THORFINN. What are you saying, madman?
ORM. Yes, shout—you are still a boy. Yes, you—I have seen big, tall children with bushy beards and gray hairs and crooked backs as well.
THORFINN. Hold your tongue, Orm.
ORM. Shout until the hut trembles—the truth you cannot shout down.
THORFINN. Silence, before I strike you!
ORM. Strike! Strike me to death—tear the tongue out of my mouth—with copper trumpets shall the truth be blasted into your ears, "Your life has been a lie."
THORFINN [With repressed anger and pain]. Orm, I beg of you—speak no more.
ORM. Yes, Thorfinn, I shall speak. Feel how the earth trembles under you. That means an earthquake! The whole earth trembles these days, for she is about to give birth. She is to bring forth in dire pain a glorious hero. Open your eyes and look. Do you see how the east wars with the west? It is love's first conflict—the new bride trembles under the elder's embraces, she struggles and suffers—but soon she shall rejoice, and thousands of torches shall be lighted and radiate peace and gladness, because he shall be born, the young, the strong, the beautiful princeling, who shall rule over all peoples and whose sceptre is called love and whose crown is called light and whose name is the new age! Thorfinn! do you remember the saga about Thor at Utgorda Loake? He lifted the cat so high that the trolls turned pale; he drank so deep from the horn that the trolls trembled—but when the old woman felled him to his knees then the trolls laughed. It was the age that vanquished him, and it is the age that you have warred against, and which has slain you—it is the lord of the age, it is God who has crushed you.
THORFINN. I have never known any god but my own strength, and that god I believe in!
ORM. You don't know him—you who have so long been lying at feud with him. It was he who drove you from your native land, and you thought you were escaping him. It was he who struck your ships to splinters and swallowed up your treasures and ended your power. It was he who tore your child from you—and you said you lacked peace! It was he—[Messenger enters.]