32 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



everybody indulged in it, although a dominant party or leader would 

 sometimes use a tribunal to ruin an opponent for having done so. 



Eric Raudi (the Red or Ruddy) had his full share of troubles, 

 and was never long without belligerent experiences proper to a 

 spirited Iceland gentleman which is about all that can be charged 

 against him. Relatively blameless and most useful men appear 

 sometimes to have been unjustly driven to the lava fields and ice 

 mountains, as in the case of Grettir, who robbed those who expelled 

 him, that he might live. 



Eric does not come into view as an aggressor. He had left Norway 

 with his father, as the best way to escape a feud. In his first Iceland 

 home the beginning of tragedy was a landslide or avalanche that 

 did some damage to a neighbor's land, whereupon this neighbor 

 laid the blame on two slaves of Eric probably Britons or Gaels 

 and killed them incontinently. Eric flared up in fury and killed the 

 slayer. This brought about the usual turbulent " lawsuit/' and 

 Eric was exiled from the district ; making his new home on Oxney 

 (Ox-island) in the great southwestern Broadfirth. 



But he did not keep out of trouble. A friend borrowed from him 

 a pair of heraldic door-posts, used occasionally, too, as ship's figure- 

 heads or possibly picture-carven sections of those partitions, often 

 strikingly ornamented, that made up the box-bed enclosures in which 

 our modern separate sleeping rooms find perhaps their origin. They 

 were valuable at any rate, and the borrower prized them no less than 

 he; so refrained from returning them as desired. In the end red- 

 headed Eric went to the false friend's house with a party and took 

 them away. There was a rally of the affronted household ; pursuit, 

 sword in hand ; a small battle in the highway, in which Eric cut 

 down a man or two thereby winning distinction as a brisk champion, 

 not to be imposed upon, but also unlimited persecution and disaster. 



He had made good and eminent friends in that neighborhood, one 

 being Thorbiorn, chief of Vifilsdale, son of Vifil, one of Queen Aud's 

 Dublin men, of whom she had said that he would be distinguished 

 anywhere, with land or without it. Also, Thorbiorn, through his 

 beautiful daughter Gudrid, was to be grandfather to the first-born 

 white American : so there were notable issues hanging on the door- 

 posts of contention and on Eric's honest impulsiveness for good or 

 ill. However, they overrode him and he was driven to hide in out- 

 lying islands and inconvenient places, while his enemies hunted 

 diligently to find and slay him. 



Then our fugitive called to mind a ninety-year-old story of an 

 unknown land over the western sea and determined to seek refuge 



j 



