So fair Helga, the Flower of Iceland, was married to the fairy king.
A year had gone by. The sun shone once more through the crystal dome, and fair Helga's fairy kingdom still bloomed in unfaded beauty; but the Flower of Iceland was pale and sorrowful, and a tear trembled on her lowered eyelashes.
Was the fairy king's wife not happy? Oh yes, she was happy, almost too happy. Beauty and love surrounded her on every side; but undisturbed blessedness never lasts long on earth.
Her husband was far away. The laws of the fairy kingdom compelled him to go every year across the sea to give account of his government to the supreme lord of the fairy race, whose throne stood in the rocky mountains of Norway. He had promised to return in a week, and now three weeks had gone by, and he had not come home. This thought gnawed at fair Helga's heart, and made her blind to all the beauty around her. In vain did the white birds flit around her head, stroking her cheeks with their soft wings. Helga's soul was sunk in sorrow, and the magic music with its soothing power lay asleep in the harp. At last she rose.
"Ah! I must be disobedient, my husband; forgive me, forgive me! But anxiety will kill me, if I do not go out to look if I can see you in the distance."
She sprang up and went to the door in the rock. The birds fluttered anxiously around her, but she frightened them away with her hand, and touched the wall through which she had entered a year ago. The rock, not daring to refuse obedience to its mistress, opened, and fair Helga stepped out on the barren soil of Iceland. But after being so long accustomed to the warm summer air, she shuddered as she felt the icy breath of her old home, and with hurried steps she went to the point of the rock. Here she stopped, turned her beautiful face, and looked over her left shoulder towards the south-east.
Before the power of this magic glance the veil of the distance vanished. Her look pierced through Iceland's fogs, flew over the eastern mountains, and swam on the Atlantic waves to the steep rock-bound coast of Norway. She saw the mysterious inhabitants of the mountains, and the mighty fairy king seated on his diamond throne, over which thousands of years had passed, leaving it still unshaken. Around him stood his people in their unfading youth and beauty, bowing in lowly reverence. But her husband's noble form was not among them; she could not meet the glance of his deep blue eye, though she anxiously examined every countenance. At last she looked sadly away, and turned to go back to her lonely kingdom.
But when she went round the corner of the rock she saw a tall, manly form standing in the very place whence she had once watched her father and Olaffson as they rode away over the lava-fields. With a cry of joy she ran to the spot. Could it be that her husband had been so near, while she believed him far away? But the man, hearing her light footstep, turned his head, and she looked not on her husband's youthful beauty, but on the careworn face of her long-forgotten father.
"Helga, Helga!" The words fell on her ear with a strange thrill. "My child, you are still alive, you are still on earth?" and he stretched out his arms towards her, and pressed her to his breast, while the hot tears fell on her brow.