thematic thread
Vengeance & the Blood-Feud
It begins at the founding: the first killing on Icelandic soil — Hjörleifr murdered by his thralls — is answered at once by Ingólf. Before the island is even settled, the law of blood-for-blood is established.
The first blood
The settlement's beginning is also the site of Iceland's first killing — and it carries a pointed lesson. Ingólfr's foster-brother Hjörleifr settled apart, and, the book says, he scorned to sacrifice to the gods, trusting his own strength instead. He had brought Irish thralls (slaves) taken on a viking raid, and these thralls rose against him and murdered him — the first blood shed on Icelandic soil.[1]
Ingólfr, when he found his foster-brother's body, drew the moral aloud: see how the man who would not honour the gods has come to his end. He then hunted down the runaway thralls — who had fled to some nearby islands — and killed them in vengeance, giving those islands a name that recalled the deed. The episode sets, at the very foundation, two of the deepest patterns of the saga world: that vengeance follows killing as surely as night follows day, and that the gods are not to be scorned. From the first season, Iceland is a place where blood is answered with blood and where fate and the old powers must be reckoned with — the moral physics of every saga to come, written into the settlement itself.
The source text · 1
After that Hjorleif went to Norway and found there Ingolf his foster-brother. He had before this married Helga, the daughter af Om, Ingolfs sister. That winter Ingolf made a great sacrifice and consulted the oracles concerning his destiny=(forlog or what is "laid" up) but Hjorleif alu^ays contemned sacrifices. The oracle • marked an abode for Ingolf in Iceland. After that each of those kinsmen-in-law prepared his ship for the Icelandic expedition, Hjorleif taking on board his ship his warbooty; but Ingolf, on his, the wealth they owned in fellowship; and when all their equipments were ready, they set out to sea.— landnamabok
Hjörleifr, who scorned sacrifice, murdered by his Irish thralls (Ellwood 1898).
Hrafnkell kills the boy Einar over a forbidden ride — not in rage but to keep an oath — and the whole saga unspools from that one death and the vengeance it owes.
The oath kept
In the morning Hrafnkell rode up to the dairy in a blue cloak with an axe in his hand and nothing else. He found Einarr on the pen wall, counting the sheep, the women at the milking. He asked, mild as anything, how the work went. Fine, said Einarr — though thirty ewes had been lost a week, he had them back now.
No matter, said Hrafnkell. Losses happen. But — and here the voice would have changed — “did you not ride Freyfaxi yesterday?” Einarr could not deny it. He admitted it plainly, and even that honesty Hrafnkell acknowledged: he would have forgiven the ride, he said, had he not sworn so great an oath about it.[1]
And because he believed that men who keep their vows come to no harm, he sprang from his horse and struck the boy dead. Then he rode home and reported it, the way you report a thing that is finished. He had Einarr's body carried to a knoll above the dairy and a cairn raised; they still tell the noon-hour by the shadow it throws. The saga gives the killing in a single clean stroke — no rage in it, only a man balancing an oath against a life and finding the oath the heavier thing.[2]
The source text · 2
In the evening Hrafnkell went to his bed as usual, and slept through the night. In the morning he had a horse brought home to him, and ordered it to be saddled, and rode up to the dairy. He rode in blue raiment: he had an axe in his hand, but no other weapons about him. At that time Einarr had just driven the ewes into the pen, and lay on the wall of the pen, casting up the number of the sheep; but the women were busy a-milking. They all greeted Hrafnkell, and he asked how they got on. Einarr answered: "I have had no good speed myself, for no less than thirty ewes were missing for a week, though now I have found them again." Hrafnkell said, he had no fault to find with tilings of that kind; "It has not happened so often as might have been expected, that thou hast lost the ewes. But has not something worse befallen than that? Didst thou not have a ride on 'Freymane' yesterday?" Einarr said he could not gainsay that utterly. "Why didst thou ride on this horse which was forbidden thee, while there were plenty of others on which thou art free to ride? Now this one trespass I should have forgiven thee, if I had not used words of such earnest already. And yet thou hast manfully confessed thy guilt." But by reason of the belief that those who fulfil their vows never come to grief, he leaped off his horse, sprang upon Einarr, and dealt him his death-blow. After that, having done the deed, he rode home to Aðalból and there told these tidings. He got him another shepherd to take charge of the dairy. But he had Einarr's dead body brought westward upon the terrace by the dairy, and there set up a beacon beside his cairn; and it is called Einarr's beacon, where, when the sun is right above it, they count mid-eve hour (six o'clock) at the dairy.— hrafnkels saga
Hrafnkell confronts Einarr at the dairy.
