Well, there’s only one thing that can make a man want to listen to lute music. Turns out he’d sneaked into Odin’s high seat, and seen the girl of his dreams there. He’d spied on her, watched her undress, and now he was desperately in love.

Whatever. Love is boring. People in love are even more so, and I had to pretend to listen while Frey ranted on about his girl; her beauty, which was like radiant stars, her laughter, which was like nightingales, and all kinds of other quite frankly nauseating details, until he got to the bit where he was going to die if he didn’t get to meet her in person.

I tried to keep a straight face. ‘Well, why don’t you go out and get her, then?’

‘It isn’t as easy as that,’ said Frey. ‘If I tell Odin, he’s sure to ask how I found out about her in the first place. And there’s another thing . . .’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘She’s the daughter of one of the Rock Folk. A relative of—’

‘Let me guess. The builder who gave us our battlements. Oh, dear.’ I feigned sympathy. ‘His blessing’s out of the window, then.’

‘I’ve got to have her,’ said Frey. ‘I’ll die if I can’t have her.’

Well, that was a bit of hyperbole. No one dies of sexual frustration. Still, he looked pretty miserable, which made me increasingly cheerful.

‘I’ll see what I can do, shall I?’ I said, and went off to do some matchmaking.

First I went to the father. Gymir was his name, and he was as hairy and unpleasant a man as ever sired a daughter. The daughter was called Gerda, and I guess she took after her mother because she was fragrant and beautiful and smooth in all the right places.

I went in disguise, with a fake beard. I introduced myself as Skirnir, Frey’s servant, and informed the uncouth Gymir that Frey was desperately in love. Predictably, the father told me to perform an impossible sexual act but, on reflection, understood that he was more likely to benefit if he considered the offer.

Frey was the perfect mark, I said: ready to give up anything for the sake of gratification. I pointed out to Gymir that this was his chance to capitalize. If he refused, then he and I knew that Frey would take Gerda anyway, in which case her father would lose, both the girl, and any chance of recompense.

‘This way,’ I said, ‘you name your price. Go on. Ask for anything.’

Some people have no vision. When I say ‘ask for anything’, I expect to hear something better than a pigskin filled with gold, some sheep or a lifetime’s supply of dung. Still, the Rock Folk weren’t what you’d call the most sophisticated of people, and I sensed I might have to guide him.