"This should be a good axe, and were you not a Christian, I would bid you hold your beginning, as its wielder, of good omen." Then the thunder crashed, and there was no need for me to answer.
And in the end he taught me patiently, until, one day, he said: "Now do you teach me to use your long spear.

I can teach you no more axe play than you know.

Some day you will meet an axeman face to face, and will find out what you know.

Then, if I have taught you ill, say naught; but if well, then say 'Jarl Lodbrok taught me'." Now I hold that the test of mastery of a weapon is that one wishes for no other, and I knew that I had learned that much.

But I could not tell how much he had taught me, for axe play was new to me, and I had not seen it before.
After I had learned well, as he said, the jarl tempered the axe head, heating and cooling it many times, until it would take an edge that would shear through iron without turning.