Kjartan and Bolli

Kjartan had bought his share of the ship before he told Guðrún he was leaving.

He came to Laugar with the journey settled in his mind: the cargo, the summer sailing, the countries he had not seen. She listened until he finished. Then she asked how long he had been making decisions that concerned them both without speaking to her.

He offered to do something to please her.

“Take me with you.”

For a moment the journey stood between them differently. She would see the foreign shores, hear the unfamiliar voices, stand beside him when the land dropped out of sight.

But Kjartan shook his head. Her father was old. Her brothers still needed her. Who would look after the household if she went?

“Wait three winters,” he said.

Guðrún would promise nothing.

They had spent many hours together at the warm spring near Laugar, talking while steam drifted low across the water. There Kjartan had found someone as quick with words as he was with his hands. When he came, Bolli usually came too. They were cousins, raised as foster-brothers in the house of Kjartan’s father, Ólafr Peacock; neither enjoyed a journey much unless the other shared it.

Now Bolli would cross the sea with him. Guðrún would remain.

Kjartan rode away without the promise he had asked for.

The News Bolli Brought

In Norway, the two young men entered the world of King Ólafr Tryggvason. Kjartan won the king’s affection, accepted the Christian faith, and found himself honoured at court. But the king wanted Iceland converted too. When that work met resistance, the sea-road home closed. Kjartan was among the Icelanders kept as hostages.

Bolli was allowed to leave.

Before he sailed, he spoke of waiting another winter, if Kjartan might then be free. Yet the king seemed determined to keep him. And perhaps Kjartan did not greatly miss Iceland while he sat talking with Ingibjörg, the king’s sister.

Kjartan checked him at that.

“Carry my greetings home,” he said.

Bolli carried more than greetings.

At Laugar, Guðrún questioned him closely. How had the voyage gone? What life did Kjartan lead? Was he coming back?

Bolli spoke of the honour paid to his foster-brother, of his place beside the king, of how little reason such a man might have to leave Norway. Guðrún asked whether the king’s friendship was the only thing holding him there.

Then Bolli told her what people said of Ingibjörg. If the choice came, he thought the king would sooner give Kjartan his sister than let him go.

Guðrún’s face reddened.

“Then he must choose a worthy wife,” she said, and ended the conversation.

Bolli returned often. At last he asked what answer she would give if he sought her hand.

“While Kjartan lives, I will marry no one else.”

He reminded her that Kjartan had sent no particular message about their future. How many winters did she mean to wait?

She would not yield that day. But Bolli spoke to her father, and her father spoke to her. Her brothers wanted the alliance. Bolli was wealthy, brave, well connected: every reason they gave was sound, and none answered the thing she had asked him first.

Ólafr Peacock would not help arrange it. He knew what had passed between his son and Guðrún. Yet he did not forbid Bolli to proceed.

Under her family’s urging, Guðrún ceased to refuse. The wedding took place as winter began. Bolli stayed at Laugar, and the woman he had wanted was his wife. She gave him little warmth.

The following summer, news reached Norway that Iceland had accepted Christianity. The king released his hostages.

Kjartan asked to go home.

The White Headdress

Before he left, Ingibjörg gave him a white headdress woven with gold. It lay folded inside a fine pouch, light enough to carry in one hand and rich enough to draw every eye in an Icelandic hall.

He was to give it to Guðrún as a bridal gift.

Kjartan took it across the sea. In Iceland he learned that Guðrún had married Bolli.

He made no public outcry. He brought his goods home to his father’s house, accepted the welcome, and grew quiet.

Ólafr persuaded him to attend a feast at Laugar. Bolli met him with a kiss and tried to make him welcome. When the visit ended, he offered Kjartan a splendid stallion and three matching mares.

Kjartan would not take them.

His father urged him. Such horses were no small gift.

“I have no use for them.”

Bolli could neither make him accept nor withdraw the offer without everyone seeing it had failed. The horses remained behind when Kjartan rode away.

There was another woman who had worn the headdress for a little while. Hrefna, the sister of Kjartan’s trading partner, had found it among his goods and tried it on. Her brother had scolded her, but Kjartan had said it suited her.

That winter they met again. His sister encouraged him to speak with Hrefna, and they talked together through the day. By evening he had found more to admire than the way the gold lay against her hair.

They married in the summer. He gave her the headdress, and at their wedding he laughed and told stories of Norway. They loved each other, and for a time his father could listen to his voice in the hall without wondering what had become of it.

But the two households still visited one another.

At a feast in Ólafr’s house, Guðrún heard Kjartan say that Hrefna should have the place of greatest honour. It was the place Guðrún had been accustomed to taking.

Later she asked to see the famous headdress. Hrefna opened the chest, drew out its pouch, and unfolded the white cloth. Guðrún examined it without praise or blame. Hrefna folded it away again.

When the guests departed, Kjartan’s sword was missing—the fine sword the king had given him. A searcher followed footprints into the brushwood and found it hidden in wet ground. Its scabbard was gone.

Kjartan put the recovered blade away in a chest. His father counselled restraint, and for the moment he accepted it.

Then they went to feast at Laugar.

Hrefna had wished to leave the headdress at home. Persuaded to bring it, she handed over her things for safekeeping. In the morning the headdress could not be found.

They searched. Guðrún suggested it might have been forgotten at home or lost on the journey.

