All through the long day, and through much of that twilight which is the darkness of a Norland summer, he was abroad on his own errands.

With Grim the Hunter he adventured far up on the fells and ate cheese and bannocks in the tents of the wandering Skridfinns, or stalked the cailzie-cock with his arrows in the great pine forest, which in his own mind he called Mirkwood and feared exceedingly.

Or he would go fishing with Egil the Fisherman, spearing salmon in the tails of the river pools.

But best he loved to go up the firth in the boat which Leif had made him--a finished, clinker-built little model of a war galley, christened the Joy-maker--and catch the big sea fish.

Monsters he caught sometimes in the deep water under the cliffs, till he thought he was destined to repeat the exploit of Thor when he went fishing with the giant Hymi, and hooked the Midgard Serpent, the brother of Fenris-wolf, whose coils encircle the earth.
Nor was his education neglected.