Lögberg-Heimskringla - 17.12.1993, Page 19

Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 17. desember 1993 • 19
Ultima Thuie
their motherland.” This last
school believes that the
Norwegians may even have
been outnumbered by the
Irish slaves they took along,
although only a small pro-
portion of the names includ-
ed in the Landnámabók is
clearly Irish. The best-known
story about these early
Norwegians concerns two
foster-brothers, Ingólfur
Arnarson (the official “First
settler” of Iceland) and
Hjörleifur Hróðmarsson, who
spent a winter in Iceland and
were so impressed they
returned with two ships
piled high with household
goods. They were accompa-
nied by family, friends and 10
slaves procured in Ireland in
what reads like a routine
Viking shopping expedition.
The two brothers parted com-
pany on reaching Iceland,
Ingólfur going to the south
coast (later to move to the
site of Reykjavík) and
Hjörleifur to the west, near
present-day Vik.
Hjörleifur was soon faced
with a rebellion by his Irish
slaves because they resented
having to share plough
pulling duties with his only
ox. Almost all the sagas carry
disparaging remarks about
the character of Irish slaves,
and this lot were evidently no
exception. They first killed
the ox, blamed it on a bear
and then laid an ambush to
get Hjörleifur and his com-
panions when they came
looking for the bear. As the
hunters fanned out, the slaves
were able to overwhelm them
one by one. They abducted
the women, piled into a boat
and decamped to an offshore
island.
he discovery of
the hunters’ bodies
shocked Ingólfur.
Death at the hands of a slave
was such a shameful fate that
he could only think that his
brother’s Christian tenden-
cies had caused him to
neglect his pagan scarifies.
The rebels were tracked
down to their island refuge
and surprised in the middle
of a meal of roast puffin.
Those who escaped being
killed there and then were
probably mindful of the
penalties meted out to slaves
who rose against their mas-
ters. Gilli Jathgudsson, an
Irish slave unwilling to for-
give a master for castrating
him (among other griev-
ances), tried to cut his own
throat and consequently suf-
fered the agony of a red-hot
wash basin placed on his
belly with gruesome results.
Nevertheless, he survived —
but only to be buried alive in
a bog. Abandoning their roast
puffin, the rebellious slaves
fled to cliffs overlooking the
harbour and threw them-
selves off. The island setting
for this unpromising start to
Icelandic history was
Heimaey, one of the group
known thereafter as the
Vestmannaeyjar (Westmann
or “Irish”) islands.
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