Gata (Gate)

Gata is Thrond's seat in the Faroes — the centre of pagan, anti-Norwegian resistance in Færeyinga saga, and the lair of one of the corpus's great villains. From this island stronghold the cunning, long-lived Thrond works his lifetime of scheming, sorcery, and treachery against the king's Christian champion Sigmund, surviving and out-waiting every man sent to break him, even working a grim necromancy here to make murdered men's images speak and name their killers. Gata is the saga's image of the old order's stubborn hold — the seat of heathen, independent resistance in the islands, the home of the schemer who will not be ruled or converted, the dark pole against which the bright Christian hero contends, and from which the islands' cleverest survivor outlasts them all.