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He should bear in mind that these men would work great havoc among his own followers before they fell. The jarl thought this counsel was wise and let himself be somewhat appeased. Then the terms of atonement were settled. Thorfinn and Thorsteinn were ready to pay so long as Grettir's life was spared.
Then Karl let them bring forward his banner to meet Thorfinn; there was a hard fight, and the end of it was that Karl laid himself out to fly, but some men say that he has fallen." "Earl Thorfinn drove the flight before him a long way up into Scotland, and after that he fared about far and wide over the land and laid it under him."
As they approached they made signs to show that they came in peace, and with them they brought huge bales of furs which they wished to barter. The Norsemen, it is true, could not understand the language of the natives, nor could the natives understand the Norsemen; but by signs they made known that they wished to barter their furs for weapons. This, however, Thorfinn forbade.
Thorfinn went up to Grettir and kissed him, and thanked him with many fair words for the great heart which he had shown to him; "And I will say to thee what few say to their friends, that I would thou shouldst be in need of men, that then thou mightest know if I were to thee in a man's stead or not; but for thy good deed I can never reward thee unless thou comest to be in some troublous need; but as to thy abiding with me, that shall ever stand open to thee when thou willest it; and thou shalt be held the first of all my men."
Thorfinn went to the Pope not only for absolution, but to get Thorolf appointed bishop in Orkney, according to Adam of Bremen, c. 243. We now come to the last years of the fourth period of his life, when "the earl sate down quietly and kept peace over all his realm. Then he left off warfare, and he turned his mind to ruling his people and land, and to law-giving.
There was an island lying a little off the mainland called Haramarsey, with a large settlement and a farm belonging to the Landman on it. The name of the Landman who lived in the island was Thorfinn. He was a son of Kar the Old, who had lived there for a long time. Thorfinn was a man of great influence.
Earl Svein was now 'wondrous wroth' at this tale, for said he, 'Grettir has now slain three brothers, one at the heels of the other, and I will not thus bring wrongs into the land so as to take compensation for such unmeasured misdeeds'; so he would not listen to any proposals by Thorfinn to pay blood-money.
'Now am I well enough minded to take revenge on Thorfinn, said Thorir, 'and this man is ready enough of tidings, and no need have we to drag the words out of him. So they all went up to the farm, but the women were distracted with fear, thinking that Grettir had played false.
Thorfinn Earl and Jarl. Malcolm II, with whom Scottish contemporary records may be said to begin, ascended the Scottish throne in 1005, and defeated the Norse at Mortlach in Moray in 1010, and drove them from its fertile seaboard, probably with the help of Sigurd Hlodverson, Jarl of Orkney.
Then Thorfinn spake, "Now shall we sit down, but do thou tell us these tidings." Then she told all things plainly even as they had come to pass, and praised greatly Grettir's stoutness and great daring; meanwhile Thorfinn held his peace, but when she had made an end of her tale, he said, "How true is the saw, <i>Long it takes to try a man</i>. But where is Grettir now?"
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