Then he wandered far as a travelling harper, letting the child out when they came to solitary woods, and when she wept and moaned silencing her by striking the strings of the harp. After long journeying he came to a cottage in Norway called Spangerhed, where lived a beggar and his wife. Seeing a gold bracelet under Heimer's rags, and some rich embroidery sticking from the harp, the beggar and his wife killed him during the night and broke open the harp. They found in it the wealth they sought, but the discovery of the pretty little girl troubled them.
"What shall we do with this child?" he asked.
"We will bring her up as our own, and name her Kraka, after my mother," said his wife.
"But no one will believe that ugly old people like us can have so fair a daughter."
"Let me manage it," said the wife. "I will put tar on her head so that her hair will not be too long, and keep her in ragged clothes and at the hardest work."
This they did and little Aslög grew up as a beggar's child. And as she kept strangely silent, never speaking, all people thought her dumb.
One day, when Aslög was well grown, Ragnar Lorbrok came that way, cruising along the Norway coast. The crew was out of bread and men were sent ashore to bake some at a house they saw in the distance. This house was Spangerhed, where Kraka dwelt.
She had seen the ships come up and the men land, and was ashamed to be seen by strangers as she was, so she washed herself and combed her hair, though she had been bidden never to do so. So long and thick had her hair grown that it reached to the ground and covered her completely.
When the cooks came to bake their bread they were so surprised at the beauty of the maiden that they let the loaves burn while looking at her, and on being blamed for this carelessness on their return to the ship said they could not help it, for they had been bewitched by the face of the loveliest maiden they had ever gazed upon.
"She cannot be as lovely as Tora was," said Ragnar.