CHAPTER XIV

FOR THE SAKE OF THE CROSS


A wary guest
Who to refection comes
Keeps a cautious silence;
With his ears listens,
And with his eyes observes:
So explores every prudent man.
Ha'vama'l


In accordance with the fashion of the day, Brattahlid was a hall not
only in the sense of being a large room, but in being a building by
itself,--and a building it was of entirely unique appearance. Instead of
consisting of huge logs, as Norse houses almost invariably did, three
sides of it had been built of immense blocks of red sandstone; and for
the fourth side, a low, perpendicular, smooth rock had been used, so
that one of the inner walls was formed by a natural cliff between ten
and twelve feet high. Undoubtedly it was from this peculiarity that the
name Brattahlid had been bestowed upon it, Brattahlid signifying 'steep
side of a rock.' Its style was the extreme of simplicity, for a square
opening in the roof took the place of a chimney, and it had few windows,
and those were small and filled with a bladder-like membrane instead of