Fitjar

Fitjar, on the island of Stord, is where Hakon the Good won his last battle and took his death-wound. Surprised by the sons of his old enemy Gunnhild with a great force, the best-loved of the early kings drew up his men and fought magnificently — at one point, the saga says, throwing off his armour in the joy of the fight — and won the field; but an arrow caught him in the arm, and the small wound would not stop bleeding. Asking to be carried north toward his house, he died on the way, and (a Christian king in a heathen land) asked to be buried as a heathen. Fitjar is the saga's image of victory and death in the same hour — the island battlefield where the gentle king beat his enemies and bled to death at the moment of triumph.