The Sagas of the Icelanders

by Smilely, Jane

  North of Fjordane, Thorolf headed for land and went to see his father Kveldulf, who welcomed him. Thorolf told his father what happened on his travels in the summer. He spent a short time there, and his father and brother accompanied him back to his ship.

  Before they parted, Thorolf and his father spoke together.

  Kveldulf said, ‘What I told you when you went to join King Harald’s men was not wide of the mark: that the way things would turn out for you would not bring good fortune to any of us. Now you have taken the course that I cautioned you against most of all, by challenging King Harald. For all your prowess and accomplishments, you lack the good fortune to prove a match for King Harald. No one else has managed that in this country, whatever their power and force of numbers. I have an intuition that this will be our last meeting. Considering our ages, you should be destined to live longer, but I feel it will not turn out that way.’

  Then Thorolf boarded his ship and continued on his way. Nothing eventful is said to have happened on his voyage until he arrived home at Sandnes, had all the booty he had taken carried up to his farmhouse and laid up the ships. He had no lack of provisions to keep his men through that winter. Thorolf remained at home all the time and kept no fewer men than the previous winters.

  20 There was a powerful and wealthy man named Yngvar, who had been a landholder under the earlier kings. When Harald came to power, Yngvar stayed at home and did not serve him. Yngvar was married and had a daughter named Bera. He lived in Fjordane. Bera was his only child and heir.

  Grim, Kveldulf’s son, asked for Bera’s hand in marriage, and a match was made. Grim and Bera were married the winter after he and Thorolf parted. He was twenty-five years old, but already bald, so he was nicknamed Skallagrim (Bald Grim). He was in charge of running the entire farm where he lived with his father, and looked after all the provisions, although Kveldulf was still fit and healthy. They had many freed slaves with them, and many people in their household who had grown up there and were of a similar age to Skallagrim. Many of them were men of great strength, because Kveldulf and his sons chose very strong men to join them and matched them to their own temperament.

  Skallagrim took after his father in terms of physique and strength, and also in complexion and character.

  21 King Harald had been in Vik when Thorolf went raiding, then went to Oppland in the autumn, and north from there to Trondheim, where he spent the winter with a large party of men.

  Sigtrygg and Hallvard, who were with the king, heard how Thorolf had treated their quarters in Hising, and about the casualties and damage he had inflicted there. They continually reminded the king of this episode, and also that Thorolf had robbed him and his subjects, too and raided in his country. The brothers asked the king’s permission to set off to attack Thorolf with the band of men they customarily had with them.

  ‘You may think there are grounds for taking Thorolf’s life, but I feel you badly lack the good fortune to perform that deed,’ the king answered them. ‘Thorolf is more than a match for you, even though you consider yourselves men of strength and accomplishment.’

  The brothers said that this would soon be put to the test, if the king would grant them leave, adding that they had often taken heavy risks against people they had less reason to take vengeance upon, and had generally come off the better.

  When spring arrived and everybody prepared to leave, Hallvard and his brother broached the subject with the king once again.

  This time he gave them his permission to kill Thorolf, ‘and I know that you will bring me back his head, with many valuables. But some people claim,’ the king added, ‘that if you sail north, you’ll need to use your oars and sails as well on the way back.’

  They prepared for their journey immediately, taking two ships and a hundred and fifty men. When they were ready, they sailed out of the fjord into a north-easterly wind, which was against them as they headed northwards along the coast.

  22 King Harald stayed at Lade until Hallvard and his brother left, then as soon as they had gone he prepared to leave as well. He and his men boarded his ships and rowed towards land on the Skarnssund Sound, then across Beitsjo to the spit at Eldueid. Leaving his ships there, he headed across the spit to Naumdal, where he took a longship owned by the local farmers and put his men on it. He had his own men and almost three hundred men with him besides, and five or six ships, all of them large. They ran into a strong headwind and rowed night and day, as hard as they could; it was bright enough to travel by night then.

  Reaching Sandnes at night after sunset, they saw a great longship floating off the farm with its awnings down, which they recognized as belonging to Thorolf. He had equipped it to sail abroad, and was drinking a toast to his journey. The king ordered all his men to leave their ships, and had his standard raised. It was a short walk to the farm where Thorolf’s guards were sitting inside drinking. There was no guard, no one was outside and everyone was sitting indoors drinking.

  The king had his men surround the house, then they sounded a war-cry, and trumpets sounded the call to battle. When Thorolf and his men heard that, they ran for their weapons that each kept above his bed. One of the king’s men called out to the house and ordered the women, children, old people, slaves and bondsmen to leave.

  Sigrid, Thorolf’s wife, went out with the women who had been inside and the others who had been allowed to go out. She asked if the sons of Kari from Berle were there and they stepped forward to ask what she wanted of them.

  ‘Take me to the king,’ she said.

  They did so, and she went up to the king and asked, ‘Is it any use to seek a reconciliation between you and Thorolf, my lord?’

  ‘If Thorolf is prepared to surrender and put himself at my power and mercy,’ the king answered, ‘then his life and limbs will be spared, but his men will be punished as they deserve.’

