Gisli Sursson's Saga and The Saga of the People of Eyri

by Martin Regal

  Then he told them to hold off a while. ‘The end you wanted will come,’ he said.

  Then he spoke a verse:

  39.

  Goddess of golden rain,

  who gives me great joy,

  may boldly hear report

  of her friend’s brave stand.

  I greet the sword’s honed edge

  that bites into my flesh,

  knowing that this courage

  was given me by my father.

  This was Gisli’s last verse. As soon as he had spoken it, he jumped off the crag and drove his sword into the head of Eyjolf’s kinsman, Thord, and split him down to the waist. In doing so, Gisli fell down on top of him and breathed his last.

  Everyone in Eyjolf’s party was badly wounded, and Gisli had died with so many and such great wounds that it was an amazement to all. They say that he never once retreated, and as far as anyone could see his last blow was no weaker than his first.

  Thus Gisli’s life came to an end, and although he was deemed a man of great prowess, fortune was not always with him.

  The men dragged his body down and took his sword from him. Then they covered him over with stones and went down to the sea. Then a sixth man died on the shore. Eyjolf invited Aud to accompany him, but she did not want to go. After that, Eyjolf and the remaining men returned to Otradal, and that same night a seventh man died. An eighth died after being bedridden with his wounds for a year, and although the other wounded men recovered they gained nothing but dishonour.

  And it is said everywhere that no man in this land had ever been known to put up a greater stand than Gisli.

  37 Eyjolf set out from his home with eleven men and went south to meet Bork the Stout. He told him the news and gave a full account of what had happened. Bork was greatly pleased by this, and he asked Thordis to give Eyjolf a warm welcome.

  ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘the great love you bore my brother Thorgrim and treat Eyjolf well.’

  ‘I weep for my brother Gisli,’ said Thordis. ‘Would not a good bowl of gruel be warm enough a welcome for Eyjolf?’

  And later in the evening, when she brought in the food, she dropped a tray of spoons. Eyjolf had laid Gisli’s sword between the bench and his feet, and Thordis recognized it. When she bent down to pick up the spoons, she grabbed the sword by the hilt and thrust out at Eyjolf, meaning to strike him in the guts. But she had not noticed that the end of the hilt was turned upwards, and it caught against the table. She had struck him lower than she intended, hit him in the thigh and wounded him sorely.

  Bork grabbed hold of Thordis and wrenched the sword away from her, and the others all jumped to their feet and overturned the tables and the food. Bork left it in Eyjolf’s hands to decide the penalty for this deed, and he claimed full compensation – the same as was imposed for slaying a man – and said he would have demanded more if Bork had handled this matter less fittingly.

  Then Thordis named witnesses and declared herself divorced from Bork, saying that she would never again share his bed – and she stood by her word. She left and went to live at Thordisarstadir, out at Eyri. Bork, however, remained at Helgafell until Snorri the Godi drove him out.32 After that he went to live at Glerarskogar. Eyjolf went home and was greatly displeased with his visit.

  38 Vestein’s sons went to Gest Oddleifsson, their kinsman, and urged him to use his power to get them out of the country along with their mother Gunnhild, Gisli’s wife Aud, Ingjald’s daughter Gudrid and Geirmund her brother. They all went to the Hvita river and Gest paid for their passage abroad.

  They were only at sea for a short time before they reached Norway. Berg and the other two men walked around town and tried to find a place to lodge. They met two men, one of whom was a young, well-built lad, dressed in fine red clothes. He asked Berg his name, and Berg told him his true identity and kin since he expected to gain more by using his father’s name. The man in red pulled out his sword and dealt Berg a death-blow on the spot. He was Ari Sursson, brother to Gisli and Thorkel.

  Berg’s companions went back to the ship and told what had happened, and the skipper helped them escape, finding a place for Helgi33 on board a ship bound for Greenland. Helgi arrived in that country, became prosperous and was held in great esteem there. Some men were sent out to kill him, but nothing came of it. He eventually died on a hunting expedition, and this was considered a great loss.

  Aud and Gunnhild went to Hedeby34 in Denmark, took the Christian faith and then went on a pilgrimage to Rome. They never returned.

  Geirmund remained in Norway, married and prospered there. Gudrid, his sister, also married and was thought to be a woman of wisdom. Many can be counted as her descendants.

