In these discourses it grew plain to his listener whence had sprung certain of her qualities, such as her fearless attitude towards death, and her tendency towards mysticism.

Here in these musty chronicles, far back in the times when those of whom they kept record were half, if not wholly, heathen, these same qualities could be discovered among her forbears.
Indeed, there was one woman of whom the saga told, a certain ancestress named Saevuna, whereof it is written "that she was of all women the very fairest, and that she drew the hearts of men with her wonderful eyes as the moon draws mists from a marsh," who, in some ways, might have been Stella herself, Stella unchristianized and savage.
This Saevuna's husband rebelled against the king of his country, and, being captured, was doomed to a shameful death by hanging as a traitor.
Thereon, under pretence of bidding him farewell, she administered poison to him, partaking of the same herself; "and," continues the saga, "they both of them, until their pains overcame them, died singing a certain ancient song which had descended in the family of one of them, and is called the Song of the Over-Lord, or the Offering to Death.

This song, while strength and voice remained to them, it is the duty of this family to say or sing, or so they hold it, in the hour of their death.

But if they sing it, except by way of learning its words and music from their mothers, and escape death, it will not be for very long, seeing that when once the offering is laid upon his altar, the Over-Lord considers it his own, and, after the fashion of gods and men, takes it as soon as he can.

So sweet and strange was the singing of this Saevuna until she choked that the king and his nobles came out to hear it, and all men thought it a great marvel that a woman should sing thus in the very pains of death.