Sigurd's death is the subject of a strange legend, and the occasion
of a weird poem, _The Darratha-Liod_[35] said to have been sung in
Caithness for the first time on the day of Sigurd's death.

The legend is given in the _Niala_[36] as follows:--"On Friday it
happened in Caithness that a man called Dorruthr went out of his house
and saw that twelve men together rode to a certain bower, where they
all disappeared. He went to the bower, and looked in through a window,
and saw that within there were women, who had set up a web. They sang
the poem, calling on the listener, Dorruthr, to learn the song, and
to tell it to others. When the song was over, they tore down the web,
each one retaining what she held in her hand of it. And now Dorruthr
went away from the window and returned home, while they mounted their
horses, riding six to the north and six to the south. A similar vision
appeared to Brand, the son of Gneisti, in the Faroes. At Swinefell in
Iceland blood fell on the cope of a priest on Good Friday, so that he
had to take it off. At Thvatta a priest saw on Good Friday deep sea
before the altar and many terrible wonders therein, and for long he
was unable to sing the Hours."[37]

This strange legend of early telepathy may be explained by the fact
that Thorstein, son of the Icelander Hall o' Side, fought for Sigurd
at Clontarf, and afterwards returned to Iceland and told the story
of the battle, which the Saga preserved; and the English poet, Thomas
Gray, used it as the theme of his well-known poem intituled _The Fatal
Sisters_. The old Norse ballad referred to Sigurd's death at Clontarf
in 1014. It is known as _Darratha-Liod_ or _The Javelin-Song_, and is
translated by the late Eirikr Magnusson and printed in the _Miscellany
of the Viking Society_ with the Old Norse original[38] and the