The man, at this, punched his neighbour of either side, and said, "Up, for this is a man like ourselves." Presently they were all up and about him, very curious.
"You come from afar off? You are not of this country? Whence then do you come?"
Gunnar said that he was from Norway. They had never heard of Norway. One of them said that he had lived all his days in the forest country and had never seen a stranger before.
Gunnar pointed to the West. Norway, he said, lay over there, beyond the mountains. They replied that he must be mistaken, because on the level of the mountains was a great lake of snow and water in which the sun dropped every night and was quenched with a furious hissing. They said that you could hear it when the wind came that way, and that the mountain-tops were covered with steam thrown up by the dying sun, which sometimes stayed there for days at a time.
"And yet," Gunnar said, "every day the sun comes up again. How do you account for that?"
They said that was easy to understand; for the lake had no bottom. Therefore the sun dropped through, and when it had emerged kindled again upon its flight through the air. And this went on for ever.
Gunnar said, "You tell me marvellous things. Now let me tell you some." So he spoke of Norway and Iceland, and of the great ocean beyond Orkney; and of Ireland, and the poets and holy men there. Then he went on to talk of the inland sea where there were no tides, but only rushing currents, and whirlpools and desperate storms. Lastly he spoke of Micklegarth and of a sea beyond that again, which is called the Black Sea, and of the terrible folding rocks which are on the edge of that. To all of this they listened with open mouths.
When they inquired what had brought him into Sweden he frankly told them how it was. They said that he was safe enough here, and that nobody would do him any harm. "Few men fight here," they said. "The worst that may happen to you is that you will go into the cage and be offered up to Frey. But that is reckoned an honourable way of death. You serve Frey, and you serve Frey's people, and you may be sure that Frey won't forget it."
"It may be true," Gunnar said, "that Frey won't forget me, but we know very little about Frey, never having seen him at any time; and for my part I should not care to risk it."
They all looked at him in wonder. "But," said one of them, "everybody has seen Frey."