Björn of the Mark

Björn of the Mark is the comic ally of Kári's vengeance — a boastful but ultimately game farmer who talks far bigger than he fights, and yet does not fail when it matters. When Kári, hunting the burners, takes shelter with him, Björn boasts endlessly of his own courage and prowess to his skeptical wife and to Kári; and though his actual fighting falls comically short of his talk, he stands by Kári in the skirmishes and proves, in the end, loyal and useful. He is the saga's rare touch of comedy in a grim tale — the small man whose vanity is gently mocked but whose loyalty is real. Björn is the saga's image of the boaster who is not, after all, a coward — the puffed-up farmer whose deeds never match his words but who, when the avenger needs a hand, is there, the humorous, faithful sidekick of the deadliest manhunt in the corpus.