f their fear of him, the minds of men turned against him who had
overcome him in a way, according to their notions, so base and
unworthy, and Angle has no easy time of it; he fails to get the
head-money, and is himself brought to trial for sorcery and practising
heathen rites, and the 'nithings-deed' of slaying a man already dying,
and is banished from the land.

Now comes the part so necessary to the Icelandic tale of a hero, the
revenging of his death; Angle goes to Norway, and is thought highly of
for his deed by people who did not know the whole tale; but Thorstein
Dromund, an elder half-brother of Grettir, is a lord in that land, and
Angle, knowing of this, feels uneasy in Norway, and at last goes away
to Micklegarth (Constantinople), to take service with the Varangians:
Thorstein hears of this and follows him, and both are together at last
in Micklegarth, but neither knows the other: at last Angle betrays
himself by showing Grettir's sword, at a 'weapon-show' of the
Varangians, and Thorstein slays him then and there with the same
weapon. Thorstein alone in a strange land, with none to speak for him,
is obliged to submit to the laws of the country, and is thrown into a
dungeon to perish of hunger and wretchedness there. From this fate he
is delivered by a great lady of the city, called Spes, who afterwards
falls in love with him; and the two meet often in spite of the
watchful jealousy of the lady's husband, who is at last so completely
conquered by a plot of hers (the sagaman here has taken an incident
with little or no change from the Romance of Tristram and Iseult),
that he is obliged to submit to a divorce and the loss of his wife's
dower, and thereafter the lovers go away together to Norway, and live
there happily till old age reminds them of their misdeeds, and they
then set off together for Rome and pass the rest of their lives in
penitence and apart from one another. And so the story ends, summing
up the worth of Grettir the Strong by reminding people of his huge
strength, his long endurance in outlawry, his gift for dealing
with ghosts and evil spirits, the famous vengeance taken for him in
Micklegarth; and, lastly, the fortunate life and good end of Thorstein
Dromund, his brother and avenger.

Such is the outline of this tale of a man far above his fellows in all
matters valued among his times and people, but also far above them
all in ill-luck, for that is the conception that the story-teller has
forme