Bókastaðir

An Old Norse Library

The Saga of Hen-Thorir

"Ertu sárr, bóndi, er þú ert svá rauðr sem blóð?""Eigi em ek sárr, enn eigi er þetta betra."

“Are you wounded, sir? You are as red as blood.”“I am not wounded, but this is no better.”

A miser refuses aid during a famine, turning a dispute over hay into a spiral of lawsuits, vengeance, and one of the most infamous house-burnings in the sagas. A tale of greed, generosity, and the deadly consequences of wounded pride.

The full text of the Saga of Hen-Thorir in Old Norse, with word-by-word glosses, sentence translations, and audio.

8,844 words · 20 chapters · Old Norse · 100% glossed · Audio available

Chapters

• 1–5
• 6–10
• 11–15
• 16–20

Resources

• Characters
• Families
• Maps

Connections

• Ölkofra þáttr: Þorkell trefill, whose counsel drives Hersteinn's case after the burning, turns up years later as one of the six goðar suing Alehood. Another of the six is a son of Þórðr gellir.

Downloads

• Intermediate Reader PDF: all words glossed outside the 300 most frequent saga words
• Advanced Reader PDF: all words glossed outside the 1,000 most frequent saga words

Source

• Þórleifr Jónsson (ed.), Hœnsa-Þóris saga, Reykjavík: Sigurður Kristjánsson, 1892 (Íslendinga sögur 5) — Scanned by Google from the copy at the University of Minnesota. Transcribed from the page scans. Public domain.
• Andreas Heusler (ed.), Zwei Isländergeschichten: die Hœnsna-Þóres und die Bandamanna saga, 2nd ed., Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1913 — Scanned by the Internet Archive from the copy at the University of Toronto. Consulted for ǫ, ø and œ. Public domain.

Glosses are generated by AI and may contain errors.