  Ari Sursson went to Iceland and came ashore at Hvita river. He sold his ship and bought himself some land at Hamar, where he lived for several years. After that he lived in several other places in Myrar, and had many descendants.

  And here ends the saga of Gisli Sursson.

  Translated by MARTIN S. REGAL

  THE SAGA OF THE PEOPLE OF EYRI

  1 There was a man named Ketil Flat-nose1 who was an excellent hersir in Norway. He was the son of Bjorn Buna, and the grandson of Grim, a hersir from Sogn. Ketil was married to Yngvild, the daughter of Ketil the Ram, a hersir from Raumarike. Their sons were named Bjorn and Helgi, and their daughters Aud the Deep-Minded, Thorunn Hyrna and Jorunn Manvitsbrekka. Ketil’s son Bjorn was fostered in the east in Jamtland by Earl Kjallak who was a wise and excellent man. The earl also had a son named Bjorn as well as a daughter named Gjaflaug.

  This was at the time when King Harald Fair-hair came to power in Norway. Because of hostilities, many distinguished men fled their ancestral lands in Norway, some east across the Kjolen mountains, and some west across the sea. Some of these men spent the winters in the Hebrides or the Orkney Islands and in summer returned to plunder Norway, causing great damage in Harald’s realm. The farmers there complained to the king about this and appealed to him to protect them from hostilities.

  The king responded by preparing an army to set out for the west and he summoned Ketil Flat-nose as the army’s leader. Ketil tried to get out of it but the king insisted he go. When he realized how determined the king was, Ketil set out on the journey, taking his wife with him and those children who were at home. On his arrival in the west he fought several battles and always had victory. He took over the Hebrides and became the leader there, making settlements with the most powerful of the leaders in the Western Isles and forming strong alliances with them. He sent his army back east to Norway, and when they returned to King Harald they announced that Ketil Flat-nose was the leader of the Hebrides but that they were not certain whether he had extended Harald’s realm into the Western Isles. When the king heard this, he confiscated Ketil’s estates in Norway.

  Ketil Flat-nose married his daughter Aud to Olaf the White, who was at that time the greatest warlord in the Western Isles. He was the son of Ingjald Helgason, whose mother, Thora, was the daughter of Sigurd Snake-in-the-eye, and the grandson of Ragnar Shaggy-breeches. Ketil married Thorunn Hyrna to Helgi the Lean, who was the son of Eyvind the Easterner and Rafarta, the daughter of King Kjarval of Ireland.

  2 Ketil Flat-nose’s son Bjorn lived in Jamtland up until the time Earl Kjallak died. He married the earl’s daughter, Gjaflaug, and then moved west over the Kjolen mountains, first to Trondheim and then south to reclaim his father’s estates and drive away the agents King Harald had appointed there. King Harald was in Vik when he heard this news, and he travelled immediately to Trondheim by the highland route. On his arrival he called an assembly of eight provinces and there he declared Bjorn Ketilsson an outlaw in Norway, which meant he could be seized and killed wherever he was found. The king sent Hauk High-breeches and some other warriors to kill Bjorn if they could find him. When they arrived south in Stadir, Bjorn’s friends found out about their mission and warned him about it.

  Bjorn boarded a skiff he owned, taking his household and goods with him, and sailed s
outh along the coast of Norway because it was then the depths of winter and he did not trust the open sea. He sailed until he came to the island of Moster, which lies off southern Hordaland, and there he was received by a man named Hrolf, the son of Ornolf Fish-driver. Bjorn stayed there in hiding with him for the rest of the winter. The king’s men turned back once they had taken over Bjorn’s estates and placed men in charge of them.

  3 Hrolf was a prominent chieftain and a man of great largesse. He maintained a temple to Thor on the island and was a great friend of Thor’s. It was because of this that he was known as Thorolf. He was a big man, handsome and strong and he sported a huge beard, which led to him being nicknamed Moster-beard. He was the most eminent man on the island.

  In the spring Thorolf gave Bjorn a good longship and provided him with a good crew, including his own son, Hallstein, to accompany him on his westward journey to visit his kinsmen. But when King Harald heard the news that Thorolf Moster-beard had sheltered the outlaw Bjorn Ketilsson, he sent men to order him off his lands and he threatened to make him an outlaw like his friend Bjorn unless he came before the king and submitted himself entirely to him.

