       To him, my early friend, I'm true."