Here a multitude awaited us, for a fishing-boat had brought tidings of the great sea battle.

Of the hundred and fifty men who had sailed in my father, Thorvald's, ships sixty were dead and many others wounded, some of them to death.

Athalbrand's people had fared even worse, since those of Thorvald had slain their wounded, only one of his vessels having escaped back to Lesso, there to tell the people of that island and Iduna all that had happened.

Now it was a land of widows and orphans, so that no man need go wooing there for long, and of Aar and the country round the same song was sung.

Indeed, for generations the folk of those parts must have told of the battle of Lesso, when the chiefs, Thorvald and Athalbrand, slew each other upon the seas at night because of a quarrel about a woman who was known as Iduna the Fair.
On the sands of Fladstrand my mother, the lady Thora, waited with the others, for she had moved thither before the sailing of the ships.