Toward the end of Íslendinga saga, the long and bloody narrative that comprises the largest portion of the Old Norse compilation of texts known as Sturlunga saga, Gizurr Þorvaldsson, a man who has been deeply implicated in the ongoing violence, arranges a meeting with Hrafn Oddsson for the purpose of mutilating him. Gizurr (like most of the men and women in the saga) has suffered great personal loss, living on after his wife Gróa is burned alive in their home along with their three sons. The poem he composes after their murder ends with the grim vow that ‘brjótr lifir sjá við sútir / sverðs, nema hefndir verði’ [the sword-breaker will live with grief until vengeance has occurred] (1:496). Ostensibly to arrange a truce, Gizurr goes to meet his enemy with forty of his companions, not the agreed-upon eleven: in other words, a raiding party rather than a band of peaceful apostles.