After sailing over summer seas, wafted along by favorable winds for six days, Frithiof came in sight of his home, Framnaes, which had been reduced to a shapeless heap of ashes by Helge’s orders.  Sadly steering past the ruins, he arrived at Baldershage, where Hilding met him and informed him that Ingeborg was now the wife of Sigurd Ring.  When Frithiof heard these tidings he flew into a Berserker rage, and bade his men destroy all the vessels in the harbor, while he strode up to the temple alone in search of Helge.  He found him there before the god’s image, roughly flung Angantyr’s heavy purse of gold in his face, and when, as he was about to leave the temple, he saw the ring he had given Ingeborg on the arm of Helge’s wife, he snatched it away from her.  In trying to recover it she dropped the god’s image, which she had just been anointing, into the fire, where it was rapidly consumed, and the rising flames soon set the temple roof in a blaze.

Frithiof, horror-stricken at the sacrilege which he had involuntarily occasioned, after vainly trying to extinguish the flames and save the costly sanctuary, escaped to his ship and waiting companions, to begin the weary life of an outcast and exile.

“The temple soon in ashes lay,
Ashes the temple’s bower;
Wofully Frithiof goes his way,
Weeps in the morning hour.” 

                              TEGNER, Frithiof Saga (Spalding’s tr.).

[Sidenote:  Frithiof an exile.] Helge’s men started in pursuit, hoping to overtake and punish him; but when they reached the harbor they could not find a single seaworthy craft, and were forced to stand on the shore in helpless inactivity while Ellida’s great sails slowly sank beneath the horizon.  It was thus that Frithiof sadly saw his native land vanish from sight; and as it disappeared he breathed a tender farewell to the beloved country which he never expected to see again.

“’World-circle’s brow,
Thou mighty North! 
I may not go
Upon thine earth;
But in no other
I love to dwell;
Now, hero-mother,
Farewell, farewell!

    “’Farewell, thou high
    And heavenly one,
    Night’s sleeping eye,
    Midsummer sun. 
    Thou clear blue sky,
    Like hero’s soul,
    Ye stars on high,
    Farewell, farewell!

    “’Farewell, ye mounts
    Where Honour thrives,
    And Thor recounts
    Good warriors’ lives. 
    Ye azure lakes,
    I know so well,
    Ye woods and brakes,
    Farewell, farewell!

    “’Farewell, ye tombs,
    By billows blue,
    The lime tree blooms
    Its snow on you. 
    The Saga sets
    In judgment-veil
    What earth forgets;
    Farewell, farewell!

    “’Farewell the heath,
    The forest hoar
    I played beneath,
    By streamlet’s roar. 
    To childhood’s friends
    Who loved me well,
    Remembrance sends
    A fond farewell!