Before leaving, Kjartan spoke where everyone could hear. First his sword, now his wife’s treasure: he expected Bolli to put these losses right.

Bolli stared at him.

“I did not take them.”

“Then speak to those who did.”

Guðrún answered before Bolli could. If someone had taken the headdress, perhaps they had only taken what ought to have been theirs. She would not mourn its loss from Hrefna’s wardrobe.

Kjartan left. No one ever brought the headdress back.

The Closed Doors

After Yule, sixty men rode with Kjartan to Laugar. They carried tents and provisions. They did not come to ask for hospitality.

He stationed men at the doors and would allow nobody out. The privies stood beyond the dwelling, across ground his men controlled. For three nights the household was kept inside, unable even to attend to its bodily needs in privacy.

When he had made his meaning plain, Kjartan rode home.

Bolli tried to quiet Guðrún’s brothers. Guðrún said little. Outside, their captors’ horses had churned the ground; inside, everyone knew what the neighbours would hear.

Then Kjartan took away the farm they meant to buy.

Bolli and Guðrún had agreed a price for Tongue, but the bargain had not yet been made before the necessary witnesses. Kjartan went to the owner with men at his back. He offered the same price and made the alternatives clear: sell to him, or keep the land.

The owner gave way.

When the news reached Laugar, Guðrún told Bolli what choices she thought remained to him. He could leave the district in disgrace, or face Kjartan with more resolution than he had shown so far.

Bolli went out without answering.

In Easter week, news came that Kjartan would be riding home through the valley with few companions.

At sunrise Guðrún woke her brothers.

Were they going to sleep through this day too? Kjartan could shut them in their own house and take land from under their hands, and still they would let him ride past unhindered?

One after another, they rose and dressed.

Bolli refused to join them. Kjartan was his kinsman. Ólafr had brought him up lovingly. He could not repay that house by going out against its son.

Guðrún told him that if he stayed behind, their marriage was over.

He stood while the others buckled on their weapons. At last he took his own.

Footbiter

They waited beside a steep-sided gully called Goat-gill. Bolli lay high on its bank, silent, where a rider approaching from the west might see him.

Guðrún’s brothers disliked his choice of place. They climbed up, seized him in rough play, and dragged him below the edge.

Elsewhere in the valley, Kjartan was sending his escort home. Friends had insisted on accompanying him, but he would not go farther surrounded by men as though he were afraid.

They urged him to let them ride on.

Bolli would never join a plot against his life, Kjartan said.

He continued with two companions.

When the ambush broke, he dismounted beside a great stone and turned to meet it. A spear flew. Men closed around him. His companion Án fought in front of him until he fell wounded, and still Kjartan held his ground.

The sword in his hand was not the king’s gift. Its blade bent under the blows. He set his foot upon it, straightened it, and fought again.

Bolli stood apart, his hand on the sword called Footbiter.

Kjartan saw him there.

“Choose,” he called. “If you came to fight, choose your side.”

Bolli did not move.

Then Óspakr, Guðrún’s brother, turned on him. Had he promised help only to watch? If Kjartan escaped this day, what mercy could any of them expect? Bolli had ridden out with them. He would share what followed whether he struck or not.

Footbiter came out of its sheath.

Kjartan watched his foster-brother approach. He was exhausted, but he could still have raised his weapon. Instead he spoke to Bolli as he had spoken to him all his life, calling him kinsman.

He would rather die at Bolli’s hand than kill him.

His weapons fell to the ground.

Bolli struck.

Then he was kneeling, gathering Kjartan against him. The fight had ceased. There was no further choice to make, no blow to parry, nothing for Footbiter to do.

Kjartan died with his head in Bolli’s lap.

Bolli acknowledged the killing. He sent the others away and remained beside the body.

When he returned to Laugar, Guðrún came out to meet him. She asked the time.

Nearly noon.

She had spun enough yarn for twelve ells of cloth, she told him. He had killed Kjartan.

Bolli looked at her. He would remember without being reminded.

She spoke of the humiliations ended, of how Kjartan had trodden him down since returning from Norway. Then she said that Hrefna would not go happily to bed that night.

Bolli’s anger broke through his weariness.

Was Hrefna going to turn any paler than Guðrún herself? Would she have been less troubled if he lay dead and Kjartan had brought the news?

Guðrún thanked him for doing what she wanted.

The Father’s Choice

At home, Ólafr heard that Kjartan was dead. His surviving sons wanted to ride against Bolli at once.

He refused.

“Will Kjartan be alive when you return?”

They could answer nothing that would alter the news.

He had loved Kjartan above every other man, he told them. Yet Bolli had grown up in his house too. He could not bear to have him killed.

More kinsmen were coming, men furious at what had happened. Ólafr gathered a force of his own and sent it to Laugar with orders to guard Bolli as faithfully as they would guard him.

At the settlement, Guðrún’s brothers were banished from Iceland. Bolli paid compensation and remained. Kjartan’s brothers resented the mercy shown him. Ólafr would maintain it while he lived.

Hrefna went north to her family. She did not marry again, and lived only a little longer.

Kjartan’s body lay for a week in his father’s house. Then it was carried south to Borg, where his mother’s brother had built a church. Newly consecrated, it was still hung in white.

There they buried him. Bolli was alive at Laugar, under the protection of Kjartan’s father.