Table of Contents

Note to Readers
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Genealogies
Part I: Introduction
1: A Somewhat Querulous Introduction: Hrafnkel and the Critics
2: Of Names and Manageability
Part II. Economic, Social, and Geological Context
3: The Saga's Economics (ch. 14)
4: New-found Land and Setting up Households (chs. 1-2)
III. Horse, Vow, and Killing
5: Freysgoði, Frey, and Freyfaxi
6: The Ójafnaðarmaðr (the 'unevenman')
7: Sam, Einar, Hrafnkel (chs 3-6)
8: Freyfaxi and Hrafnkel: More on the Vow and its Price (chs 5-6)
9: Hrafnkel's Offer (ch. 7)
10: Thorbjorn's Rejection (ch. 7 cont.)
IV. Lawsuit ab ovo to 'Final' Settlement
11: Mustering Support and Going Public (ch. 7 cont.)
12: The Lawsuit: Preparatory Stages (chs 8-9)
13: Thorkel's Homily on Fellow-feeling and Commensurating Pain (ch. 10)
14: The trial (chs 11-12)
15: Hanging Upside-down and Sam's Self-judgment (ch. 13)
16: Farewell Freyfaxi and Frey (chs 15-16)
17: The 'True' Nature of Hrafnkel's Transformation (ch. 16)
V. Six Years Later
18: Eyvind Returns; a Griðkona Takes Over (ch. 17)
19: Who in Hell Are We Rooting For? (ch. 18)
20: Hrafnkel's Judgment and Justification (ch. 19)
21: Sam's Last Gasp (ch. 20)
22: Sam and Morpheus: What Counts as Taking a Turn
23: Conclusion: Hard cases, hard choices
Appendices
A. Hrafnkels saga Freysgoði, translation of MS ÁM 156, fol.
B. Glossary of Norse Terms
Works Cited
A.1 Hrafnkels saga, editions and translations consulted
A.2 Norse sources and translations
B. Secondary Works
Maps
Index

About the Author

William Ian Miller is the Thomas G. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and Honorary Professor of history at the University of St. Andrews. He has written extensively on the bloodfeud, mostly as manifested in saga Iceland: Bloodtaking and Peacemaking (1990), Eye for an Eye (2006), Audun and the Polar Bear (2008); 'Why is your Axe Bloody?': A Reading of Njáls saga (2014). He has also written books about
various emotions, mostly unpleasant ones: Humiliation (1993), The Anatomy of Disgust (1997), The Mystery of Courage (2000), Faking It (2003), and Losing It (2011) about the loss of mental acuity that comes with age.

Reviews

It is difficult to fault [Miller's] dedication to reading [the saga] with such a fine-toothed comb that he manages, against the odds, to say something new about a saga about which so much has been said before.
*Jackson Crawford, Scandinavian Studies*

[A] tour-de-force combination of legal scholarship and passionate imaginative engagement with the work.
*Times Literary Supplement*