The Bönder now prepared at Kringlen to meet Sinclair and his Scots. As already stated, the latter had taken to the mountains in order to avoid Rosten, and had descended into the valley at Horgenlien in Nordre Sel, and taken up their quarters there for the night, after the Bönder had retired from that farm in the morning. Sinclair slept at Romungaard, where are still to be found the remains of the room he occupied, and now used as a barn.[89] The Bönder in Nordre Sel had fastened oxen to the fences, in order that the enemy should not burn down their farms. Some say that the Scots remained a day at Sel before they proceeded further. "Now begins prosperity; it will be better still over in Hedemarken," Sinclair is reported to have said to his people. In the morning, before he marched up from Sel, a few hours previous to the battle at Kringlen, he is said to have burned some powder on the palm of his hand, in order to ascertain whether his march would be successful or not. The smoke having gone up against his breast, he is reported to have exclaimed, "This day I shall suffer loss in my men, however great that loss may be." Sinclair was accompanied by a "Veirlöber,"[90] or hound; some called it a "Værkalv," others a "Vildtyrk" or "Tryntyrk",[91] "able to detect the enemy like a hound." It could, they said, scent "Christian blood." It is likewise related that the thick part of its legs had been removed in order that it might run with greater lightness. The Veirlöber was shot the same morning at the farm of Ödegaard. An elderly farm labourer had remained there in order to see what the enemy would do, and hid himself with his steel-bow in a field of hemp; and another, who had likewise remained behind, got into a chimney to give the signal to the archer. After drinking some sour milk in the dairy, the hound came up to them. It is said that the sour milk, together with the smell of the hemp, prevented the nose of the Veirlöber from discovering the man who was concealed, and whose unerring shot stretched him on the ground, so that the sour milk "spouted out of him." A similar Vildtyrk, as already stated, had been shot in Romsdalen. The Saga says it was fortunate for the Bönder that these Vildtyrker had been shot, for they were dangerous spies. It is probable that they were nothing more than Sinclair's sleuth-hounds. This is to be inferred both from the descriptions given and from statements respecting the one that was shot at Ödegaard—namely, that he ran about in the fields and barked.
BARN AT ROMUNGAARD.
Still shown as that in which the Scots passed the night before the fight at Kringelen.
COTTAGE AT ROMUNGAARD.
Still shown as that in which George Sinclair slept the night before the fight at Kringelen.
The Scots then advanced from Sel. It was on the 26th August 1612,[92] a day which has remained so memorable in the history of Gudbrandsdal. It was a Wednesday. To the strains of martial music the whole of the Scottish force marched southwards. Some of them hearing the cries of children on the mountains, to which the mothers had fled, are said to have called out in derision, "Hear the witch-cats how they screech; when we come again we shall visit them." But soon their mockery was to be silenced, and their music to sound for the last time; and the young blood now flowing in their veins was in a few moments to stain the rocky sides of Kringlen and the gray waters of the Laagen. Step by step they approached the spot where this expedition was to end so quickly and sadly. The Bönder at Kringlen were waiting for them. Here, on convenient places above the road, they had raised huge breastworks, and a kind of trap of stones and timber. The trap was laid on logs held together by means of rope, and propped up with supports in such a manner that when the ropes were cut and the props removed, the logs and stones would roll down the whole hill-slope.[93] The object was to let the mass fall down as soon as the enemy got below it, and thereupon to attack the survivors with weapons in hand. The whole of the construction of stones and logs, as well as the Bönder, who stationed themselves behind that awful barricade, were concealed by leafy branches of trees and by fir trees, so as to give the appearance of a small wood. A small body of Bönder concealed themselves a little to the north, and on hearing the noise of the conflict were to have descended into the road, to prevent the enemy from running back. The Bönder also cut down large trees, and made chevaux-de-frise out of them, to be rolled in the front and in the rear of the enemy along the narrow road, in order to shut him in and prevent him from going either forwards or backwards.
In a ballad older than Edvard Storm's poem, undoubtedly composed by a Gudbrandsdal man, and of which there are a few imperfect copies, the position of the Bönder is thus described:—