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By Root 1929 0

and should suffer outlawry and loss of his property for this crime, unusual though it may be. What if the lawspeaker had sneaked up on my brother in the night, and delivered him his death blow with an ax? This is no different. A man may kill another with the strength of his arm, or he may kill another with the strength of his cleverness. He may kill him as a man or in the guise of lawspeaker, but the man who is killed is equally dead either way, and equally mourned, and equally lost to the good of folk who depend upon him. And now I demand a judgment of full outlawry and deprivation of property against Bjorn Bollason, exile into the wastelands, loss of his position as lawspeaker, and any other punishments as self-judgment might allow us to ask for.” And he stopped speaking and looked carefully about the circle, at each of his followers, and at each of the lookers-on, and at each of the judges, and finally at Bjorn Bollason himself, and folk stood still for this staring.

Now Bjorn Bollason strode into the circle, and he was very richly dressed, in layers of white wadmal, with a great seal of St. Olaf the Greenlander dangling on his chest. He wore a number of ornaments that the Icelanders had given him as gifts, and he looked proud and imposing. And it was the case that he did not look at anyone, neither those standing about, nor Jon Andres, nor the judges, but only looked off, over the fjord, once, and up toward the mountains once. And then he began to speak in a proud voice, and he said, “I, Bjorn Bollason, have been lawspeaker of the Greenlanders for many summers, and before that, my foster father Hoskuld had great knowledge of the law. Never in the memory of men has such a case been brought before the Thing, where a man who is a judge has been threatened with outlawry for carrying out the laws as they were decided upon. This action is absurd at the least and dangerous at the most, for in this way every decision of the judges can be challenged whenever and for as long as men wish to challenge it, and that is all I have to say in the matter.” And he strode out of the circle as proudly as he had strode into it. And now it was getting on toward the evening meat, and so the judges retired to make their decision, and what they decided was not unexpected by anyone, including Gunnar and Jon Andres. Folk gathered about, pressing hard upon the little circle, and the chief judge below Bjorn Bollason, a man from Brattahlid named Bessi Hallsteinsson, announced that the case could not be made, and that the lawspeaker had committed no crime, and indeed, would have committed a crime had he not endeavored his utmost to carry out the punishment that had been decided upon.

Now a great shouting arose, and some men began to press backwards from the circle where the judges had their places, and others began to press forwards, from where the booths were set up, and folk saw that the men from Hvalsey Fjord and Vatna Hverfi district were much more numerous than it had seemed before, and that, all at once, they were armed with axes and clubs and bows and arrows. The men from Brattahlid and Dyrnes who were Bjorn Bollason’s supporters, and Bjorn and his sons, as well, ran from the Thing field to the place where weapons were laid down on the first day of the Thing, and they grabbed everything they could find, whether it belonged to them or not, and they turned and made their stand at that place, for the Vatna Hverfi men were upon them almost at once.

It seemed to Gunnar Asgeirsson that the shouting at the verdict arose around him, but then he understood that his own mouth was stretched open, and his own throat was pouring forth curses upon the heads of Bjorn Bollason and his hand-picked judges. Had someone told him that his hair was in flames, he would not have been surprised to hear it, so hotly did the rage and enmity burn within him. Bjorn Bollason had not deigned to look at the assembled folk, so proud was he, so ostentatiously clothed in white, and just that, that turn of the head, as he looked from Eriks Fjord to the mountains behind, drew