  Olvir Hump went into the farmhouse and called Thorolf to talk to him, to tell him the option the king had given.

  Thorolf replied, ‘I will not accept any settlement that the king tries to force on me. Ask him to allow us to leave, and we will let fate take its own course.’

  Olvir went back to the king and informed him of Thorolf’s request.

  ‘Set fire to the house,’ the king ordered. ‘I do not want to do battle with them and lose my men. I know that Thorolf will inflict heavy casualties upon us if we attack him outside. It will be tough enough to defeat him when he is inside, even though he has fewer men than we do.’

  Then the house was set on fire and the flames rapidly engulfed it, because the timber was dry and had been tarred, and the beams were covered with bark. Thorolf ordered his men to break down the wall between the main room of the house and the entrance, which was easily done. When they had removed the beam from it, as many of them as could get a grip took hold of it and drove the end against one corner of the room so hard that the joints split on the outside and the walls came apart, giving them an easy way out. Thorolf went out first, followed by Thorgils Boomer, then the rest one by one.

  Battle ensued then, and for a while the farm shielded Thorolf and his men from behind, but when it started to burn, the fire closed in on them, and many of them were killed. Thorolf ran forward, hewing to both sides, towards the king’s standard. Then Thorgils Boomer was killed. When Thorolf reached the wall of shields around the king, he thrust his sword through the standard-bearer.

  Thorolf said, ‘I took three steps too few here.’

  He was attacked with both swords and spears, and the king himself delivered the mortal blow, and Thorolf fell at his feet. The king called out, ordering his men not to kill any more, and they stopped fighting.

  Then he ordered his men down to the ship. He said to Olvir and his brother, ‘Take your kinsman Thorolf and prepare him for a fitting burial, along with the other dead; then bury them. Tend to the wounded who have a chance of living. There will be no plundering here, because all this wealth belongs to me anyway.’

  After that the king went down t
o his ships with most of his men, and on board they began tending to their wounds.

  The king walked around the ship, inspecting the men’s wounds, and saw one man bandaging a skin wound he had received.

  The king said Thorolf had not dealt that wound, ‘for his weapons bit in a completely different way. I do not think many people will be bandaging the wounds he delivered. Such men leave a great loss behind them.’

  In the morning the king ordered the sails to be hoisted, and they sailed straight south. In the course of the day the king and his men noticed many rowboats in every sound between the islands. Their crews were on their way to see Thorolf, because he had planted spies all the way to Naumdal and in many islands, and they had noticed Hallvard and his brother heading north with a large army to attack him. The brothers had met a steady headwind and been forced to stay in various harbours. Word had got around higher up on land and reached Thorolf’s spies, which was the reason they were sailing in convoy to join him.

  The king had favourable winds until he reached Naumdal, where he left his ships and crossed to Trondheim overland. There he rejoined the ships he had left behind, and the party set off for Lade. News of the battle soon spread. Hallvard and his brother heard about it where they had moored, and returned to join the king after what was thought to be a rather humiliating expedition.

  Olvir Hump and his brother Eyvind Lamb remained at Sandnes for a while and administered to the battle-dead. Thorolf’s body was prepared according to the prevailing custom for men of high birth, and they raised a burial stone in his memory. They had the injured nursed back to health, and helped Sigrid to put the farm back in order. All the property remained intact; most of the furniture, tableware and clothing had burned inside.

  When Olvir and his brother were ready they set off from the north and went to see King Harald when he was in Trondheim. They stayed with him, kept a low profile and spoke little to other people.

  One day the brothers called on the king, and Olvir said, ‘My brother and I would like to ask your leave to return to our farms, because after these recent events we are not in the mood to sit and drink with the assailants of our kinsman Thorolf.’

  The king looked at him and answered somewhat curtly, ‘That I will not grant to you; stay here with me.’

  The brothers left and returned to their seats.

  The next day, the king had Olvir and his brother called in to him in his chamber.

  ‘Now you will know the answer to the matter you raised when you asked my leave to go home,’ the king said. ‘You have been here with me for some while and conducted yourselves in a civilized fashion. You have consistently served me well, and I have thought well of you in all ways. Now I want you, Eyvind, to go north to Halogaland and marry Sigrid from Sandnes, Thorolf’s widow. I will give you all the wealth that belonged to Thorolf, and you will have my friendship too, if you know how to look after such things. Olvir will stay with me; I do not want to let him go, on account of his skills in poetry.’

  The brothers thanked the king for the honour he had shown them, saying they would readily accept it. Eyvind prepared to leave and procured a good, suitable ship. The king gave him tokens to prove his mission. Eyvind had a smooth journey and arrived in Alost at Sandnes, where Sigrid gave him and his men a warm welcome. Then Eyvind produced the king’s tokens and message to Sigrid, and he proposed to her, saying the king had ordered that he should be granted this match. Given what had happened, Sigrid felt she had no choice but to accept the king’s will. The marriage was arranged and Eyvind took Sigrid as his wife. He took charge of the farm at Sandnes and all the property that had belonged to Thorolf. Eyvind was a man of high birth. His children with Sigrid were Finn the Squinter, who was the father of Eyvind the Plagiarist, and Geirlaug, whose husband was Sighvat the Red. Finn the Squinter married Gunnhild. Her father was Earl Halfdan and her mother was Ingibjorg, the daughter of King Harald Fair-hair.