  This happened ten years after Ingolf Arnarson2 had left to settle in Iceland and his journey had become very famous, because men who returned from Iceland spoke of the good quality of the land.

  4 Thorolf Moster-beard held a great sacrificial feast during which he consulted his dear friend Thor about whether he should reconcile himself with the king or leave the country and seek another fate. The oracle directed Thorolf to Iceland. He got himself an ocean-going ship and prepared it for the journey to Iceland, taking with him his household and all his goods. Many of his friends decided to go on the journey with him. He dismantled the temple and transported most of its timbers, together with the earth from underneath the pedestal on which Thor had been placed.

  Thorolf then sailed out to sea with a fair wind and came within sight of land, sailing then west along the southern coast and around cape Reykjanes. The wind dropped and they could see on the shore where broad fjords cut into the land. Thorolf cast overboard the high-seat pillars which had been in his temple, one of which had Thor carved on it. Thorolf declared that he would settle in Iceland in whatever place Thor directed the pillars to land. As soon as the pillars were thrown overboard, they were swept towards the more westerly of the fjords and seemed to travel faster than might be expected.

  A sea breeze then sprang up and they sailed west around the headland of Snaefellsnes and into the fjord. They saw that the fjord was extremely broad and long and that it was bordered on both sides by high mountains. Thorolf named the fjord Breidafjord (Broad Fjord). He put in to land halfway along the southern shore of the fjord and anchored his ship in a cove there, which has since been named Hofsvog. After that they explored the area and found that Thor and the pillars were already ashore at the tip of the headland north of the cove. The headland has been named Thorsnes ever since.

  Then Thorolf carried fire around his land-claim,3 from the Stafa river as far as the river he named Thorsa (Thor’s river). He established settlements for his crew and set up a large farm by the cove, Hofsvog, which he named Hofstadir. There he had a temple built,4 and it was a sizeable building, with a door on the side-wall near the gable. The high-seat pillars were placed inside the door, and nails, that were called holy nails, were driven into them. Beyond that point, the temple was a sanctuary. At the inner end there was a structure similar to the choir in churches nowadays and there was a raised platform in the middle of the floor like an altar, where a ring weighing twenty ounces and fashioned without a join was placed, and all oaths had to be sworn on this ring. It also had to be worn by the temple priest at all public gatherings. A sacrificial bowl was placed on the platform and in it a sacrificial twig – like a priest’s aspergillum – which was used to sprinkle blood from the bowl. This blood, which was called sacrificial blood, was the blood of live animals offered to the gods. The gods were placed around the platform in the choir-like structure within the temple. All farmers had to pay a toll to the temple and they were obliged to support the temple godi in all his campaigns, just as thingmen are now obliged to do for their chieftain. The temple godi was responsible for the upkeep of the temple and ensuring it was maintained properly, as well as for holding sacrificial feasts in it.

  Thorolf named the headland between Vigrafjord and Hofsvog Thorsnes. The headland is in the form of a mountain, and Thorolf invested so much reverence in it that no one was allowed to look towards it without having washed and nothing was allowed to be killed on the mountain, neither man nor animal, unless it died of natural causes. He named this mountain Helgafell and believed that he and all his family on the headland would go there when they died. At the place where Thor had come ashore, on the point of the headland, Thorolf held all court sessions and he established a district assembly there. He considered the ground there so sacred that he would not allow it to be defiled in any way, either by blood spilt in rage, or by anybody doing their elf-frighteners5 there – there was a skerry named Dritsker (Shit-Skerry) for that purpose.

  Thorolf became a splendid farmer and kept a large household, since at the time there was plenty of food to be had from the islands and from the sea.

  5 The story now turns to Bjorn, the son of Ketil Flat-nose, who sailed west across the sea to the Hebrides after parting with Thorolf Moster-beard, as was told earlier. By the time he arrived there his father Ketil had died, but he was met by his brother Helgi and his sisters who invited him to share their prosperity. Bjorn became aware that they now practised a different religion, and he found it degrading that they had rejected the traditional faith their ancestors had revered. He therefore could not find much pleasure in the place and did not want to settle there. Still, he did spend the winter with his sister Aud and her son Thorstein.6 But when they discovered that he was not receptive to his family’s ideas, they named him Bjorn the Easterner and took a dim view of his reluctance to settle there.

