
Of Thorunn's Death, and What Happened After
In the days of Leif the Lucky, a certain spae-woman named Thorunn died while visiting a neighboring district. On her death-bed, she asked that her body be taken back to her family farm to be barrowed, a distance of some three days' travel. She promised that those who carried out her request would not be the worse off for it. Five men from the farm said that they would see to this.
After her death, they built a coffin for her, loaded it onto a horse, and set off. Now, it is no mean feat to balance a coffin and body on the back of a horse, and going was slow. Toward the end of the day, they were caught in a rainstorm, and soon all five were drenched to the skin.
They stopped at a farm and asked guest-room for the night. The farmer was by no means pleased to see the men and their burden.
“You may sleep in the byre tonight,” he told them, “but, as I did not know of your coming, I cannot offer you a meal.” Wet and hungry, the men bedded down in the byre, and all agreed that the farmer's actions were stingy and mean.
That night, a thrall-woman went into the kitchen of the farm-house to smoor the fire. There she beheld a tall, pale woman, stark naked, slicing a cheese into pieces. The sight so disconcerted her that she went to the bed-closet where the farmer and his wife lay and told them of what she had seen.
The farmer's wife climbed out of the bed-closet and went to the kitchen. Sure enough, all was as the thrall-woman had said, but now the naked woman was slicing rashers off a joint of smoked lamb and placing them on a wooden trencher.
“Who are you? What are you doing in my house?” the farmer's wife demanded, but the naked woman gave no sign of having heard her, and continued her task without speaking.
The woman went back to the bed-closet and told her husband: “This is to do with those men in the byre.”