Later Years
During the closing years of the tenth century, Olaf's kinsman and friend Gunnar became embroiled in a blood feud with several neighboring landowners. A settlement was reached whereby Gunnar would accept "lesser outlawry," a three-year exile, but after agreeing to the settlement Gunnar refused to leave Iceland. Olaf tried to protect his kinsman but was unsuccessful, and Gunnar was killed by his enemies. Olaf's favorite son Kjartan traveled abroad with his beloved cousin Bolli Thorleiksson. The two were very close. Ultimately, however, they grew apart when Bolli married Kjartan's lover Guðrún Ósvífursdóttir. According to Oddr Snorrason, Olaf had predicted that strife would ensue between Kjartan and Bolli. Tensions between the cousins grew until a full-blown blood feud ended with Kjartan being killed by Bolli in 1003. Ironically, Bolli killed Kjartan with the sword "Leg-biter," which had been given to him as a gift by his cousin Thurid, Kjartan's sister. Olaf refused to prosecute Bolli for the killing, and arranged for him to pay a fine instead; by sharp contrast, he had Gudrun's brothers, who had goaded Bolli to fight his cousin, driven into exile. Jesse Byock contrasted Olaf's magnanimity towards Bolli with the blood feud mentality of his wife Thorgerd:
Olaf knows that Kjartan, who was involved in a love triangle with Bolli and Bolli's wife Gudrun Osvifrsdottir, caused his own downfall by acting aggressively. In Icelandic terms, Kjartan had surpassed the acceptable limits of immoderation. Whereas Olaf wants to maintain the solidarity of the larger family, keeping workable relations with his siblings and their children, Thorgerd's concerns are different. She focuses more narrowly on the honour of her nuclear family.
Olaf died in 1006, and Olaf's widow Thorgerd subsequently directed a number of revenge-killings herself, including that of Thorkel, a man who had witnessed Kjartan's death but been indifferent to it and had not intervened. Bolli was killed by Olaf's sons and their allies in a raid led by Thorgerd. Some twelve years later, Gudrun, with the help of her friend Snorri Goði, had a number of Bolli's murderers killed in revenge.
Read more about this topic: Olaf The Peacock
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“So many things I had thought forgotten
Return to my mind with stranger pain:
Like letters that arrive addressed to someone
Who left the house so many years ago.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives.”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)