Hvammsfjörðr

Hvammsfjord is the firth of the Dales — the water of Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir's fourth and last dream, and the setting of much of Laxdæla. On its shores stand the seats of the great Dales families whose loves and killings the saga follows; and in the famous dream Guðrún told to the wise Gest, this firth is where her fourth husband will drown, the last of the four marriages Gest reads from her four strange dreams. Hvammsfjord is the saga's image of the home-water of the Dales — the firth that frames the country of Guðrún's loves and losses, the water of the final dream, the still center of the landscape across which the proudest woman in the sagas lives out her four marriages and arrives, at last, at her famous reckoning with all she has loved and lost.