I had read the old Nordic Sagas as a child, and now in my intercourse with the Somali I was struck by their likeness to the ancient Icelanders. I was therefore pleased to find Professor Östrup, who is an authority on both nations, making use of a common term to characterize Arabs and Icelanders: he calls them ‘attitudinizers’. The same ravenous ambition to distinguish themselves before all others and at any cost to immortalize themselves through a word or gesture, lies deep in the hearts of the sons of the desert as it did in the hearts of the untamed, salt young seafarers of the Northern Seas.

On the African plains the picture of Ejnar Tambeskälve, the unrivalled young archer, the friend of King Olav Tryggveson, who was with him in the naval battle of Svoldr in the year 1002, was brought back to me. As Ejnar’s bowstring burst with a loud boom and the King through the din of the battle cried out: ‘What burst there so loudly?’ he screeched back: ‘The Kingdom of Norway off thy hand, King Olav!’ The wild-eyed warrior boy, standing up straight in the stern of the ship, may have felt with satisfaction that now what was to be achieved had been achieved. And we who today read about him may agree with him, since by now few people will remember who won or lost the battle of Svoldr, or what were the consequences of it, while Ejnar Tambeskälve’s grand mot has been remembered through a thousand years.

In my dealings with Farah and his tribe I felt that whatever else I might risk from their hand, I did not run the risk of being pitied – no more than I would do in my dealings with a young boy at home.

Personally I have always had a predilection for boys, and have at times reflected that the strong sex reaches its highest point of lovableness at the age of twelve to seventeen – to get it back, in a second flowering, at the age of seventy to ninety. So were the Somali from the first day irresistible to me. With the later European settlers, however, they were not popular.