Murder in the Baðstofa: Bathing and the Dangers of Domestic Space in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature

Abstract

A famous scene in Eyrbyggja saga describes how a farmer, Styrr of Hraun, uses a baðstofa, “bathhouse, bathing chamber,” to dispose of two troublesome berserker brothers.1 One brother has demanded the farmer's daughter as his bride, threatening the farmer if he will not agree to the match. After seeking counsel from his wise neighbor, Snorri Þorgrímsson, the farmer sets three labor-intense tasks for the berserkers to complete while he has a baðstofa prepared for their arrival. Having exhausted their strength through physical labor, Styrr invites the berserkers to relax in the baðstofa and then barricades their only exit, heating the space to an unbearable temperature and murdering them when they attempt to clamber out. A now-lost chapter of Heiðarvíga saga describes the same event, with the probable narrative difference that the berserkers in Heiðarvíga saga ask whether anyone else will join them in the baðstofa, with Styrr craftily responding that it would be unfitting for the other men to bathe with such mighty personages.2Eyrbyggja saga emphasizes that the architecture of the baðstofa at Hraun is vulnerable by design. Constructed while the berserkers are away cutting a road through the lava, Styrr's bathing house is dug into the ground with only a single narrow exit up and out, and it has a small opening in the wall that allows it to be easily (over)heated from the outside. Most medieval Icelandic farmers did not custom-build themselves a baðstofa for the purpose of ridding themselves of unpleasant suitors. Nevertheless, when the baðstofa makes an appearance in medieval Icelandic writings, it tends to be situated within a narrative episode depicting home invasion, murder, or attempted murder. In this paper, I argue that making the baðstofa visible in such a context is a deliberate violent inversion of its normal association with socialization, hospitality, and restoration. This is particularly true of the baðstofur in Sturlunga saga, a compilation that describes a particularly bloody period of Icelandic history and records numerous contemporary events in which mundane domestic spaces became sites for reprisal killings.The baðstofa as it appears in literature cannot be disassociated from changing social practices, material cultures, and environmental conditions. As examined here, the function and architecture of the baðstofa did not remain stable throughout the medieval and Early Modern period. Conceptions of bathing changed, and so too did the availability of firewood in the Icelandic landscape. Increasingly, the term baðstofa described a heatable room but not one associated in literature with heightened danger to its occupants.The restoration of the baðstofa in a literary context occurs in a folktale recorded (and perhaps partly invented) by Jón Eggertsson (ca. 1643–1689) in the late seventeenth century, which describes a bungled home invasion of a church farm in the fifteenth century. In this story, the hunted becomes the hunter and the baðstofa a site of protection and eventual reconciliation for the feuding parties. As recorded by Jón Eggertsson, this folktale plays with the audience's knowledge of home invasion scenarios elsewhere in Icelandic sources and their often fatal outcomes, adding a touch of comedy to an otherwise serious violation of domestic space.An Icelandic-Latin glossary from the late twelfth century in the encyclopedic manuscript GKS 1812 4to gives baðstofa as the gloss for thermae, “public baths,” and kerlaug, “basin for bathing, bathtub,” for balneum, “bathing chamber.”3 Bathing and bathing establishments were common throughout much of mainland Europe during the Middle Ages, albeit on a more modest scale than the thermae and balnea of ancient Rome, where both immersion bathing and dry sweating were practiced.4 In Amalfi in southern Italy, records exist of heated balnea inside private, domestic spaces from as early as the tenth century, and bathing chambers were a standard feature of wealthy households (and some less affluent rural homes) by the late twelfth century, when GKS 1812 4to was written.5 At its most basic, this type of balneum was a small heated chamber with a single hot-water bath, with an area for undressing.Saunas and dry sweating were treated as distinct categories of bathing, which made these baths conceptually different from modern-day ones, which are generally understood as involving immersion in water. Practices of bathing also frequently involved public social