Each of the bondis was asked, but all refused.  Some witty person wrote a poem about these confabulations and called it “Grettir’s Faring,” adding many jests of his own for the dilectification of men.  After parleying for a long time they all came to an agreement that they would not throw away their luck, and set to work to raise a gallows there and then in the forest upon which Grettir should hang.  Their delight over this proposal was uproarious.

Then they saw three people riding along the valley from below, one of them in a dyed dress.  They guessed that it must be Thorbjorg the mistress of Vatnsfjord on her way to the dairy, and so it was.  Thorbjorg was a person of great magnificence, and tremendously wise.  She was the leading personage of the district and managed everything when Vermund was away.  She came up to where the crowd was gathered and was lifted from her horse; the bondis saluted her respectfully.  She said: 

“What is your meeting about?  Who is this thick-necked man sitting there in bonds?”

Grettir told his name and saluted her.

“What has moved you, Grettir,” she said, “to commit violence upon my Thing-men?”

“I cannot overlook everything,” he said.  “I must be somewhere.”

“You are indeed unfortunate,” she said, “that a pack of churls like these should have captured you and that none of them should have paid for it.  What are you men going to do with him?”

The bondis said that they were going to hoist him on to a gallows for his misdeeds.

She said:  “It may be that Grettir has deserved it, but it will bring trouble upon you men of Isafjord if you take the life of a man so renowned and so highly connected as Grettir, ill-starred though he be.  Now what will you do for your life, Grettir, if I give it to you?”

“What do you wish me to do?”

“You shall swear never to commit any violence here in Isafjord; nor shall you take revenge upon those who have had a hand in capturing you.”

Grettir said it should be as she desired, and he was released.  He said it was the greatest effort of self-restraint that he ever made that he did not thrash the men who were there triumphing over him.  Thorbjorg told him to come home with her and gave him a horse to ride on.  So he went to Vatnsfjord and stayed there well cared for by the mistress until Vermund returned.  She gained great renown from this deed through the district.  Vermund was very much put out when he got home and asked why Grettir was there.  Thorbjorg told him everything which had happened with the Isafjord men.

“To what does he owe it that you gave him his life?” he asked.

“Many reasons there were,” she said.  “The first is that you might be the more respected as a chief for having a wife who would dare to do such a thing.  Next, his kinswoman Hrefna will surely say that I could not let him be slain; and thirdly, because he is in many respects a man of the highest worth.”