had a new purpose. It seemed that he was fated to travel far, and his fancy
forsook the homely life of his own wicks and fells and reached to that
outworld of which he had heard in the winter's talk by the hall fire.

There were plenty of folk in Hightown to satisfy his curiosity. There were
the Bearsarks, who would spin tales of the rich Frankish lands and the
green isles of the Gael. From the Skridfinns he heard of the bitter country
in the north where the Jotuns dwelt, and the sun was not and the frost
split the rocks to dust, while far underground before great fires the
dwarves were hammering gold. But these were only old wives' tales, and he
liked better the talk of the sea-going franklins, who would sail in the
summer time on trading ventures and pushed farther than any galleys of war.
The old sailor, Othere Cranesfoot, was but now back from a voyage which had
taken him to Snowland, or, as we say, Iceland. He could tell of the Curdled
Sea, like milk set apart for cheese-making, which flowed as fast as a
river, and brought down ghoulish beasts and great dragons in its tide. He
told, too, of the Sea-walls which were the end of the world, waves higher
than any mountain, which ringed the whole ocean. He had seen them, blue and
terrible one dawn, before he had swung his helm round and fled southwards.
And in Snowland and the ports of the Isles this Othere had heard talk from
others of a fine land beyond the sunset, where corn grew unsown like grass,
and the capes looked like crusted cow-pats they were so thick with deer,
and the dew of the night was honey-dew, so that of a morning a man might
breakfast delicately off the face of the meadows.

Full of such marvels, Biorn sought Leif and poured out his heart to him.
For the first time he spoke of the weird-wife's spaeing. If his fortune lay
in the west, there was the goal to seek. He would find the happy country
and reign over it. But Leif shook his head, for he had heard the story
before. "To get there you will have to ride over Bilrost, the Rainbow