interaction.6 The popularity of communal bathing extended to Scandinavia, where a public bathhouse was a common feature of urban areas in medieval Denmark, and bathing facilities were commonly found at religious houses, hospitals, and the residences of the wealthy.7 In Old Norse usage outside of Iceland, the word baðstofa refers to this type of communal bathing space, sauna, or heated steam bath.8The ONP database (https://onp.ku.dk/) contains numerous instances of baðstofa describing a public sauna or bath, particularly in fourteenth-century Norwegian legal documents and law texts. A brief glimpse of the interior of such a baðstofa can be found in Arons saga Hjörleifssonar, in which Aron Hjörleifsson is entrusted with the management of King Hákon Hákonarson's bathhouse in Bergen, which is large enough to accommodate fifty guests and has separate chambers for undressing and bathing; as was presumably common at such establishments, guests were expected to pay Aron for the upkeep of the bathhouse.9 Bathing culture as it developed in Iceland was of course influenced by practices beyond the island's borders. However, in the absence of urban areas, local bathhouses comparable to those in mainland Scandinavia did not emerge, and baðstofur are always part of a larger living complex.Þiðreks saga af Bern contains two references to the baðstofa in connection with the character of Þéttleifr the Dane, introduced as an elite-born boy who shows no interest in riding or other aspects of courtly culture and never combs his hair, washes himself, or uses the baðstofa, cultivating neither his personal hygiene nor his aristocratic status. The young Þéttleifr's avoidance of the baðstofa is contrasted with his frequent presence in the steikarahús, “kitchen.” Þéttleifr's entry into manhood is represented by his eventual entry into the baðstofa to wash and groom himself, emerging into his new identity as an adult nobleman.10 Soon after, he proves his mettle by helping his father defeat a band of robbers who vastly outnumber them. The young Þéttleifr is a typical kolbítr figure, and his rapid transition from a youth disinterested in masculine pursuits to a formidable warrior has close parallels within the Íslendingasögur and fornaldasögur.11In sharp contrast to Þéttleifr's experiences in the baðstofa, a translated exemplum about a hubristic nobleman who is miraculously deserted by his servants and household while bathing reveals a degree of anxiety over the bather's weakness and social vulnerability inside the bathing chamber.12 The rich man's growing irritation and rage as he finds himself naked and alone, without attendants or clothing waiting for him in the dressing room beyond, progresses to fear when those he encounters take him for a pauper and turn him out. Experiencing the world as an outcast proves to be his path to salvation, as he comprehends the transience of temporal wealth, which can evaporate as quickly as the steam from his bath. He learns the virtues of humility and charity before being restored to his former position by an angel. The type of solo day bathing described in the exemplum does not feature in Icelandic sources, however, nor does the exemplum reflect normal Icelandic bathing practices, since an explanation is added for the audience's benefit that it is a common cultural practice outside of Iceland for men to bathe during the middle of the day, and for very rich men to bathe alone with a single attendant to serve them.13The baðstofa could serve as a place of healing when used appropriately. A passage on its restorative and harmful effects survives in a medical handbook attributed to Henrik Harpestræng (d. 1244), a canon at Roskilde.14 Harpestræng's text is informed by the scientific wisdom of his day, according to which one's health and temperament were governed by bodily fluids: four humors that were present in the body in varying quantities and had distinct natures, each being composed of a different combination of the four contraries (hot, cold, moist, dry). Ill temper and bad health resulted from an imbalance of these humors, which could be corrected through various harmonizing treatments. Under the humoral system of medicine, restorative bathing involved warming, cooling, drying, or moistening the body as dictated by the bather's personal needs.15 Entering the baðstofa was not beneficial for all, and Harpestræng warns that a trip to the baðstofa could be fatal for sufferers of various medical conditions, including unhealed wounds.16A brief passage in the king's saga Sverris saga suggests that the risks of the baðstofa for the wounded were known