Another of the methods by which the rite of blood-friendship was observed in the Norseland, was by causing the blood of the two covenanting persons to inter-flow from their pierced hands, while they lay together underneath a lifted sod. The idea involved seems to have been, the burial of the two individuals, in their separate personal lives, and the intermingling of those lives—by the intermingling of their blood—while in their temporary grave; in order to their rising again with a common life[71]—one life, one soul, in two bodies. Thus it is told, in one of the Icelandic Sagas, of Thorstein, the heroic son of Viking, proffering “foster-brotherhood,” or blood-friendship, to the valiant Angantyr, Jarl of the Orkneys. “Then this was resolved upon, and secured by firm pledges on both sides. They opened a vein in the hollow of their hands, crept beneath the sod, and there [with clasped hands inter-blood-flowing] they solemnly swore that each of them should avenge the other if any one of them should be slain by weapons.” This was, in fact, a three-fold covenant of blood; for King Bele, who had just been in combat with Angantyr, was already in blood-friendship with Thorstein.[72]
The rite of blood-friendship, in one form and another finds frequent mention in the Norseland Sagas. Thus, in the Saga of Fridthjof the Bold, the son of Thorstein:
“Champions twelve, too, had he—gray-haired, and princes in exploits,—
Comrades his father had loved, steel-breasted and scarred o’er the forehead.
Last on the champions’ bench, equal-aged with Fridthjof, a stripling
Sat, like a rose among withered leaves; Bjorn called they the hero—
Glad as a child, but firm like a man, and yet wise as a graybeard;
Up with Fridthjof he’d grown; they had mingled blood with each other,
Foster-brothers in Northman wise; and they swore to continue
Steadfast in weal and woe, each other revenging in battle.”[73]