Lapp Magic 155 



day in the spring the Lapland chief says to Harald, 

 with the grim humour which forms such a delightful 

 feature of the Norse sagas : ' Thy father took it very ill 

 last Yule because I helped myself to some of his pro- 

 visions ; but now I will return you good for this evil : 

 the good piece of news, namely, that your father is dead,' 

 Harald was destined to meet the Lapp whom he had 

 rescued once again ; and in a manner which still more 

 closely affected his own future. One winter towards 

 the end of his reign Harald was staying with one of 

 his subjects in Upland, at Tofta, in fact, a farm which 

 still stands at the top of the Gudbrandsdal, close to a 

 country which was in those days uninhabited, almost 

 unexplored up to the Swedish border. This event, too, 

 happened at Yule-tide. On the evening of the Yule 

 feast came one Svasi and sent a message to ask the 

 king to come out and speak to him. At first the king 

 was angry, but the message was repeated, and Svasi 

 proved to be the Laplander whom Harald had known 

 loufT before. He reminded the king how, when in old 

 days they had travelled together, he had promised to 

 visit his home ; and now it, he said, stood only just 

 beyond tlie nearest ridge of mountains. The king com- 

 plied ; and when he got to the hut of Svasi, there stood 

 a beautiful maiden, Snrefrid, who held out a cup of 

 mead to the king. No sooner had he drunk it than, 

 says the saga, it was as if a fire ran through his whole 

 body ; he fell so passionately in love with the maiden 

 that he determined, low-born as she was, to make her 

 his wife at once. Eventually Sntefrid died. But her 

 corpse never changed, and remained as fresh and rosy 

 as when she was alive. The king constantly sat by 