in Norway (and Iceland) even before Harpestræng's day. According to Sverris saga, the warrior Nikulás of Vestnes refuses medical treatment for a head wound sustained during fighting. When he takes a bath in this condition, he is suddenly struck with pain and dies after a short convalescence, to the great loss of his king, Sverrir Sigurðarson (d. 1202).17 Here, bathing does not form part of a treatment regimen, which Nikulás believed to be unnecessary, but is instead a post-battle activity that proves fatal.The death of Nikulás of Vestnes occurs during the later chapters of Sverris saga, which chronicle Sverrir's reign as sole king of Norway and the many conflicts that threatened to topple him during his final years in power. Earlier chapters of Sverris saga document the rapid, violent rise of King Sverrir to power in Norway. According to the prologue of Sverris saga, this earlier section of the king's saga was written by the Icelander Karl Jónsson, abbot of Þingeyrarklaustur (1135–1213), but dictated by King Sverrir himself, likely during the period ca. 1185–1188. The abbot traveled to Norway in the summer of 1185, a year after Sverrir defeated King Magnús Erlingsson of Norway.18 The saga as currently preserved has been expanded to include the events up to and including Sverrir's own death in 1202, and the depiction of Nikulás of Vestnes's death is unlikely to have come directly from Sverrir.19Where baðstofur appear in chapters of Sverris saga set before 1185, these spaces are frequently depicted as points of potential weakness and vulnerability that attackers can exploit. In chapter 71 of Sverris saga, prior to his rival Magnús's defeat, Sverrir launches a surprise attack on a Saturday (laugardagr, lit. “washing day”), but he plans to wait until as many as possible of his enemies will be defenseless in the baðstofur. However, his men are overeager and launch their attack “heldr snemma dags” (rather too early in the day).20 Shortly before Magnús's final defeat, Sverrir sends Úlfr of Laufnes and Þórólfr rympill with six ships to the settlement of Lúsakaupangr “og bað þá elda þar baðstofur ok taka at verkakaupi slíkt er þeir vildu” (and bid them heat the bathhouses there and take what they wished for their labor).21 The looting and destruction of Lúsakaupangr was openly aimed at civilians, which the saga does not portray as behavior unfit for a king: Sverrir's men are depicted as respecting the sanctity of churches, even as they lay waste to secular infrastructure. In this context, Sverrir's wordplay mockingly places his men in the role of bathhouse attendants who “heat” the bathhouses by lighting them on fire as part of Sverrir's terror campaign, although the saga indicates that the population had already fled.The destruction of the bathhouses of Lúsakaupangr was a violent act, but all such communal bathing establishments gradually vanished from the urban landscape over the centuries to come. Water and steam played a peripheral role in the personal hygiene of most Early Modern Europeans, except as a medical remedy closely supervised by physicians.22 Shared spaces for pleasure-bathing and socialization became increasingly associated with moral and bodily contagion and gradually disappeared from the urban landscape.23 Instead, laundering undergarments and rubbing the body down with clean linen was promoted as a form of “dry bath,” effectual in maintaining bodily balance and good health.24The extent to which Icelanders practiced bathing in outbuildings such as that described in Eyrbyggja saga is hotly debated. Small pit houses on Viking Age farmsteads, formerly interpreted as steam baths, may instead be women's textile workshops, constructed from timber and heated by a stone oven or hearth.25 The presence of a baðstofa on Icelandic farms is widely attested in sources from the medieval period to the twentieth century, but by the late eighteenth century the word describes a communal eating, working, and sleeping space for the farm household. Given that Icelandic farm buildings were traditionally constructed from turf and thus needed to be rebuilt on a regular basis, no fully intact examples of Early Modern (or medieval) baðstofa architecture survive; even the historic baðstofa at Keldur in Rangárvellir in South Iceland dates only from 1891, when the baðstofa from 1820 was rebuilt.26 Written sources are therefore invaluable in studying the built environment of premodern Iceland.Geothermal activity in Iceland has meant that bathing options in some parts of the country have included natural hot springs and heated pools, or laugar, which were not