The table remained still covered as the underground people had left it.  All their vessels, which were of silver, and manufactured in the most beautiful manner, were upon it.  In the middle of the room there stood upon the ground a huge copper kettle half-full of sweet mead, and, by the side of it, a drinking-horn of pure gold.  In the corner lay against the wall a stringed instrument not unlike a dulcimer, which, as people believe, the giantesses used to play on.  They gazed on what was before them full of admiration, but without venturing to lay their hands on anything; but great and fearful was their amazement when, on turning about, they saw sitting at the table an immense figure, which Orm instantly recognised as the giant whom Guru had animated by her embrace.  He was now a cold and hard stone.  While they were standing gazing on it, Guru herself entered the room in her giant form.  She wept so bitterly that the tears trickled down on the ground.  It was long ere her sobbing permitted her to utter a single word.  At length she spoke—­

“Great affliction have you brought on me, and henceforth must I weep while I live.  I know you have not done this with evil intentions, and therefore I forgive you, though it were a trifle for me to crush the whole house like an egg-shell over your heads.”

“Alas!” cried she, “my husband, whom I love more than myself, there he sits petrified for ever.  Never again will he open his eyes!  Three hundred years lived I with my father on the island of Kunnan, happy in the innocence of youth, as the fairest among the giant maidens.  Mighty heroes sued for my hand.  The sea around that island is still filled with the rocky fragments which they hurled against each other in their combats.  Andfind won the victory, and I plighted myself to him; but ere I was married came the detestable Odin into the country, who overcame my father, and drove us all from the island.  My father and sisters fled to the mountains, and since that time my eyes have beheld them no more.  Andfind and I saved ourselves on this island, where we for a long time lived in peace and quiet, and thought it would never be interrupted.  Destiny, which no one escapes, had determined it otherwise.  Oluf came from Britain.  They called him the Holy, and Andfind instantly found that his voyage would be inauspicious to the giants.  When he heard how Oluf’s ship rushed through the waves, he went down to the strand and blew the sea against him with all his strength.  The waves swelled up like mountains, but Oluf was still more mighty than he.  His ship flew unchecked through the billows like an arrow from a bow.  He steered direct for our island.  When the ship was so near that Andfind thought he could reach it with his hands, he grasped at the fore-part with his right hand, and was about to drag it down to the bottom, as he had often done with other ships.  Then Oluf, the terrible Oluf, stepped forward, and, crossing his hands over each other, he cried with a loud voice—­”