The Iron Star — And What It Saw on Its Journey Through the Ages / From Myth to History

by John Preston True

This is not so strange. But is it not a most wonderful thing that just because Umpl, from the falling of the Star was led to think, and make his brain stronger and wiser than his mates, the result of it should last so long that it made a leader of a boy more than a hundred years after Umpl's day? Just think of it! Let us suppose that you were to make up your mind that you would make the most of yourself; that, when a quarrel began at school, before taking sides you would think carefully over both sides, and make sure which was the right one, and then fight for it your hardest, instead of taking up the side you happened to hear about first; and because of your doing this every day, and in every case that has two sides, just suppose that a boy should live two hundred years from now, who would be your great-great- great-great-grandson; who would be as like you as one pea is like another, and who would grow up to be a great judge of the Supreme Court, or perhaps President of the United States!

And yet, this is happening right along all around us! Just to think of it every day makes me wonder, sometimes, what my thoughts yesterday will have to do with my own many-times-great-grandson a hundred years from now. Will he have reason to be glad or sorry?

But let us get back to Ulf.

Now and then in his Forest home he heard tales of a nation still farther to the northwest; a race of wonderfully strong men who, strange to say, had yellow hair and pink cheeks. They were also terrible fighters, and no one could stand against them among all the black or brown haired tribes. Just why a band of Northmen, as they were called,—some dictionary makers spell it Norsemen,—should think it worth while to go so far inland I cannot say; but a war-party did get as far as Ulf's village on a plundering expedition, perhaps hoping to find gold.

They did not find any, but they did find Ulf, who happened to be making such a hammering that he did not hear what was going on till it was too late to run; so he did the next best thing, and fought like a wolf. Now, if there was one thing that the Northmen valued more than another it was courage, and their leader was so pleased with the lad's pluck that—after he had picked one of his arrows out of his own arm and had warded off with some trouble various lightning-like jabs of a copper knife—he directed his men to "throw a noose over that young wildcat" and bring him along, together with what other treasure they might find.

Among that treasure was the Iron Star. Not that they knew its story, but because they knew iron when they saw it, and what iron was good for. So that is how Ulf and the Star together first saw the sea shining in the sun as it lapped in and around the black ledges of a Norway fjord, as the inlets of that rocky land are called. But it was a weary journey thither.

What a strange sight was the glistening sea to Ulf, a son of the Forest! During the long march he had learned much of the language of his captors—it was somewhat like his own; so, when the leader turned on the brow of a hill and cried in a thundering cheer, "The vik! the vik!" he knew that the rockbound harbour and the end of the journey were in sight. What a harbour really was he had no idea. When the men raced up the hill he ran too, till the sight struck him dumb.

What was that broad, gleaming, heaving plain? Whoever saw earth toss up and down like that? What was that great animal creeping across it, borne onward by so many legs, to where others lay silent on the narrow strip of beach? The time came when he knew better what a longship was, and the difference between legs and oars. But now—what huge houses those were to one who had always lived in a hut! Could it be possible that one could climb up inside and find a room up above the top of another room? Ulf had never seen a stairway or a ladder in his life. And what were those creatures with shining yellow and white things in their own yellow hair, clad in robes of many colours, and some of them so very, very beautiful? He had not felt fear when he fought with the Jarl—the leader. He was afraid now, for these might be spirits!

Meanwhile, the "spirits" took a very lively interest in the slender, black-haired little thrall, as slaves were called. They were in the habit of saying what they thought in those days, and it was quite a matter of course when little Edith Fairhair declared that he was "ex- ceed-ing-ly good-looking," and that she meant to ask her father to give him to her to play with. As her father happened to be the Jarl himself, of course she got what she wanted. So Ulf came to live in Jarl Sigurd's household. It was a very great change from Forest-life, and he was just the boy to make good use of it.

For one thing, his old life had taught him how to keep his eyes and ears open and his mouth shut. Few around him knew how many, many things he thought about, in that silent black head of his. When the white-headed old man with the harp came in a great longship, with the train of a visiting jarl, and sang songs that never came to an end, songs about mighty men of other days, their wars and battles, he listened right well from his place far down the long hall where the thralls sat at suppertime.