THE SCENE: With his typical mix of arrogance and nonchalance, Grettir Asmunderson goes into an underground tomb, kills the zombie within, and comes back with the loot.
THE TEXT: late one evening, Grettir was about to walk back to Thorfinn’s when he saw great fire flare up on the headland down from Audun’s farm. Grettir ask what strange thing was happening there. Audun said he had no need to find out.
“Where I come from,” said Grettir, “people who saw that would say it was the glow of a treasure hoard.”
“the keeper of that fire,” answered the farmer, “is someone we are better off not trying to find out about.”
“I’d like to find out,” said Grettir.
“there’s a mound on the headland,” said Audun, “where Kar the Old, Thorfinn’s father was buried. At first they owned a single farm on the island, but since Kar died he has haunted the island and frightened away all the farmers who own land here. Now Thorfinn owns the entire island and no one who is under his protection is harmed by Kar.”
Grettir said he had done well to tell him this and added, “I’ll come back tomorrow. Have some tools ready for me to dig with.”
The night passed and Grettir came back early in the morning. The tools were ready for him and the farmer accompanied him to the mound. Grettir broke open the mound and worked furiously, not stopping until he had reached the timber props, by which time it was very late in the day. Then Grettir went inside the mound. It was dark and smelled unpleasant. He explored the mound to see how it was laid out. He found some horse bones, then he rubbed against the card back of a chair and could tell there was a man sitting in it. A huge amount of gold and silver had been piled up there and the man’s feet were resting on a chest full of silver. Grettir took all the treasure and carried it over to the rope. And when he was walking back inside the mound, something grabbed him tight.
He dropped the treasurer and fought back, and the two of them grappled violently, knocking everything over that was in their way. The mound dweller went for him ferociously and Grettir backed off for a long time, until he realized that he would need all his strength. They both fought with all their might and struggled towards where the horse bones were. They grappled for a long while there and both of them were brought to their knees at different times, until in the end the mound-dweller toppled over backwards with a mighty crash. Audun ran away from the rope, thinking that Grettir must have been killed. Then Grettir drew his sword, Jokul’s Gift, swung at the mound-dwellers neck and chopped off his head. He placed the head up against the mound-dwellers buttocks and took all the treasure over to the rope. Audun was nowhere around, so he had to clamber up the rope himself and then pull up the treasurer, which he had tide to the end of it.
Grettir was feeling very stiff after his fight with Kar and went back to Thorfinn’s farm with the treasure. Everyone there was seated at the table. Thorfinn glared at Grettir when he entered the hall and asked him what he needed to do that was so important he couldn’t keep the same hours as other people.
“Many little things happen at night,” Grettir said.
Then he spread out on the table all the treasures he had taken from the mound. Grettir had his eye on one piece of the treasure in particular, a fine short sword. He said he had never seen such a good weapon before and handed it over last of all. Thorfinn’s eyebrows lifted when he saw the treasurer and the short sword because it was an heirloom that had never left his family.
– The Saga of Grettir the Strong, 14th Century AD