In the evening Hrafnkell went to his bed as usual, and slept through the night. In the morning he had a horse brought home to him, and ordered it to be saddled, and rode up to the dairy. He rode in blue raiment: he had an axe in his hand, but no other weapons about him. At that time Einarr had just driven the ewes into the pen, and lay on the wall of the pen, casting up the number of the sheep; but the women were busy a-milking. They all greeted Hrafnkell, and he asked how they got on. Einarr answered: "I have had no good speed myself, for no less than thirty ewes were missing for a week, though now I have found them again." Hrafnkell said, he had no fault to find with tilings of that kind; "It has not happened so often as might have been expected, that thou hast lost the ewes. But has not something worse befallen than that? Didst thou not have a ride on 'Freymane' yesterday?" Einarr said he could not gainsay that utterly. "Why didst thou ride on this horse which was forbidden thee, while there were plenty of others on which thou art free to ride? Now this one trespass I should have forgiven thee, if I had not used words of such earnest already. And yet thou hast manfully confessed thy guilt." But by reason of the belief that those who fulfil their vows never come to grief, he leaped off his horse, sprang upon Einarr, and dealt him his death-blow. After that, having done the deed, he rode home to Aðalból and there told these tidings. He got him another shepherd to take charge of the dairy. But he had Einarr's dead body brought westward upon the terrace by the dairy, and there set up a beacon beside his cairn; and it is called Einarr's beacon, where, when the sun is right above it, they count mid-eve hour (six o'clock) at the dairy.— hrafnkels saga
The killing, kept as an oath.
The feud at its most appalling: unable to reach their enemies any other way, the avengers burn Njáll and his family alive in their hall. Vengeance has stopped being justice and become atrocity.
The fire takes the hall
They came in the night. Njáll made the fatal, human choice to bring everyone inside the strong house rather than fight in the open — and Flosi's men, unable to beat the defenders at the doors, set the hall alight. Even then there was black saga humour in it: as they built the fire, Skarphéðinn called out from within, asking whether the lads were lighting a fire or taking to cooking. “Thou shalt not need to be better done,” came the answer.[1]
The women smothered the first flames with whey. So the burners fired the loft above, with the vetch-stack, and the roof was ablaze before anyone inside knew. Njáll quieted the wailing women with terrible calm: this is but a passing storm, he said, and God is merciful and will not let us burn in this world and the next.[2]
The source text · 2
Now they took fire, and made a great pile before the doors. Then Skarphedinn said.— njals saga
The fire is set; Skarphéðinn's grim jest.
Njal spoke to them and said, "Keep up your hearts, nor utter shrieks, for this is but a passing storm, and it will be long before ye have another such; and put your faith in God, and believe that He is so merciful that He will not let us burn both in this world and the next."— njals saga
Njáll calms the household: 'a passing storm.'
And its absolute extreme: Guðrún avenges her murdered brothers by killing the sons she bore her husband and feeding him their hearts. The feud, pursued to the end, consumes even one's own children.
Gudrun's terrible revenge
Atli has his murders but not his gold — and now he must answer to Guðrún, whose brothers he has killed. Her vengeance is the most appalling in all Norse legend, and the lay tells it without flinching. She kills the two young sons she has borne to Atli, and at the victory-feast she serves their father their own children's hearts and blood to eat and drink — then tells him what he has consumed.[1]
Then she finishes it: she stabs Atli in his bed, gives his blood to the bedclothes, and sets fire to the hall, burning Atli and all his household within.[2] It is horror piled on horror, and the lay does not soften it or moralise — it simply lets the cursed gold's logic run to its end. This is where the heroic ethos of vengeance, pursued absolutely, arrives: a woman destroying her own children to wound her husband, a hall of the dead, a family annihilated root and branch. Guðrún has answered the murder of her brothers in the only currency the feud knows, and the cost is everything. The cursed gold of Andvari has taken its final, total harvest.