  Eyvind Lamb and the king remained friends for the rest of their lives.

  23 There was a man called Ketil Haeng, whose parents were Earl Thorkel of Naumdal and Hrafnhild, daughter of Ketil Haeng from Hrafnista. Haeng was a man of good reputation and noble birth; he had been a great friend of Thorolf Kveldulfsson, who was his kinsman. He had taken part in the call to arms when forces were mustered in Halogaland to support Thorolf, as was written above. When King Harald left the north and it

  became known that Thorolf had been killed, the forces disbanded. Haeng turned back with sixty men and went to Torgar, where they encountered Hildirid’s sons, who had only a small force with them. On reaching the farm, Haeng attacked them. Hildirid’s sons were killed there, along with most of the others, and Haeng and his men seized all the booty they could take.

  Afterwards Haeng took the two largest knorrs he was able to find and loaded them with all the belongings he could manage to take with him. He put on board his wife and children and all the men who had taken part in his deeds. Baug, Haeng’s foster-brother, a wealthy man of good family, was at the helm of one of the knorrs. When they were ready to sail and the wind was favourable, they put out to sea.

  A few years previously Ingolf and Hjorleif* had gone to settle in Iceland. Their voyage was much talked about and people said there was plenty of good land available.

  Haeng sailed westwards in search of Iceland, and he and his men sighted land when they were off the south coast. But because of the stormy weather and heavy waves breaking on the shores and the poor harbours, they sailed westwards along the Icelandic coast, past the sands. When the storm began to lull and the seas calmed, they came to a large estuary into which they sailed their ships and moored off the eastern shore. This river is now called Thjorsa and was much narrower and deeper then. They unloaded their ships and set off to explore the land east of the river, moving their livestock there afterwards. Haeng wintered on the west side of the Outer Ranga river, and when spring came he explored the land to the east, claiming the territory between the Thjorsa and Markarfljot rivers, from mountain to shore, and built a farmstead at Hof by East Ranga.

  In the spring of their first year in Iceland, Ketil Haeng’s wife Ingunn gave birth to a boy they called Hrafn, and after they took down the buildings there the place became known as Hrafntoftir (Hrafn’s Toft).

  Haeng gave Baug the land in Fljotshlid from the Merkia river down to the river west of Breidabolstad. Baug lived at Hlidarendi and the large family in that district is descended from him. Haeng gave land to some of his ship’s crew and sold land for a low price to others, and they are also considered among the original settlers.

  One of Haeng’s sons, Storolf, owned the land at Hvol and Storolfshvol; he was the father of Orm the Strong. Another of his sons, Herjolf, owned the land in Fljotshlid bordering on Baug‘s, out to the brook at Hvolslaek. He lived at the foot of the slopes at Brekkur, and was the father of Sumarlidi, whose son was Veturlidi the Poet. Haeng had a third son, Helgi, who lived at Vellir and owned the land there as far as the boundary of his brothers’ farms by the East Ranga river. Vestar, Haeng’s fourth son, owned the land east of Ranga, between that river and Thvera, and the lower part of Storolfshvol. His wife was Moeid, the daughter of Hildir from Hildisey, and they had a daughter called Asny, who married Ofeig Grettir. Vestar lived at Moeidarhvol. Hrafn, Haeng’s fifth son, became the first Lawspeaker in Iceland. He lived at Hof after his father died. Thorlaug, Hrafn’s daughter, married Jorund the Godi, and their son was Valgard from Hof. Hrafn was the most prominent of Haeng’s sons.

  24 When Kveldulf heard about the death of his son Thorolf, he was so saddened by the news that he took to his bed, overcome by grief and old age.

  Skallagrim went to see him regularly and tried to talk him round. He told him to take heart, saying that nothing was less becoming to him than to be bedridden.

  ‘A more suitable course would be for us to take vengeance for Thorolf,’ he said. ‘There is a chance that we will come within reach of some of the men who were responsible for Thorolf’s death. If not, there
are men we can take that would not be to the king’s liking.’

  Then Kveldulf spoke a verse:

  1. The spinner of fate is grim to me:

  I hear that Thorolf has met his end

  on a northern isle; too early

  the Thunderer chose the swinger of swords. Thunderer: Thund, a name of Odin; chose: i.e. for Valhalla, by letting him be killed

  The hag of old age who once wrestled with Thor

  has left me unprepared to join

  the Valkyries’ clash of steel. Urge as my spirit

  may, my revenge will not be swift.

  That summer King Harald went to Oppland, and in the autumn he headed westwards to Valdres all the way to Voss. Olvir was with the king and often suggested to him that he should consider making compensation for Thorolf, by offering Kveldulf and Skallagrim money or some honour they would accept. The king did not rule out the possibility entirely, if Kveldulf and his son would come to see him.