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(Mask) discovers Heimir’s rich clothes under the rags, <strong>and</strong> she urges her husb<strong>and</strong> Áki to kill<br />
Heimir. <strong>The</strong>n they raise Áslaug as their daughter. Since she is beautiful <strong>and</strong> they are ugly, Gríma<br />
covers her beauty with dirt, <strong>and</strong> calls her Kráka (Crow), after her own mother. From the moment<br />
Heimir is killed, Kráka never utters a word, <strong>and</strong> the old ones think that she is dumb.<br />
When Kráka is eighteen, Ragnar loðbrók, king <strong>of</strong> Denmark, visits the remote fjord. He<br />
has just lost his beloved wife. Ragnar stays aboard the ship <strong>and</strong> sends his men to the farm, to bake<br />
some bread. Kráka washes her hair <strong>and</strong> body in a creek, <strong>and</strong> appears to the men at the farm, her<br />
beauty radiating. At that occasion she also speaks for the first time in 15 years. When the men<br />
return to the ship, bewildered by her beauty, <strong>and</strong> with burned bread, the king becomes curious. He<br />
sends her a word <strong>and</strong> puts her through a test. She must solve three riddles, since her beauty is only<br />
worth something to him, if her wisdom equals her beauty. She must come to his ship without the<br />
escort <strong>of</strong> any person, <strong>and</strong> yet not alone. She must not be dressed, <strong>and</strong> yet not naked. She must not<br />
have eaten, <strong>and</strong> yet she must not feel hunger. She solves all three tests.<br />
King Ragnar wants her to follow him to Denmark, but she sends him away to come back<br />
for her a year later. Áslaug becomes queen <strong>of</strong> Denmark, <strong>and</strong> has many sons with Ragnar, but she<br />
doesn’t reveal her true identity, until she is carrying the youngest, Sigurður, in her womb. At that<br />
time Ragnar is planning to marry another woman, but changes his mind, knowing who Áslaug<br />
really is. She bears the son, <strong>and</strong> calls him Sigurður ormur í auga (Sigurður with the Snake in his<br />
eye). Her sons all become great heroes, <strong>and</strong> when they are grown men, fighting with their father,<br />
Áslaug gets in touch with her ancestry <strong>and</strong> rides with them to battle. She takes the name R<strong>and</strong>alín<br />
(Shield Woman). 135<br />
Áslaug is a shape shifter, like all the valkyrjur. She transforms from a golden<br />
child to a mute black crow, to a mother <strong>and</strong> wife, <strong>and</strong> finally she becomes the fighting<br />
valkyrja, her bond with her long gone mother awakened. Áslaug is in fact the only<br />
valkyrja I have come across who is linked with the black bird, in this case the crow,<br />
which relates her to the Celtic Morrigan <strong>and</strong> Basque Ragana.<br />
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