The source text · 2
"Thou giver of swords, / of thy sons the hearts / All heavy with blood / in honey thou hast eaten; / Thou shalt stomach, thou hero, / the flesh of the slain, / To eat at thy feast, / and to send to thy followers.— atli gudrun lays
Guðrún tells Atli he has eaten the hearts of their sons (Bellows 1923).
With her sword she gave blood / for the bed to drink, / / With her death-dealing hand, / and the hounds she loosed, / The thralls she awakened, / and a firebrand threw / In the door of the hall; / so vengeance she had.— atli gudrun lays
Guðrún stabs Atli and gives his blood to the bed (Bellows 1923).
The other key: vengeance delayed is not vengeance abandoned. Old, lamed Howard waits years, is goaded by his wife, and finally answers his son's killing — late, but sure. The debt does not expire.
Vengeance, full of years
The reckoning came. Backed by Steinþórr and risen out of his grief, old Howard the Halt led the attack, and Þorbjǫrn was slain — the overbearing chief who had killed a sackless son and scorned the law brought down at last by the man he had thought too old and broken to matter.[1] The vengeance was late, but it was sure; the wrong, so long left to stand, was answered.
And then, unusually for a feud-saga, Howard gets an ending of grace. He does not die in the violence; he settles his affairs, sells his lands, and goes north, even sailing abroad, and in his old age comes into the new faith — bringing home great church-timber from which a church is later raised. He dies, as the saga's last chapter has it, full of years and honour: his grave set in that stately church, and Howard held ever after for a very great man.[2] It is a quietly remarkable arc — a story that begins with a helpless lamed old man sunk in grief, and ends with him vindicated, at peace, and honoured — the rare saga where late vengeance is followed not by ruin but by rest.
The source text · 2
Tell we now how Thorgrim woke, and was waxen hot; then spake he: "I have been up to the house and about it awhile ; but all was so dim to me that I wot not what shall befall me; yet let us go home to the house: meseems we should burn them in, so may we the speediest bring the end about."— havardar saga
The vengeance falls; Þorbjǫrn slain (Morris & Magnússon).
The stateliest house was that, and therein was set Howard's grave, and he was held for a very great man.— havardar saga
A church made of Howard's wood; his grave set there, and he held for a very great man (Morris & Magnússon).
How it ends, when it ends: not in more blood but in a kiss of atonement at Svínafell, Kári and Flosi reconciled at last. The only thing that finally stops the chain is the will to stop it.
The kiss at Svínafell
Kári turned at last for home. Sailing late in the season, his ship was dashed to pieces on the Icelandic coast in a gale — and of all the houses he might have made for, he chose, deliberately, to go to Flosi's hall at Svínafell and, as the saga puts it, put Flosi's manhood to the proof. He walked in out of the storm, his enemy of all these years.[1]
Flosi knew him the instant he entered. He sprang up, went to meet him, kissed him, and sat him in the high-seat at his own side. They were reconciled with a full atonement — and Flosi gave Kári the hand of Hildigunnr: Höskuldr's widow, the woman whose blood-stiff cloak had set the whole burning in motion. The feud ends in the marriage-bed of its own beginning.[2]
Flosi, grown old, later sailed for Norway in a ship men told him was unseaworthy; he said she was good enough for an old and death-doomed man, put to sea, and was never heard of again. And there, the saga says plainly, the story of Burnt Njáll comes to its close — not on a killing, but on two enemies who had taken everything from each other choosing, in the end, peace.
The source text · 2
Now they ask Kari what counsel was to be taken; but he said their best plan was to go to Swinefell and put Flosi's manhood to the proof.— njals saga
Storm-wrecked, Kári goes to Flosi at Svínafell.
Flosi asked Kari to be there that winter, and Kari took his offer. Then they were atoned with a full atonement.— njals saga
Flosi rises, kisses Kári; full atonement; Hildigunnr to wife.
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