Epigraph
macron (“long” mark): Tronhūus, pandecāke
breve (“short” mark): căno
These are explained at the end of the e-text, along with general notes on Norwegian names and words used in the book.
Note
‘A man is at all times entitled, or even called upon by occasion, to speak, and write, and in all fit ways utter, what he has himself gone through, and known, and got the mastery of; and in truth, at bottom, there is nothing else that any man has a right to write of. For the rest, one principle, I think, in whatever farther you write, may be enough to guide you: that of standing rigorously by the fact, however naked it look. Fact is eternal; all fiction is very transitory in comparison. All men are interested in any man if he will speak the facts of his life for them; his authentic experience, which corresponds, as face with face, to that of all other sons of Adam.’
Thomas Carlyle