Now they put Beate to bed and Little Beate had to sleep with her. When she had said her prayers she hugged her little friend and said, "Never, never can I thank you enough, because you saved me from that horrible deep well, dear Little Beate. Of course, I know that our Lord helped you to stand firm between the logs, and to make yourself so strong and stiff, but it was you, and no one else who stretched your hand out to me, so that I was not drowned. And therefore you shall be my very best friend, always, and when I grow up you shall be the godmother to my first daughter, and I shall call her Little Beate for you." Then she kissed the little one and slept.
Part Two
[Viggo]
Now Big Beate had a brother who was bigger still than she. He was eight years old, and he was a wild, mischievous boy. His name was really only Viggo, but he had read an old story about a terrible, bearded viking by the same name, who sailed from land to land killing and robbing and bringing with him on his ship all the gold and silver which he found and all the pretty girls. So Viggo got a hatchet, just such a one as he had read that the old Viking had, and he told his sister that after this she must call him Viggo the Viking, for a Viking he would be when he grew up. In the yard he ran after the chickens and the ducks; he wanted to try his strength and the ax on their heads. They cackled and screamed and flew away from him and this only made the little viking the braver. But when he came to the geese, with uplifted ax, shouting his wild war cry, the old gander got angry, bent his long neck and pinched Viggo the Viking's leg so that he threw his ax down and ran screaming and howling away. The old gander knew well enough the code of the vikings, that vikings are not allowed to rob and kill in their own country, no not even on the other side of the goose pond.
One day Viggo the Viking came up to his sister. He looked wild, wore a big paper helmet on his head and frowned angrily.
"Now I am going to carry away the pretty girls in this land, that is what I have come for," said he. "You are too big, but Little Beate is surely going to be mine. I'll carry her far, far away, at least to the pine woods and perhaps even to the pasture, and you shall never see her any more, in all your life."
"You are a naughty boy, and give us nothing but trouble, that is what Mother said too, the other day," said Beate. "Little Beate has done you no harm, she hasn't even said a word to you."
"Has not done anything to me?" said the viking. "Didn't she stand on the flower pot yesterday under the big geranium, when I came and put my horse there? Don't you think I saw that she pushed my horse so that he fell down and broke his left hind leg? If I did what she deserves, I should cut her head off," said the viking, and he tried the edge of his little ax with his fingers.