human-constructed spaces although they could certainly be incorporated into the built environment, the most famous example being Snorralaug in Reykholt. A laug could also refer to a basin for immersion bathing, such as the one in which Ármóðr is murdered by the wicked Starkaðr according to Egils saga einhenda ok Ásmundar berserkjabana.27Sturla Þórðarson's Íslendinga saga describes the medical use of a prepared laug by an Icelandic priest, Dálkr, in a failed attempt to restore the health of Hallbera Snorradóttir, adult daughter of Snorri Sturluson, who was living at Borg at the time.28 There is also documentary evidence that Hólar and Skálholt were equipped with dedicated bathing chambers staffed by bath attendants and that bath-related inventory (e.g., baðtygi, baðföng, baðkúfar) were present at Hólar, Skálholt, the monastery at Möðruvallaklaustur, and the Presthólar benefice in the sixteenth century.29 However, Nanna Ólafsdóttir argues convincingly that buildings or rooms designated as baðstofa were already too prevalent on fifteenth-century Icelandic farmsteads to have functioned exclusively as baths, saunas, or sweating-rooms.30 Restoring bodily harmony through dry sweating after cold- and wet-inducing work would be entirely in keeping with humoral theory and medieval—and older—conceptions of winter as a season closely associated with phlegm (cold/wet).31 If Icelandic baðstofur are interpreted as heatable chambers for dry sweating, then these drying and warming properties would qualify them as bathing rooms as conceptualized under the humoral system, as described above. Documentary evidence suggests that they continued to be used as spaces for socialization and interaction with guests: Arnheiður Sigurðardóttir observes that in fifteenth-century legal documents, the baðstofa is increasingly named as the location in which binding legal agreements are reached, particularly in North and West Iceland, and there is a clear expansion in the use of the baðstofa over the course of the sixteenth century.32Fljótsdæla saga, an Icelandic saga dating from as late as ca. 1500 and preserved only in postmedieval copies, treats the architecture of the Viking Age skáli (here, “longhouse”), in which eating, working, and sleeping took place in the same area, as a phenomenon requiring some explanation.33 The narrator comments directly on the lack of division of domestic space into stofur (here, “chambers”) and explains that baðstofur were not yet common; there was plenty of firewood in those days, and the household could sit huddled around a large open hearth for warmth in the evening. The absence of hierarchical spatial division allows for a scene in which the farm household and guests crowd together in the evening in the skáli, where a freed slave openly slanders a woman in the presence of the master of the household and some laborers visiting the farm. Saga narratives are highly selective when describing domestic interiors, which generally come into clear view only when the action requires the audience to gain a more specific understanding of the space in which it takes place.34Fljótsdæla saga indicates a belief that baðstofur became more common in the late medieval period than they had been in earlier centuries, but it also suggests that the social interaction in the skáli described in the slandering scene was an unfamiliar domestic scenario for the later audiences of the tale.The emerging distinction between the social life of the baðstofa and the skáli reflects changes in function and architecture over a long period of time. Arnheiður's detailed and convincing analysis of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century documents indicates that baðstofur during these centuries were primarily workrooms for daytime use and sitting. In the case of larger and wealthier farms and church properties, baðstofur can refer to private or semi-private chambers, revealing increasingly hierarchical division or segregation of architectural space from the era of the Viking skáli. On particularly large sixteenth- and seventeenth-century farms, multiple building units could be designated as baðstofa, the most common distinction being between a small and large baðstofa.35A communal sleeping skáli continued to be one of the basic rooms on Icelandic farms throughout the seventeenth century, including tenant farms of middling size.36 A person's right to “sess í baðstofu og legurúmspláss í skála” (a seat in the baðstofa and a place to sleep in the skáli) remained an important legal issue in 1647.37 Hörður Ágústsson argues that combining the baðstofa and skáli was the product