Hlíðarendi

Hlíðarendi — 'Lithend', the slope's end — is Gunnar's farm in the Fljótshlíð of southern Iceland, and the stage of the most famous moment in all the sagas. It is a fair place, set against a green hillside, and Gunnar loved it past reason. Ordered into exile and riding for the ship that would carry him to safety, he glanced back at the slope — the cornfields mown, the hillside fair — and spoke the words every Icelander knows: 'Fair is the slope; never have I seen it so fair — and I will ride back home, and go abroad nowhere.' That choice to stay was his death warrant. Besieged in his hall on this hillside, his bowstring cut, he made his magnificent last stand here. Hlíðarendi is the saga world's great emblem of love of place — the beauty of a piece of ground worth dying not to leave.