When I awoke in the morning the Ragnild was rolling heavily; we were in the midst of an angry sea and of a great gale, and while I was dressing I was thrown from one side of my little stateroom to the other, and it was no fun. I came on deck, and as I looked at the big waves I said, "The wind and the waves are in their ugly mood." The wind howled and shrieked through the rigging, and waves were like big hills. I thought of the many wrecks of ships and boats, and of the multitude of passengers and seafaring men that have been drowned since people have sailed on the seas.
The captain murmured to me, "This is ugly weather indeed. We must employ all the skill we have to fight against the storm. Our sails are new, our rigging is strong, and our vessel is staunch, and we are all valiant men on board who have gone through many such a storm before."
That morning as I watched the coast, I remembered that the Vikings believed and worshipped Ægir as the god of the sea. Ægir ruled over the sea and the wind. Ran was his wife, and she had a net in which she caught all those who were lost at sea; her Hall was at the bottom of the ocean, and there she welcomed all the shipwrecked people.
Ægir and Ran had nine daughters, and their names were emblematic of the waves. They were called Hefring the Hurling, Hrönn the Towering, Bylgja the Upheaving, Bara the Lashing.
The five other daughters were called Himinglæfa the Heaven Glittering, Blödughadda the Bloody Haired, Kolga the Cooling, Unn the Loving, Dufa the Dove.
The Vikings dreaded Hefring, Hrönn, and Bylgja when far out at sea, and Bara when they were approaching the shore. These four waves are those the mariners dread to-day.
They believed that these daughters of Ægir and Ran were seldom partial to men, that the wind awakened them and made them angry and fierce. They called them "The white-hooded daughters of Ægir and Ran." They called the spray their hair. They believed that in calm weather they walked on the reefs and wandered gently along the shores, and that their beds were rocks, stone-heaps, pebbles, and sands.
I had not been long on the sea before I found that I had exchanged the terrific winds of Arctic "Snow Land" for the gales of the Arctic Ocean. The weather was fearful! Snow, sleet, hurricanes, treacherous heavy squalls, followed each other in succession.
"This is the winter weather we have here," said the captain; "we do not expect any better at this time of the year. When there is a lull, it is only to deceive us; then it blows harder than ever, and the snow or the sleet falls thicker than before."
My fancy recalled again to me the words of the "Long Night": "I send terrific gales and mighty snowstorms over oceans and lands."