“O thou sword-storm stirrer,
Raven, stem of battle
Famous, fared against me
Fiercely in the spear din.
Many a flight of metal
Was borne on me this morning,
By the spear-walls’ builder,
Ring-bearer, on hard Dingness.”
After that they buried the dead, and got Gunnlaug on to his horse thereafter, and brought him right down to Lifangr. There he lay three nights, and got all his rights of a priest, and died thereafter, and was buried at the church there.
All men thought it great scathe of both of these men, Gunnlaug and Raven, amid such deeds as they died.
CHAPTER XVII. The News of the Fight brought to Iceland.
Now this summer, before these tidings were brought out hither to Iceland, Illugi the Black, being at home at Gilsbank, dreamed a dream: he thought that Gunnlaug came to him in his sleep, all bloody, and he sang in the dream this stave before him; and Illugi remembered the song when he woke, and sang it before others:—
“Knew I of the hewing
Of Raven’s hilt-finned steel-fish
Byrny-shearing—sword-edge
Sharp clave leg of Raven.—
Of warm wounds drank the eagle,
When the war-rod slender,
Cleaver of the corpses,
Clave the head of Gunnlaug.”
This portent befel south at Mossfell, the self-same night, that Onund dreamed how Raven came to him, covered all over with blood, and sang:—
“Red is the sword, but I now
Am undone by Sword-Odin.
‘Gainst shields beyond the sea-flood
The ruin of shields was wielded.
Methinks the blood-fowl blood-stained
In blood o’er men’s heads stood there,
The wound-erne yet wound-eager
Trod over wounded bodies?”
Now the second summer after this, Illugi the Black spoke at the Althing from the Hill of Laws, and said:—