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Landnam's man, or original settler, and lived on the island which his father had taken for himself. His courage in sheltering Gisli lost him his land by legal process, which Bork, as priest at Thorsness Thing, brought against him in that capacity.

Graysteel, the spear-head scored with runes made out of the thrall's good sword, did not pass away with Gisli or his time. Two hundred and fifty years after, it was a well-known weapon. In the year 1221 the Sturlunga speaks of it as follows at the battle of Breidabolstad in the south of Iceland: "Then Gunnlaug rushed forward and thrust at Bjorn Thorvalddson of Breidabolstad with the spear which they called 'Graysteel,' and said Gisli the Soursop had owned. The thrust fell on his throat, and he, Bjorn, then turned back to the church and sat him down there. Gunnlaug went to Lopt, and tell s him that Bjorn was wounded. Lopt asks who dealt the wound. 'I and Graysteel,' says Gunnlaug. 'How deep was the wound?' asks Lopt. Then Gunnlaug showed him the spear, and the barb of the spear high up was smeared with fat. Then they were sure that wound would be a death-wound."

Again, in some verses on the same battle, in which the poetry of Snorro Sturluson is roughly handled:

"I heard that Bjorn from whetted steel--
O happy deed!--had taën a thrust;
The closefist, turning on his heel,
Hard kissed by Graysteel, bit the dust." 1

1. Sturlunga, iv. 26.

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Again, twenty-five years later, in 1238, at the battle of Orlygstad, so disastrous to the Sturlungs, Graysteel was in the hands of Sturla Sighvatson. "Sturla defended himself with the spear, hight Graysteel, deftly and well. It was a great spear of the olden time, scored with runes [mála spiot], but not well tempered. He thrust so hard with it that men fell fast before him. But the spear-head bent, and he put his foot upon it oftimes to straighten it." 1

The author of the Sturlunga was present at this battle, and speaks of the spear as an eye-witness. The bad luck predicted by the thrall followed Graysteel to the last. In a few moments after he had so gallantly wielded the fatal weapon, Sturla, the descendant of Thordisa the Soursop, was taken prisoner and massacred by his bitter foes.

At that time Graysteel, forged in 963, would have been 275 years old--a good old age for a weapon. Length of days, and often cleaning and sharpening, may have been the cause why the spear-head of Thorgrim the Priest should have so bent under Sturla's strong arm as to need straightening over and over again under his foot. But in those days it was no uncommon thing for a good weapon to be treasured up for centuries. In the will of Athelstane the Atheling, the brother of Edmund Ironside, who died young in the days of Ethelred the Unready,

1. Sturlunga, vi. 17.

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we have a most curious list of weapons owned by that prince--swords of all sorts--which he bequeathed to his kinsmen and followers: "The sword with the notch in the blade [ðes sceardan swurdes],"--"the sword with the 'pitted' or fretted hilt,"--"the sword which King Offa owned," which must have been then two hundred years old, and which he leaves to his brother Edmund Ironside; and, though last, not least, a "mal" sword [mál swurd], which has been ignorantly rendered "the sword with a cross on it," but which is nothing more than own brother to our "mála" spear--that is, a sword with runic figures or characters scored on it, whose mystical meaning was thought to impart a peculiar virtue to the weapon.

Lastly, we have only to call the reader's attention to the boldness with which the characters are drawn. From the least to the greatest--from Ingibjorga, "who did not love her first husband so well that she would not rather have been married to his brother," to Gisli, the man of thought and work, who toiled day and night, whose poetry was the best of its kind, and whose arm was no weaker when be struck his last blow than when be began the fight--all have a sharpness and clearness of their own. Thorkel, the lazy dandy, who thinks more of dress than work, who lets Gisli do all the labour about the farm, while he sleeps or listens to women's gossip, is ever true to himself. He is lazy to the last; and had he known how to work, would not have

p. xxxv

fallen as he did. But while Bork--the stupid, heavy Bork--is busy setting up their booth, Thorkel sits idly on the seashore, with his fine clothes and good sword, till vengeance overtakes him at the hand of a mere boy. Indeed, they are all the same. Vestein, the bold sailor, who will not turn back because he has already passed the watershed; Ingialld, the busy man, who rowed out to fish every day that a boat would swim--the bold heart who stood by Gisli to the last; the crafty Ref and his shrewish wife; the sharp-eyed, hare-footed and hare-hearted Spy-Helgi; the wary, backward Eyjolf; the tender, faithful Auda; the fat, stupid Bork;--all are masterpieces in their way. True for all time, and coming home to ever noble heart, they are realities which have lived for nine hundred years, and which can never pass away so long as human nature remains the same.