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By Root 2169 0

around to where the deer would go into the water. Those men who had dogs sat themselves down and resolved to wait, but soon the intelligence came that rather than moving toward the herding spot, the deer were moving away from it, to the south and inland, toward the hunters. And now the wind shifted, blowing the scent of the deer toward the dogs, and these beasts, which were numerous and hungry, set up a deafening howl. The deer began splitting up and running, and so the hunt began, although the lookout posted to watch for the boats coming around the island had given no signal yet. Men and dogs spread out in a wide semicircle that tightened as it moved toward the shore, scooping the deer before it, and, a piece of luck, panicking only a few of the deer into running straight ahead and escaping around the closing edge of the flank. Soon, too soon, the two flanks were at the strand, and it was time for the semicircle to flatten and push the deer into the water. But no boats were to be seen, so some men with spears, fearing to lose all of the effort, went among the deer with spears, killing a few and frightening the others, so that some of them broke past the rim of men and dogs and escaped. Now a great deal of shouting broke out among the Greenlanders, and men began to turn toward each other with their weapons raised, but then the lookout gave his signal, and the first boats appeared in the turbulent sea. The semicircle flattened quickly, and the deer began running into the ocean, the dogs at their heels.

The men in the boats rowed quickly into the herd and began laying about themselves with their spears. The trick was to thrust a spear into the chest of a deer, killing it with a single stroke, then to pull the deer close to the boat, using the spear, and grab the antlers, so that the beast could be lashed to the gunwale of the boat, but it happened that the sea was so rough from the rain of the previous two days that many beasts were lost. In addition to this, many spears were lost, and two boats, and two men were drowned, and when the day was over, it was seen that each farmstead represented would receive but three of the animals, and indeed, they were poor enough animals, for they had been grazing on skimpy forage for most of the summer.

On the fourth day, some men, led by Finn Thormodsson, set out from the main group of Greenlanders, and found a small group of reindeer, not more than two score, grazing in a blind culvert, and they ran them into a pocket made by three cliff walls, and took them all, even spindly, half-grown fawns. And this was the result of the reindeer hunt on Hreiney, great expense of effort for little reward, and folk began to talk about the deer that had run across the Gardar field on the last day of the Thing. It was also the case that not a few men sickened from the wet conditions of the hunt, and lay ill through part of the autumn work.

And this was the trick that Jon Andres Erlendsson and Ofeig Thorkelsson played on Kollgrim Gunnarsson on the last day of the hunt, when Finn was off with his band. They came upon him where he was sitting with the Lavrans Stead dogs, and seized him and carried him off away from the others to a spot overlooking the water, and there they took his hood and twisted it around so that his face was hidden, and they tied the shoulder pieces together so that it stayed this way. Then they ripped around the bottom of his robe and used this piece to tie his hands together behind him, and then they ripped around his robe again, so that his undergarments showed, and they used this piece to tie together his feet, and they tied it as well to the piece that bound his hands. And now they took him out in a boat that they found, for Jon Andres’ boat was pulled up on the strand with the others, and they tipped him out of the boat and into the water, with the remark that perhaps this treatment would persuade him to leave them alone. After doing this, the men rowed back to where the others were, and declared that a certain man, of Hvalsey Fjord, had fallen into the water and needed help,