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180
GUDUMKLOSTER.
Chap. XLII.
pected, appearing like a white silver film in the horizon,
between the numerous tumuli with which this country
bubbles, to-day rendered more bumptious still by the
presence of innumerable hay-cocks. The crops here
look well—buckwheat and rye. Potatoes too are
magnificent—far finer than those of windy Thy. The ancient
tomb-mounds do good service to the farmer: they break
the fury of the blast and protect the young crops. The
corn is finer behind one of these little eminences than
in the open plain. Thy, too, though fertile enough when
under cultivation, has the disadvantage of a limestone
bottom, burns more easily, and suffers much in time of
drought; her very turfs are inferior to those of the rest
of Jutland. Our way runs by Gudumkloster,—“ Good
as a monk of Gudum” ran the proverb ; and I am only
too glad to repeat anything in favour of the Church
when in my power. We will pause one moment, and
again turn to Amleth, whom we lately left, shortly
after the murder of Fengo, in the island of Mors.
Amleth now speedily arranges his affairs, and then
prepares to return to England to visit his father-in-law.
But this time he will go as a king should do, so he
causes a shield to be fashioned of curious workmanship,
on which he has engraved all the deeds of his
manhood, and scenes from his childhood upwards, the
murder of his father, the late marriage of the queen his
mother, his own mad pranks, his journey to England, and
his marriage wuth the daughter of the English king.*
* Fearing that the vivid description given by Saxo of the pictorial
decorations on the shield of Amleth may give rise to some erroneous
idea as to the state of art in these early days, I must explain that these
representations were nothing more nor less than “ Hållristninger,” or
figure-drawings—runes of the fifth century. The only specimens
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