Hrefna

Hrefna is Kjartan's wife in Laxdæla — a gentle, blameless woman caught and destroyed in the crossfire of Guðrún's jealousy. Kjartan marries her after losing Guðrún, and she is happy and kind; but her joy is poisoned by the rivalry between the two households. The famous wound is small and cruel: at a feast Hrefna wears a precious headdress Kjartan brought from abroad, and it is stolen — by Guðrún's people, out of spite — and the theft of the headdress becomes one more turn in the escalating bitterness that leads to Kjartan's killing. When Kjartan is dead, Hrefna does not long survive him: she dies, the saga says simply, of a broken heart. Hrefna is the saga's image of the innocent casualty — the good wife who did no wrong, married a man another woman could not let go of, and was broken by a jealousy that was never about her at all.