There in the lonely north, between
the snow and fire, the hot-water springs, the volcano of Hecla, the
great rivers full of salmon that rush down such falls as Golden
Foot, there they lived their old-fashioned life, cruising as pirates
and merchants, taking foreign service at Mickle Garth, or in England
or Egypt, filling the world with the sound of their swords and the
sky with the smoke of their burnings. For they feared neither God
nor man nor ghost, and were no less cruel than brave; the best of
soldiers, laughing at death and torture, like the Zulus, who are a
kind of black Vikings of Africa. On some of them "Bersark's gang"
would fall--that is, they would become in a way mad, slaying all and
sundry, biting their shields, and possessed with a furious strength
beyond that of men, which left them as weak as children when it
passed away. These Bersarks were outlaws, all men's enemies, and to
kill them was reckoned a great adventure, and a good deed. The
women were worthy of the men--bold, quarrelsome, revengeful. Some
were loyal, like Bergthora, who foresaw how all her sons and her
husband were to be burned; but who would not leave them, and
perished in the burning without a cry. Some were as brave as
Howard's wife, who enabled her husband, old and childless, to
overthrow the wealthy bully, the slayer of his only son. Some were
treacherous, as Halgerda the Fair.
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