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Updated: May 12, 2025
Grettir got tired of being hemmed in, so he made a lunge with his sword and killed one of Gisli's men, sprang from his stone and assailed them so vigorously that Gisli fell back all along the foot of the hill. Then his other man was killed. Grettir said: "One would scarcely see that you have achieved much in the world abroad, and you have shamefully forsaken your comrades."
Gisli struggled to get away, but Grettir gave him a sound whipping and then let him go. Gisli thought that he would sooner not learn anything from Grettir than have another such flogging, nor did he do anything more to earn it. Directly he got his feet under him again he ran off to a large pool and swam across the river. In the evening he reached the settlement called Hrossholt, very exhausted.
The next spring Gisli got ready to go to his ship, and bade men above all things beware of carrying aught of his goods south along the mountain, and said that the very fiend dwelt there. Gisli rode south along the sea all the way to his ship, and never met Grettir again; and now he is out of the story.
He did not often speak of Gisli; for the man ruled him across the gulf of centuries, and he was always unhappy when he gave way to the temptation to do so; for he could not get rid of the sense of kinship with him, nor of the memory of that withering spaedom with which the first Gisli had been cursed by the wronged thrall who slew him "This is but the beginning of the ill luck which I will bring on thy kith and kin after thee."
'Good will befall neither of us; for I will not give up the sword, and it shall never come into any man's hand but mine, if I have my will. "Then Kol lifted his ax, and Gisli drew Graysteel, and they smote at each other. Kol's blow fell on Gisli's head, so that it sank into the brain; and Graysteel fell on Kol's head, and his skull was shattered, and Graysteel broke asunder.
Grettir turned back, and took up the things Gisli had cast down, and brought them to his place, nor from that time forth gat Gisli aught thereof. Many men thought Gisli had his due herein for the noise and swagger he had made about himself; and Grettir sang this about their dealings together
Therewith he pulls the shirt up over his head and let the twigs go all down his back, and along both sides of him, and Gisli strove all he might to wriggle away from him; but Grettir flogged him through and through, and then let him go; and Gisli thought he would learn no more of Grettir and have such another flogging withal; nor did he ever again earn the like skin-rubbing.
"So Gisli took the sword and slew Bjorn with it, and got good fame for this feat. And time rolled on, and he gave not back the sword; and one day Kol met him, and Gisli had Graysteel in his hand, and Kol had an ax. "And Kol asked if the sword had done him good service at his great need, and Gisli was full of its praises. "'Well, now, said Kol, 'I should like it back.
Then, as the women knit and the men sat with their hands clasped upon their heads, Liot stood in their midst and told of the wayfarings and doings of the Borsons, who had been in the Varangian Guard, and sometimes of the sad doom of his fore-elder Gisli, who had been cursed even before he was born.
And the woman who loved Gisli told him that her foster-father, Kol, who was a thrall, had a sword that whoever wielded would win in any fight. And Gisli sent for Kol and asked him: "'Hast thou ever a good sword? "And Kol answered: 'Many things are in the thrall's cot, not in the king's grange. "'Lend me thy sword for my duel with Bjorn, said Gisli.
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