Hakon and Groa wed the following day. It was a Friday, known to the Northmen as Frigga"s day in honor of Odin"s wife, the goddess of marriage. The guests gathered on the shores of Lake Mjosa under gray clouds. From the cover of nearby trees, Hakon watched them assemble, his spirits as morose as the weather.
“You ready, boy?” This came from Egil, who, as Hakon"s senior friend at the wedding, agreed to escort Hakon as far as the altar, where he would hand Hakon to Groa.
“Aye,” he muttered.
Hakon had been dreading this day for months, and it couldn"t have started worse. That morning, he had been taken from the guest hall and symbolically cleansed of his former self by female attendants. They had come at sunrise and ushered him to a small structure in which stood a bench and a tub of steami
