Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld

Thormód Kolbrúnarskáld is the warrior-poet of St Olaf's last battle — the skald who steels the king's army for death with an old poem, and dies composing his own last verse. The night before Stiklestad, when Olaf's small, sleepless force needs heart, it is Thormód who recites the ancient Bjarkamál, the old summons to die well beside one's lord, and the army wakes the stronger for it. He fights under the king's banner in the battle, and afterward, mortally wounded by an arrow lodged in his heart, he goes among the wounded and — asked to let a woman tend his hurt — answers with a perfect, defiant half-stanza about the king's table-fellows, finishing the verse as he dies on his feet. Thormód is the saga's purest image of the poet-warrior: a man who lives and dies by both sword and word, whose last act is not a cry of pain but the completion of a poem.