The Legend of the White Reindeer 
thing, till his snowy head was stained with his 
adversary’s blood. 
Thus he showed that below the ox-like calm 
exterior was the fighting beast; that he was 
like the men of the north, rugged, square-built, 
calm, slow to wrath, but when aroused “ seeing 
reds? 
When they ranked together by the lake that 
fall, the Fossekal sang his old song: 
When I am hiding 
Norway’s luck 
On 2 White Storbuk 
Comes riding, riding, 
as though this was something he had awaited, 
then disappeared no one knew where. Old 
Sveggum had seen it flying through the stream, 
as birds fly through the air, walking in the bot- 
tom of a deep pond as a Ptarmigan walks on 
the rocks, living as no bird can live; and now 
the old man said it had simply gone southward 
for the winter. But old Sveggum could neither 
read nor write: how should he know? 
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