of an energy crisis: timber shortages and difficulties in providing sufficient fuel to heat buildings in winter that affected Icelanders of all classes, driving peasants to combine sleeping and working spaces to permit more efficient heating.38 He theorizes that the baðstofa subsumed the role of the skáli as the regular sleeping quarters for the household over a long transitionary period, beginning in the mid-eighteenth century on large farms and benefices, with women moving their sleeping quarters to the baðstofa first.39The Rev. Magnús Ólafsson's Flateyjarríma, composed in 1626 or 1628, briefly mentions a heated baðstofa welcoming the narrator during his imagined journey to the island of Flatey in Skjálfandi, indicating an enduring cultural association between hospitality and the baðstofa.40 The choice of the baðstofa to finalize legal agreements points to the same purpose, as do the presence of furnishings in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources such as chairs and tables, although the stofa (“hall”) seems to have been the main room in which guests were entertained on manor farms grand enough to have a room set apart for visitors.41Nanna Ólafsdóttir's analysis of the function of the baðstofa prior to the fifteenth century relies heavily on the testimony of the Sturlunga saga compilation, which contains numerous references to thirteenth-century baðstofur.42Sturlunga saga is deeply concerned with the performance of power and violence, and domestic settings are skillfully manipulated to maximize the impact of the actions and interactions of the elite and their followers. Unlike Eyrbyggja saga or Heiðarvíga saga, the sagas in Sturlunga saga deal with contemporary or near-contemporary events.From a literary perspective, a clear pattern emerges in Sturlunga saga's use of the baðstofa. Despite the evidently mundane nature of the space itself, scenes involving a baðstofa are often intense encounters with enemies, and the baðstofa nearly always makes its appearance in connection with either a farm invasion or a deadly attack.The most detailed description of a baðstofa in Sturlunga saga is in Þórðar saga kakala. Kolbeinn Arnórsson and his men are in hot pursuit of Þórðr kakali Sighvatsson and his ally Svarthöfði Dufgusson, who take temporary refuge on an out-of-the way farm. They undress and sleep briefly in the farm's baðstofa (with an oven or hearth in which Svarthöfði hides his armor), before being woken with the news that Kolbeinn's army is advancing rapidly on the farm.43 In a spectacular escape scene, Þórðr and Svarthöfði evade capture by outmaneuvering Kolbeinn's forces, first by running naked through the snow and then in Svarthöfði's case by leaping over a high cliff when cornered. Although Þórðr and Svarthöfði's escape is successful, the experience of either being inside a baðstofa when a farm is invaded or killed within sight of a baðstofa is common within the Sturlunga saga compilation. The presence of a baðstofa is mentioned in ten instances in Sturlunga saga, eight of which are in the immediate context of a home invasion. In addition to the episode in Þórðar saga kakala, these occur: At the farm of Ölfusvatn, where the farmer is captured while hiding in the baðstofa and murdered (Þórðar saga kakala);44At Reykjanes in Barðastrandarsýsla, where the farm is attacked and set on fire in the evening when several men are lying in the baðstofa after returning home from fishing (Þorgils saga skarða);45At Eyri in Arnarfjörður, where the farm is attacked and set on fire, and men attempt unsuccessfully to escape through the back door, which leads to the baðstofa (Íslendinga saga);46At an unnamed location in Vatnsfjörður in Ísafjörður, where attackers fatally wound a man in the baðstofa (Íslendinga saga);47At Hallgilsstaðir (var. Hallgrímsstaðir or Hafgilsstaðir) in Hörgárdalur in Eyjafjörður, where the farmer, whom the attackers intend to murder, escapes in his underclothes through the baðstofa window (Íslendinga saga);48At Helgastaðir in Reykjadalur in Þingeyjarsýsla, where a man is captured in the morning in the baðstofa and killed (Íslendinga saga);49At Kirkjubær in Síða, where a young deacon runs to alert neighbors of a farm invasion, twice crossing a half-frozen river, and then returns to the baðstofa at Kirkjubær (Svínfellinga saga).50This list includes two fatal arson attacks in which a baðstofa is visible, three murders, and one attempted murder. Only in the final instance, an episode from Svínfellinga saga, does the baðstofa function as a safe, protective refuge that provides respite from the harsh outside world. Svínfellinga