Sight of its low greenness, nestled in the sea like a woman in the arms of a lover, woke his mirth from its long and sullen drowse. He shouted, he slapped the backs of crewmen, swapped coarse japes with them, and laughed so that a flight of gulls sheered off. At Haven he gave a feast that filled hall and town to overflowing and went on for days and nights, while oxcart after oxcart groaned up laden with fresh casks, until the last guest lurched home clutching his head. Afterward there was much to do, things that had waited for the king’s word. He gave himself gleefully to them.

But as soon as might be, he moved away. The Sound, softly lapping on weed-strewn shingle, its tides mild as the breathing of a slumbrous bairn, was not the sea for which he had yearned. Instead he took his men and servants to another kingly hall, on the Skaw. Here, at this northern tip of Jutland, heath rolled down to great dunes and heaped driftwood, below them the broad sands running from end to end of sight. Trees were few and dwarfed, gnarled and sideward-leaning, from the winds that blew ever out of the west. Surf tumbled and brawled, thundering inward, hissing back again to meet the onslaught that followed. Beyond ramped the waves, green and gray, foam-swirled, ragged-maned, sunlight a steely flare along their flanks when weather was clear, lashed to black anger when storms swept in. Seals tumbled among them or basked darkly agleam on the skerries around which breakers spouted. Northward across the Skagerrak, westward across the North Sea, the eye found no spoor of land, only this wet wilderness. The air was damp, mostly chill, always laden with taste of salt, smells of kelp and fish, never really at rest. Gulls wheeled and mewed in their hundreds.

This hall was built for a stronghold, keeping watch over the sea lanes and the fisher hamlets along these shores. Some ways away, on the east side, was a town of craftsmen and traders, where ships went in and out. Across the Kattegat from it stood a bigger town of the Geats. In these easy times, hulls plied steadily between them. From the hall, in season, were seen many others going by bound on greater farings, up to Norway or over to Friesland and England, returning home battered but laden. It was no more than a sight, like the passing of birds. Ragnhild seldom got to the town. She stayed at the stronghold, running its everyday life, while Hadding rode around his Jutish shire.

He would come home glad, tales crackling from his lips, eager for the night and their shutbed. But now, as winter set in, it was she who slowly became curt and withdrawn. He offered her what he could—sailing, horseback riding, hunting, days-long trips through the hinterland—such things as he himself liked. Less and less did she take them.