NJAL’S AND BERGTHORA’S BONES FOUND.

Kari bade Hjallti to go and search for Njal’s bones, “for all will believe in what thou sayest and thinkest about them”.

Hjallti said he would be most willing to bear Njal’s bones to church; so they rode thence fifteen men.  They rode east over Thurso-water, and called on men there to come with them till they had one hundred men, reckoning Njal’s neighbours.

They came to Bergthorsknoll at mid-day.

Hjallti asked Kari under what part of the house Njal might be lying, but Kari showed them to the spot, and there was a great heap of ashes to dig away.  There they found the hide underneath, and it was as though it were shrivelled with the fire.  They raised up the hide, and lo! they were unburnt under it.  All praised God for that, and thought it was a great token.

Then the boy was taken up who had lain between them, and of him a finger was burnt off which he had stretched out from under the hide.

Njal was borne out, and so was Bergthora, and then all men went to see their bodies.

Then Hjallti said—­“What like look to you these bodies?”

They answered, “We will wait for thy utterance”.

Then Hjallti said, “I shall speak what I say with all freedom of speech.  The body of Bergthora looks as it was likely she would look, and still fair; but Njal’s body and visage seem to me so bright that I have never seen any dead man’s body so bright as this.”

They all said they thought so too.

Then they sought for Skarphedinn, and the men of the household showed them to the spot where Flosi and his men heard the song sung, and there the roof had fallen down by the gable, and there Hjallti said that they should look.  Then they did so, and found Skarphedinn’s body there, and he had stood up hard by the gable-wall, and his legs were burnt off him right up to the knees, but all the rest of him was unburnt.  He had bitten through his under lip, his eyes were wide open and not swollen nor starting out of his head; he had driven his axe into the gable-wall so hard that it had gone in up to the middle of the blade, and that was why it was not softened.

After that the axe was broken out of the wall, and Hjallti took up the axe, and said—­

“This is a rare weapon, and few would be able to wield it.”

“I see a man,” said Kari, “who shall bear the axe.”

“Who is that?” says Hjallti.

“Thorgeir Craggeir,” says Kari, “he whom I now think to be the greatest man in all their family.”

Then Skarphedinn was stripped of his clothes, for they were unburnt; he had laid his hands in a cross, and the right hand uppermost.  They found marks on him; one between his shoulders and the other on his chest, and both were branded in the shape of a cross, and men thought that he must have burnt them in himself.

All men said that they thought that it was better to be near Skarphedinn dead than they weened, for no man was afraid of him.