Nörfasund (the Strait of Gibraltar)

Norfasund — the Strait of Gibraltar — is the narrow sound between heathen Spain and Serkland (Africa) where Sigurd the Crusader fought his way into the Mediterranean. Here, at the gate of the inner sea, he met a large viking force and gave them battle and won, before sailing on east along the Moorish coast, storming island strongholds. Norfasund is the corpus's image of the threshold of the south — the narrow strait beyond which lies a sea with no other Norse story in it, the Mediterranean of Moors and Greeks and Latins, the door through which the Norwegian crusade passed off the edge of the familiar Norse map into the warm centre of the medieval world. The gateway of the great voyage's farthest reach.