More than three years had passed since our departure for England but now our ships nosed into Heidaby harbour and tied up at the jetty. I, the young, inexperienced steersman who had taken us out of the port back then, stood tall and proud scanning the cheering crowd, which was gathering faster than the eye could blink. And there she was! Estrid, standing among her people on tiptoe waving a yellow kerchief in the air. My sight, battle- and sea-trained, proved too keen to miss the one person I wished to see above all others.
A prodigious leap took me from the steer-board at the stern onto the jetty. I could have broken a leg as I slithered on the fish slime coating the wooden boarding, such was my eagerness to be ashore.
“I was the first to see the three sails,” she said breathlessly when
