THE WANDERER'S NECKLACE




BOOK I

AAR



CHAPTER I

THE BETROTHAL OF OLAF

Of my childhood in this Olaf life I can regain but little. There come to
me, however, recollections of a house, surrounded by a moat, situated in
a great plain near to seas or inland lakes, on which plain stood mounds
that I connected with the dead. What the dead were I did not quite
understand, but I gathered that they were people who, having once walked
about and been awake, now laid themselves down in a bed of earth and
slept. I remember looking at a big mound which was said to cover a chief
known as "The Wanderer," whom Freydisa, the wise woman, my nurse, told
me had lived hundreds or thousands of years before, and thinking that so
much earth over him must make him very hot at nights.

I remember also that the hall called Aar was a long house roofed with
sods, on which grew grass and sometimes little white flowers, and that
inside of it cows were tied up. We lived in a place beyond, that was