CHAP. XXXVIII.

Of Thorir of Garth and his sons; and how Grettir fetched fire for
his shipmates.


There was a man named Thorir, who lived at Garth, in Maindale, he was
the son of Skeggi, the son of Botulf. Skeggi had settled Well-wharf up
to Well-ness; he had to wife Helga, daughter of Thorkel, of Fishbrook;
Thorir, his son, was a great chief, and a seafaring man. He had two
sons, one called Thorgeir and one Skeggi, they were both hopeful men,
and fully grown in those days. Thorir had been in Norway that summer,
when King Olaf came east from England, and got into great friendship
with the king, and with Bishop Sigurd as well; and this is a token
thereof, that Thorir had had a large ship built in the wood, and
prayed Bishop Sigurd to hallow it, and so he did. Thereafter Thorir
fared out to Iceland and caused the ship to be broken up, when he grew
weary of sailing, but the beaks of the ship, he had set up over his
outer door, and they were there long afterwards, and were so full of
weather wisdom, that the one whistled before a south wind, and the
other before a north wind.

But when Thorir knew that King Olaf had got the sole rule over all
Norway, he deemed that he had some friendship there to fall back on;
then he sent his sons to Norway to meet the king, and was minded that
they should become his men. They came there south, late in autumn, and
got to themselves a row-barge, and fared north along the land, with
the mind to go and meet the king.