imself against the greatest men in the
land, but nothing comes of these trials, for he is being reserved for
a greater deed than the dealing with mere men; his enemy is Glam
the thrall; the revenant of a strange, unearthly man who was himself
killed by an evil spirit; Grettir contends with, and slays, this
monster, whose dying curse on him is the turning-point of the story.

All seems fair for our hero, his last deed has made him the foremost
man in Iceland, and news now coming out of Olaf the Saint, his
relative, being King of Norway, he goes thither to get honour at
his hands; but Glam's curse works; Grettir gains a powerful enemy by
slaying an insulting braggart just as he was going on ship-board; and
on the voyage it falls out that in striving to save the life of his
shipmates by a desperate action, he gets the reputation of having
destroyed the sons of a powerful Icelander, Thorir of Garth, with
their fellows. This evil report clings to him when he lands in Norway;
and all people, including the King from whom he hoped so much, look
coldly on him. Now he offers to free himself from the false charge by
the ordeal of bearing hot iron; the King assents, and all is ready;
but Glam is busy, and some strange appearance in the church, where
the ordeal is to be, brings all to nothing; and the foreseeing Olaf
refuses to take Grettir into his court, because of his ill-luck. So
he goes to his brother, Thorstein Dromund, for a while, and then goes
back to Iceland. But there, too, his ill-luck had been at work, and
when he lands he hears three pieces of bad news at once; his father is
dead; his eldest brother, Atli, is slain and unatoned; and he himself
has been made an outlaw, by Thorir of Garth, for a deed he has never
done.

He avenges his brother, and seeks here and there harbour from his
friends, but his foes are too strong for him, or some unlucky turn of
fate always pushes him off the help of men, and he has to take to the
wilderness with a price upon his head; and now the other part of the
curse falls on him heavier, for ever after the struggle with the ghost
he sees horrible things in the dark, and cannot bear to be alone, and
runs all kinds of risks to avoid it; and so the years of his outlawry
pass on. From time to time, driven by need, and rage at his unmerited
ill-fortune, he takes to plundering those who cannot hold their own;
at other times he lives alone, and supports himself by fishing, and
is twice nearly bro