The book begins with the feud between the people of Gunnar's Stead and the people of Ketil's Stead. Which may, indeed, have begun with pride, but actually began as Asgeir prepared a feast. He brought honey from the storeroom and mixed it with water and rotten bilberries. Indeed, it did, for intoxicating beverages are practically unknown to the Greenlanders. And so, the results of the drunken feast had long ranging effects through the generations.
Death is a constant companion, from the plague, from a fall, from hunger, from murder, from old age.
But in the end, it was the death of Kollgrim Gunnarsson, the son of Gunnar Asgeirsson by burning on charge of witchcraft that tore the fabric of the settlement. For such a death was not in Greenlander's ken. The idea had been brought to them by Icelanders. The cadence of the language caught me unawares. It is the sound of the old sagas.