fighting was desperate on either side.  Then the king ordered his berserks, the men called Wolfskins, forward.  No iron could hurt them, and when they charged nothing could withstand them.  Thorir defended himself bravely and fell on his ship fighting valiantly.  The whole ship from stem to stern was cleared and her fastenings were cut, so that she fell out of the line of battle.  Then they attacked Onund’s ship, in the forepart of which he was standing and fighting manfully.  The king’s men said:  “He bears himself well in the forecastle.  Let us give him something to remind him of having been in the battle.”  Onund was stepping out with one foot on to the bulwark, and as he was striking they made a thrust at him with a spear; in parrying it he bent backwards, and at that moment a man on the forecastle of the king’s ship struck him and took off his leg below the knee, disabling him at a blow.  With him fell the greater number of his men.  They carried him to a ship belonging to a man named Thrand, a son of Bjorn and brother of Eyvind the Easterner.  He was fighting against King Harald, and his ship was lying on the other side of Onund’s.  Then there was a general flight.  Thrand and the rest of the vikings escaped any way they could, and sailed away westwards.  They took with them Onund and Balki and Hallvard Sugandi.  Onund recovered and went about for the rest of his life with a wooden leg, wherefore he was called Onund Treefoot as long as he lived.

CHAPTER III

MEETING OF DEFEATED CHIEFS IN THE WEST AND MARRIAGE OF ONUND

There were then in the western parts many distinguished men who had fled from their homes in Norway before King Harald, for he declared all who fought against him outlaws, and seized their property.  As soon as Onund had recovered from his wound, Thrand went with his party to Geirmund Swarthyskin, who was the most eminent of the vikings in the West.  They asked him whether he was not going to try and regain his kingdom in Hordland, and offered to join him, hoping by this means to do something for their own properties, for Onund was very wealthy and his kindred very powerful.  Geirmund answered that Harald had such a force that there was little hope of gaining any honour by fighting when the whole country had joined against him and been beaten.  He had no mind, he said, to become the king’s thrall, and to beg for that which he had once possessed in his own right.  Seeing that he was no longer in the vigour of his youth he preferred to find some other occupation.  So Onund and his party returned to the Southern Islands, where they met many of their friends.

There was a man named Ofeig, nicknamed Grettir.  He was the son of Einar, the son of Olvir the Babyman.  He was a brother of Oleif the Broad, the father of Thormod Shaft.  Another son of Olvir was named Steinolf, the father of Una, whom Thorbjorn the Salmon-man married.  A third son of Olvir was Steinmod, who was the father of Konal, the father of Alfdis of the Barra Isles.  Konal’s son was named Steimnod; he was the father of Halldora, whom Eilif, the son of Ketil the One-handed, married.