“First I should like to clear myself of the charge of burning, if I may,” said Grettir; “for I did not do it intentionally.”

“Very likely it is so,” said the king; “but since the purgation has come to naught through your impatience you cannot clear yourself further than you have done.  Impetuosity always leads to evil.  If ever a man was doomed to misfortune you are.”

After that Grettir remained for a time in the town, but he got nothing more out of Olaf.  Then he went to the South, intending after that to go East to Tunsberg to find his brother Thorsteinn Dromund.  Nothing is told of his journey till he came to Jadar.

CHAPTER XL

ADVENTURE WITH THE BERSERK SNAEKOLL

At Yule Grettir came to a bondi named Einar, a man of wealth who had a wife and a marriageable daughter named Gyrid.  She was a beautiful maiden and was considered an excellent match.  Einar invited Grettir to stay over Yule, and he accepted.

It was no uncommon thing throughout Norway that robbers and other ruffians came down from the forest and challenged men to fight for their women, or carried off their property with violence if there was not sufficient force in the house to protect them.  One day at Yule-tide there came a whole party of these miscreants to Einar’s house.  Their leader was a great berserk named Snaekoll.  He challenged Einar to hand over his daughter to him or else to defend her, if he felt himself man enough to do so.  Now the bondi was no longer young, and no fighter.  He felt that he was in a great difficulty, and asked Grettir privately what help he would give him, seeing that he was held to be so famous a man.  Grettir advised him to consent only to what was not dishonourable.  The berserk was sitting on his horse wearing his helmet, the chin-piece of which was not fastened.  He held before him a shield bound with iron and looked terribly threatening.  He said to the bondi: 

“You had better choose quickly:  either one thing or the other.  What does that big fellow standing beside you say?  Would he not like to play with me himself?”

“One of us is as good as the other,” said Grettir, “neither of us is very active.”

“All the more afraid will you be to fight with me if I get angry.”

“That will be seen when it is tried,” said Grettir.

The berserk thought they were trying to get off by talking.  He began to howl and to bite the rim of his shield.  He held the shield up to his mouth and scowled over its upper edge like a madman.  Grettir stepped quickly across the ground, and when he got even with the berserk’s horse he kicked the shield with his foot from below with such force that it struck his mouth, breaking the upper jaw, and the lower jaw fell down on to his chest.  With the same movement he seized the viking’s helmet with his left hand and dragged him from his