Preface.


Few words of introduction are needed for this story, excepting such
as may refer to the sources of the details involved.

The outfit of the funeral ship is practically that of the vessel
found in the mound at Goekstadt, and now in the museum at
Christiania, supplemented with a few details from the ship
disinterred last year near Toensberg, in the same district. In both
these cases the treasure has been taken from the mound by raiders,
who must have broken into the chamber shortly after the interment;
but other finds have been fully large enough to furnish details of
what would be buried with a chief of note.

With regard to the seamanship involved, there are incidents
recorded in the Sagas, as well as the use of a definite phrase for
"beating to windward," which prove that the handling of a Viking
ship was necessarily much the same as that of a square-rigged
vessel of today. The experience of the men who sailed the
reconstructed duplicate of the Goekstadt ship across the Atlantic
to the Chicago Exhibition bears this out entirely. The powers of
the beautifully designed ship were by no means limited to running
before the wind.

The museum at Christiania has a good example of the full war gear
of a lady of the Viking times.

Hakon, the son of Harald Fairhair, and foster son of our
Athelstane, took the throne of Norway in A.D. 935, which is