ABSTRACT
That was the way the skaldic poet Thorarin Stuttfeld described the departure in 1107 of King Sigurd of Norway. Sigurd shared the throne with two brothers and four years after his accession at the age of 17 he felt secure enough to sail with his people from Norway for the Holy Land. The great Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson thought the travels of Sigurd the Jorsalafari, as he came to be known, worthy of detailed retelling in his Heimskringla, the history of Norway up to 1177. Snorri wrote down the story not long before his death in 1241, at which time the tale was more than a century old. He encapsulated the events as laid out by the earlier Norwegian historian Theodoricus monachus and some skalds.3
