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along Breidavik was managed by tenants when I was small, but then Bjorn of Breidavik came home to live at Kamb again. I told you about the winter games, but between times too he often used to visit my father, and he’d call on Orm on his way to Laugarbrekka. Sometimes his brother Arnbjorn came too – he had the farm at Hraunhavn further along Breidavik. I liked Bjorn. He was fond of children, I think, and because of Thurid and Kjartan he didn’t marry – I’ll tell you about that presently – and I enjoyed the attention that he gave me. I often think now of the strange fate he met, and every day I pray for his soul. He must have died long ago, among strangers in the lands outside the world. We might so easily have shared his fate. He left Iceland about the same time as we did, and, although my father never admitted it, I think his own decision was partly influenced by the fact that Bjorn of Breidavik had been driven out of our community.
    Once Bjorn and Arnbjorn were back we heard much more about the feuds on the north shore – or perhaps it was just that as I got older I became more aware of these things. You weren’t born then, but you must have heard stories. The way I see it now, we were still trying to find a way to live in our new country. We had no king, and so we had to carve out justice for ourselves in a land without laws or precedents. We couldn’t just go on as our ancestors did in Norway; everything was different. The phrase that comes back tome, from all the talk I heard at the hearth when I was little, repeated again and again, is, ‘Of course, it’s his responsibility’. It was a man’s responsibility to get justice for his kin when they were alive, and to avenge their deaths when they were killed. That’s how I learned about the grown-up world: it was governed by fate, and you had to do your duty, although you knew you had to die for it. My father came from Vifilsdalur, and both he and his father were friends of Styr Thorgrimson of Hraun, and like him they supported Eirik Raudi. That put us against Snorri the Priest and the people from Thorsnes to start off with, and then my father’s alliance with his neighbour Bjorn, when he came home from Norway, increased the tension. Yet we all met as neighbours. I can remember Snorri the Priest talking to my father at the fair at Frodriver as if they were the best of friends. But the undercurrent was always there. I think now that Halldis was right when she said only the new God could save us from the fates that trapped us.
    When I came home with Karlsefni Iceland had changed, although I was only gone a few years. But those were the years when our land became Christian, and also the time when the Quarter Courts began to work properly. I’m not saying the feuds were over, but the strength was beginning to go out of them. A good thing, naturally, and yet – they don’t breed men now of the kind I knew when I was young. Looking back, they seem much larger than this life that we live now. In the stories, of course, they grow more formidable still. I’ve had a hand in that myself. I’m known in Glaum for my storytelling, and I’ve made sure my children and grandchildren are well educated in the story of our past. Stories have a life of their own. They grow, as children grow, and perhaps we forget the small thing they once were. But we nurture them just because we respected what was there in the beginning. I’m glad of the world I come from now, although I daresay to you it seems a savage, pagan time.
    I could tell you so much about the families living at Snaefelsnes when I was a girl. Those were dangerous years, and the men’s talk I heard then was all of fighting and killing. Hardly anyone, after Eirik left, talked of new worlds and wealth, but only of secret plans for revenge. Only the women’s talk was the same as always, everywhere –the farm and the household, summer and winter, a pattern of life that is woven year by year and never changes.
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