And of all these feats and victories, voyages and minstrelsy, and contests of arms and harp playing, had I, as a child by the cloister hearth, heard the Skalds sing, and wandering guests recount, long before I looked into Halfred's sea-grey eyes.
For during the long time that he was wholly lost sight of, and the Singing Swan had vanished in flames, and all people held Halfred for dead, the Skalds composed many songs about him. But that was later.
At that time Halfred thus roamed about everywhere, singing and triumphing, winning fights at sea, and contests in palaces. And because he was victor over all the Skalds in singing competitions, the people named him "Sigskald," and from that, the heathen people, prophesying backwards, invented, perhaps, that fable about the elf which had given him honey, and his name, in the cradle.
And he amassed great spoils, and many hundred rings of red gold, and gave them all away again to his sailing comrades. And yet he still heaped up rich hords upon the Singing Swan; and brought also much treasure to Hamund's hall, where he was wont to pass the winter.
And he splendidly improved the hall, and built over against it a great Mead hall, in which a thousand men could drink: and six steps led to the seat of honour in the Mead hall.
But the most costly thing among all his spoils was a candelabrum--"Lampas" the Greeks call it--half as high as a man, of pure gold, with seven flaming arms, which far away, in the land of Greece, he had borne away from a marble city that he had burned.
And this treasure Halfred himself prized highly, who otherwise cared nothing for gold. And at the Yule feast, and the Midsummer feast, and at all high festivals, it must stand close before him upon the table, with its sevenfold flame.
But that at which everyone wondered most was, that all people who saw Halfred, and heard him sing, seemed to be forced to be friendly to him. It often happened that even the Skalds whom he vanquished in song contests, themselves conceived great love for him, and praised his strains more than their own.
But this is truly the most incredible thing that can be told of Skalds. Compared to this it is a small thing that a wooer whom he had supplanted in a woman's favour should become his friend and blood brother. But that was later.
And, indeed, because everything seemed miraculous, those heathen people invented that legend that he was the son of Oski, and that therefore neither men's wrath nor maiden's pride could withstand him; that a god was throned upon his forehead, who dazzled all eyes; with many more such fables.