Here, also, we
have the gracious maiden figure of Audhild, perhaps the
loveliest of all Bjornson's delineations of womanhood, a figure
worthy to be ranked with the heroines of Shakespeare and Goethe,
who remains sweet and fragrant in our memory forever after.
With the mutual love of Sigurd and Audhild comes the one hour
of sunshine in both their lives, but the love is destined to
end in a noble renunciation and to leave only a hallowed memory
in token of its brief existence.
Ten more years as a crusader and a wanderer over the face of
the earth pass by before we meet with Sigurd again in the
third section of the trilogy. But his resolution is taken.
He has returned to his native land, and will claim his own.
The land is now ruled by Harald Gille, who is, like Sigurd
Slembe, an illegitimate son of Magnus Barfod, and who, during
the last senile years of Sigurd Jorsalfar's life, had won the
recognition that Sigurd Slembe might have won had he not missed
the chance, and been acknowledged as the king's brother. When
the king died, he left a son named Magnus, who should have been
his successor, but whom Harald Gille seized, blinded, and
imprisoned that he might himself occupy the throne.
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