Dingnes (Norway)

Dingness is the field in Norway where Gunnlaug Worm-Tongue and his rival Hrafn fight their final, fatal duel over Helga the Fair. Forbidden to settle their quarrel by formal holmgang in Iceland, the two poets meet abroad, and here their long rivalry comes to its bloody end: in the fight Gunnlaug wounds Hrafn, and when the wounded man asks for water and Gunnlaug fetches it in his helmet, Hrafn treacherously strikes at him — so that both are mortally hurt and both die. Dingness is the saga's image of the place where love and pride end in mutual ruin — the foreign field where two gifted poets, who might have shared a country, instead destroy each other, leaving Helga to mourn them both. The ground where the small perfect tragedy of Gunnlaugs saga is sealed.