Helgafell (Holy Fell)

Helgafell — the 'Holy Fell' — is a small, steep-sided hill on the Snæfellsnes peninsula in western Iceland, held sacred from the first days of the settlement; Þórólfr Most-Beard hallowed it to Thor and forbade any man to look on it unwashed, believing the dead of his line passed into it. Across the sagas it is a seat of power and of peace: the great strategist Snorri goði held it, and it is where the proud Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir, after four marriages and a lifetime of loves and griefs, came at last to end her days as Iceland's first nun and anchoress. It is at Helgafell, old and blind, that she gives the most famous answer in the sagas — asked which man she loved the most, she says, 'I was worst to the one I loved the best.' A holy hill that gathers up the whole arc from heathen sanctity to Christian penance, and holds the corpus's deepest word on love and regret.