Gísli Súrsson

Gísli Súrsson is the sagas' most sympathetic outlaw — a good man trapped by the very loyalties that make him good. Bound by sworn-brotherhood and tangled in the marriages of his Westfjords kin, he secretly avenges the murder of his beloved brother-in-law by killing the likely killer — but conceals it, and the concealment poisons everything. Outlawed for thirteen years, he is sheltered above all by his wife Aud, whose loyalty never wavers even when offered silver to betray him. Gísli is a dreamer and a poet, troubled by two dream-women, one kind and one cruel, who visit his sleep and foretell his end. Cornered at last on a headland, he fights with a magnificent defiance, killing and wounding many before he falls with a final verse on his lips. Hunted to death but never broken — the outlaw's only possible victory, and the saga's quiet argument that a man can lose everything and keep himself.