Drangey

Drangey is a sheer-sided island rising straight out of the fjord of Skagafjörðr in northern Iceland — a natural fortress of cliffs, reachable only by ladder, where Grettir the Strong spent the last years of his nineteen-year outlawry. For the mightiest man in Iceland it was the perfect refuge and the cruelest prison: unassailable by force, but a rock at the world's edge where a man condemned to fear the dark could only wait. With his brother and a thrall he held it against all comers, living on the island's sheep and birds, his fire forever needing tending. In the end no man could take Grettir on Drangey by strength — it took a witch's curse worked into a cursed log of driftwood, and a wound that would not heal, to bring him down at last. Drangey is the outlaw's world shrunk to its smallest possible point: one rock, the sea all round, and nowhere left to run.