Bergþórshváll

Bergþórshváll — 'Bergthora's Knoll' — is Njáll's farm on the flat coastal lands of southern Iceland, and the site of the most terrible scene in all the sagas: the Burning. After years of feud the man Flosi and a hundred followers surrounded the house by night, and when they could not beat the defenders in the doorway, they set fire to it and burned Njáll, his wife Bergþóra, their sons, and the household alive within. Njáll, who could have fought free, lay down with Bergþóra under an ox-hide and let the fire take them; only Kári Sölmundarson broke out through the smoke to become the avenger. Burning men in their hall was the blackest act the Norse imagination knew — a violation of every law of guest and home — and Bergþórshváll is its name forever. The quiet knoll where the wisest man in Iceland chose to die rather than betray his own composure.