11 'I \VA11-XH1P8. 



rising, Thorberg was obliged to go home to his farm, and 

 was away a long time, and when he came back the bulwarks 

 were completed. The same evening the king, together with 

 Thorberg, went to see how the ship looked, and every man 

 said he had never seen an equally large or fine longship. The 

 king returned to the town. Early next morning the king and 

 Thorberg went down to the ship ; all the smiths had arrived, 

 and stood there doing no work. The king asked why they 

 did this. They said the ship was spoiled, and that a man 

 had walked from the stem to the lyptitig and made cuts 

 into the gunwale, the one after the other. The king looked 

 at it and saw it was true. He swore that if he knew who 

 had spoiled the ship from envy, that man should die, but the 

 one who could tell him should get great reward from him. 

 Thorberg said, ' I can tell you, king, who did this.' The 

 king answered, ' Thou wast the likeliest man to be so lucky 

 as to ascertain this and tell me.' ' I will tell the king who 

 has done it,' he said : ' I have done it.' The king answered, 

 ' Thou shalt repair it so that it is as good as it was before, or 

 else lose thy life.' Thorberg shaped the gunwale so that 

 all the cuts disappeared. The king and every one said that 

 the ship was much better on the side which Thorberg had 

 shaped. The king asked him to do the same on the other 

 side, and thanked him well for it. Thereafter Thorberg was 

 the chief smith of the ship till it was finished. It was a 

 dragon made in the shape of the serpent which he brought 

 from Halogaland, and belonged to Raud, but much larger and 

 in every respect more carefully built. He called it the Long 

 Serpent, while the other was the Short Serpent. The Long 

 Serpent had 34 rooms. Its beaks and the dragon-tail were all 

 ornamented with gold ; its gunwales were as high as those 

 on seagoing ships. No better or costlier ship has been built 

 in Norway " (Olaf Tryggvason, c. 95). 



" The same autumn King Olaf had a large longship built on 

 the shore of the river Nid. It was a snekJcja ; he employed 

 many smiths on it. In the beginning of winter it was 

 finished ; it had thirty rooms, high stems, but was not large. 

 The king called it the Trim/ (crane) " (Olaf Tryggvason, 

 c. 79). 



Crews.- The crew of the ships no doubt varied in number 

 considerably, according to the power of the chiefs who manned 

 them ; crews of one hundred and twenty men are often men- 

 tioned ; sometimes the crew consisted of seven hundred men. 1 



1 See battle of Svol.I, p. 188. 