  6 Bjorn stayed in the Hebrides for two winters before he made his journey to Iceland, accompanied by Hallstein Thorolfs-son. They arrived in Breidafjord and following Thorolf’s advice, Bjorn settled the land between Stafa river and Hraunsfjord, establishing his home at Borgarholt in Bjarnarhofn.7 He was an eminent man in the district.

  Hallstein Thorolfsson thought it was beneath him to accept land from his father and travelled west across Breidafjord and took land there, making his home at Hallsteinsnes.

  A few years later Aud the Deep-Minded came out to Iceland and spent her first winter with her brother Bjorn. She then took all the land in the valley in Breidafjord, between the Skraumuhlaupsa and Dagverdara rivers, and lived at Hvamm. All of Breidafjord was settled at this time but settlers who take no part in this saga do not need to be mentioned here.

  7 A man named Geirrod settled the land from the Thorsa river to Langidal and lived at Eyri. He travelled to Iceland withUlfar the Champion, to whom he gave land round Ulfarsfell, and Finngeir, the son of Thorstein Ondur. Finngeir lived at Alftafjord, and his son was Thorfinn, the father of Thorbrand of Alftafjord. Another man, Vestar, who was the son of Thorolf Blister-pate, came to Iceland with his elderly father and settled the land west of Urthvalafjord and lived at Ondurdareyri. His son, Asgeir, lived there after him.

  Bjorn the Easterner was the first of these settlers to die, and he was buried in a mound at Borgarlaek. He was survived by two sons. One of them was Kjallak the Old who lived at Bjarnarhofn after his father. He married Astrid, who was the daughter of Hrolf the hersir and the sister of Steinolf the Short, and they had three children. Their son was Thorgrim the Godi and their daughter Gerd was married to Thormod the Godi, the son of Odd the Bold. Their third child, Helga, was married to Asgeir of Eyri. From the children of Kjallak a large family is descended, and they are known as the Kjalleklings. Bjorn’s other son was named Ottar, and he married Groa, the daughter of Geirleif and the sister of Oddleif of Bardastrond. Their sons were Helgi, the father of Osv
if the Wise, and Bjorn, the father of Vigfus of Drapuhlid. Vilgeir was the third son of Ottar Bjarnarson.

  In his old age, Thorolf Moster-beard married a woman named Unn. Some people say she was the daughter of Thorstein the Red, but Ari Thorgilsson the Learned does not count her among his children.8 Thorolf and Unn had a son named Stein, whom Thorolf dedicated to his friend Thor, calling him Thorstein. The boy matured very quickly. Hallstein Thorolfsson married Osk, the daughter of Thorstein the Red. Their son was also named Thorstein and he was fostered by Thorolf. Thorolf called him Thorstein Surt (Black), and his own son Thorstein Cod-biter.

  8 At this time Geirrid, the sister of Geirrod of Eyri, came out to Iceland and Geirrod gave her a farm in Borgardal, an inland valley of Alftafjord. She had her hall built across the public path and insisted that all travellers pass through there. She always kept a table laden with food, which was freely offered to anyone who wanted it. Because of this, she was thought of as the most generous of women.

  Geirrid had been married to Bjorn, the son of Bolverk Blind-pout, and their son was named Thorolf. He was a zealous Viking. He arrived in Iceland sometime after his mother and stayed with her for the first winter. Thorolf considered his mother’s land inadequate and challenged Ulfar the Champion for his land, inviting him to a duel because Ulfar was old and childless. Ulfar would rather have died than be cowed by Thorolf. They fought a duel in Alftafjord and Ulfar was killed, but Thorolf was wounded in the leg and always walked with a limp after that. He became known as Lame-foot because of it.

  Thorolf established a farm at Hvamm in Thorsardal. He took over Ulfar’s lands and was a great troublemaker. He sold land to slaves freed by Thorbrand of Alftafjord: Ulfarsfell to Ulfar and Orlygsstadir to Orlyg and they lived there for a long time. Thorolf Lame-foot had three children. Arnkel was the name of his son and Gunnfrid his daughter, who was married to Thorbeinir of Thorbeinisstadir at Vatnshals, east of Drapuhlid. Their sons were Sigmund and Thorgils, and his daughter, Thorgerd, was married to Vigfus of Drapuhlid. Thorolf Lame-foot’s other daughter was named Geirrid, and she was married to Thorolf, the son of Herjolf Holkinrassi. They lived at Mavahlid and their children were Thorarin the Black and Gudny.