He would go to
Ireland, to the Ostmen, or Irish Danes men at Dublin, Waterford, or Cork,
and marry some beautiful Irish Princess with gray eyes, and raven locks,
and saffron smock, and great gold bracelets from her native hills. No; he
would go off to the Orkneys, and join Bruce and Ranald, and the Vikings of
the northern seas, and all the hot blood which had found even Norway too
hot to hold it; and sail through witch-whales and icebergs to Iceland and
Greenland, and the sunny lands which they said lay even beyond, across the
all but unknown ocean. He would go up the Baltic to the Jomsburg Vikings,
and fight against Lett and Esthonian heathen, and pierce inland, perhaps,
through Puleyn and the bison forests, to the land from whence came the
magic swords and the old Persian coins which he had seen so often in the
halls of his forefathers. No; he would go South, to the land of sun and
wine; and see the magicians of Cordova and Seville; and beard Mussulman
hounds worshipping their Mahomets; and perhaps bring home an Emir's
daughter,--
"With more gay gold about her middle,
Than would buy half Northumberlee."
Or he would go up the Straits, and on to Constantinople and the great
Kaiser of the Greeks, and join the Varanger Guard, and perhaps, like
Harold Hardraade in his own days, after being cast to the lion for
carrying off a fair Greek lady, tear out the monster's tongue with his own
hands, and show the Easterns what a Viking's son could do.
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