So before the king and my father went to Winchester there was high feasting, and those two were pledged one to the other.

Then was a new house to be built for them at Hoxne, where the wedding itself should take place.
"Maybe Halfden will be here by that time," said Lodbrok to me.

"I wish, friend Wulfric, that honest Egfrid had not been so forward, or that you had another fair sister." Now though that saying pleased me, I could not wish for the wild viking as husband to our gentle Eadgyth, though I loved him well as my own friend.

So I said that I thought Halfden's ship was his only love.
"Maybe," answered the jarl; "but one may never know, and I think it would be well for English folk and Danish to be knit together more closely." But when I asked him why this should be so, he only smiled, and talked of friendliness between the two peoples, which seemed a little matter to me at that time.
Now when the time came, my father having gone, we two, Lodbrok and I, went back to Reedham, while my mother and Eadgyth stayed yet at Thetford for the sake of Egfrid's new house building, for he would have it built to suit her who should rule it.
Strange and grievous it was to me to see our shipyard empty, and sad to have to tell the story of the good ship's loss to those whose mourning was not yet over.

Yet they were sailors' wives and children, and to them death at sea was honourable, as is to a warrior's wife that her husband should fall in a ring of foes with all his wounds in front.