The Story of Grettir the Strong eBook

Allen French
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 319 pages of information about The Story of Grettir the Strong.

The Story of Grettir the Strong eBook

Allen French
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 319 pages of information about The Story of Grettir the Strong.

Now Grettir abode there, and made himself a hut of such wood as he could come by.  He took of the sheep for his meat, and there was more on one of them than on two elsewhere:  one ewe there was, brown with a polled head, with her lamb, that he deemed the greatest beauty for her goodly growth.  He was fain to take the lamb, and so he did, and thereafter slaughtered it:  three stone of suet there was in it, but the whole carcase was even better.  But when Brownhead missed her lamb, she went up on Grettir’s hut every night, and bleated in suchwise that he might not sleep anight, so that it misliked him above all things that he had slaughtered the lamb, because of her troubling.

But every evening at twilight he heard some one hoot up in the valley, and then all the sheep ran together to one fold every evening.

So Grettir says, that a half-troll ruled over the valley, a giant hight Thorir, and in trust of his keeping did Grettir abide there; by him did Grettir name the valley, calling it Thorir’s-dale.  He said withal that Thorir had daughters, with whom he himself had good game, and that they took it well, for not many were the new-comers thereto; but when fasting time was, Grettir made this change therein, that fat and livers should be eaten in Lent.

Now nought happed to be told of through the winter.  At last Grettir found it so dreary there, that he might abide there no longer:  then he gat him gone from the valley, and went south across the jokul, and came from the north, right against the midst of Shieldbroadfell.

He raised up a flat stone and bored a hole therein, and said that whoso put his eye to the hole in that stone should straightway behold the gulf of the pass that leads from Thorir’s-vale.

So he fared south through the land, and thence to the Eastfirths; and in this journey he was that summer long, and the winter, and met all the great men there, but somewhat ever thrust him aside that nowhere got he harbouring or abode; then he went back by the north, and dwelt at sundry places.

CHAP.  LXII.

Of the Death of Hallmund, Grettir’s Friend.

A little after Grettir had gone from Ernewaterheath, there came a man thither, Grim by name, the son of the widow at Kropp.  He had slain the son of Eid Skeggison of the Ridge, and had been outlawed therefor; he abode whereas Grettir had dwelt afore, and got much fish from the water.  Hallmund took it ill that he had come in Grettir’s stead, and was minded that he should have little good hap how much fish soever he caught.

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The Story of Grettir the Strong from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.