Þverá

Þverá is the great seat of Víga-Glúm in Eyjafjörðr, in northern Iceland — a rich farm with its own temple of Frey by the river, and the very ground on which Glúm's whole fortune rests. The saga makes the land itself the stake: as long as Glúm holds Þverá and the favour of the god whose temple stands on it, his luck and power are unbreakable. But when he commits a killing on this sacred ground and compounds it with a deceitful oath, the god turns against him; his luck-tokens pass out of his hands, and he is at last dispossessed of the very seat that was the source of his strength. Þverá is the saga's image of the holy farm — land and luck and divine favour bound together, so that to lose the ground is to lose everything. The seat whose loss is the loss of a chieftain's whole world.