[Footnote 109: The messengers.]
[Footnote 110: It would seem that the original runes, as graved by
Gudrun, had not been so completely erased as to leave no traces of
them; but that they were still sufficiently legible to enable Kostbera
to ascertain the real purport of the communication.]
[Footnote 111: Ham (hamr. _fem._ hamingia) a guardian angel, an
attendant spirit.]
[Footnote 112: Here a gallows in our sense of the word, but usually a
stake on a scaffold, to which the condemned to a death of torture was
bound hand and foot.]
[Footnote 113: So great was their haste to land.]
[Footnote 114: She played a double game.]
[Footnote 115: Sigurd.]
[Footnote 116: The ancient usage of laying the body in a ship and
sending it adrift, seems inconsistent with the later custom of
depositing it in a cist or coffin.]