saga also depicts the threatened farm household as successfully averting violent conflict with the attackers by sheltering in the sanctuary of the church until help arrives, with the deacon acting in a key role to ward off the attack through nonviolent means.51 The prayers and diplomacy of the mistress of Kirkjubær, Steinunn Jónsdóttir, who has close family members on both sides of the dispute, delay a final bloody reckoning until after her own death. Elsewhere, surprise attacks occur either on or in close proximity to the baðstofa, and it becomes a threatening environment for its occupants.Throughout Sturlunga saga, but particularly in Sturla Þórðarson's Íslendinga saga, the baðstofa is a vulnerable domestic space, in which men are unarmed and naked or half-naked when their enemies encounter and murder them. Depictions of this space being violated draw the audience's attention to the ethics of farm invasion; killing or maiming a man in the baðstofa does not bring much honor, even where it is an act of revenge.52The remark by an unnamed man in Íslendinga saga who appears unannounced at the farm of Steinbjarnartunga in the middle of the night to seek fire that he needs it “at elda Þorvaldi bað” (to heat a bath for Þorvaldr) has an obvious parallel with Sverris saga.53 This is a revenge attack on the man's enemy, Þorvaldr Snorrason, who dies that night when the farmhouse in which he is staying is lit ablaze in an arson.However, unlike in Sverris saga, attacking the baðstofa is not presented as a deliberate strategy in a conflict, and indeed there are many unintentional victims caught up in the events of Sturlunga saga who are family members of the attackers. The narrative tends to highlight these familial connections, most prominently in the case of the men in the baðstofa at Reykjanes in Breiðabólsstaður: one of the attackers in the arson is the son of one of the men trapped inside the burning farm, and the son curses his father when he refuses to abandon the others to save himself. In contrast to Sverris saga, the motivation of the attack at Reykjanes is never explained, stripping down the event to an act of violence within a seemingly endless cycle of violence and revenge. Perhaps the most tragic of these violent attacks as portrayed in Sturlunga saga is the burning of the Flugumýri manor farm on 22 October 1253, in which the chieftain and saga-writer Sturla Þórðarson's 13-year-old daughter, Ingibjörg, is rescued from the flames by one of her cousins—who was among the arsonists. The motivation behind the arson attack on Flugumýri is clear, but the episode at Reykjanes is particularly effective for providing no background or moral context for the audience that might help to comprehend the circumstances in which a man chooses to torch the farm complex within which his own father is sheltering.The literary examples examined above have in common that no feminine presence is mentioned in the baðstofa while occupied by adult men. Spending time with other men in the baðstofa at the end of a hard day's work outdoors is restorative, warming, and homosocial, being associated in both Eyrbyggja saga and Sturlunga saga with the completion of physically draining labor (e.g., fishing, road building, and winter travel).As an imagined space in medieval Icelandic literature, the baðstofa is not exclusively a male domain, but female socialization in the baðstofa is not depicted in surviving sources. Rannveigar leiðsla (Rannveig's dream-vision) in the A version of Guðmundar saga begins with the explanation that a woman named Rannveig from an unnamed farm in East Iceland was found unconscious after having fallen while exiting the baðstofa early one morning, although she was not discovered until much later.54 Here, the baðstofa does appear as a woman's space, but not for female socialization. Rannveig bathes alone before starting her day's work, which was more likely to have consisted of indoor activities such as cooking and weaving than extended labor outdoors. Although the baðstofa is not described, it is a semi-private space somewhat apart from the main sleeping quarters on the farm, which would presumably be the highest-traffic area of the house in the early morning.As in the exemplum discussed earlier, exiting the baðstofa leads Rannveig to an intense and transformative religious experience, in this case a dream-vision in which she is first dragged to hell for sleeping with two priests but is rescued from torment by saintly intervention and shown a vision of heaven before she awakes. Depending on the type of bathing in which Rannveig engaged, her time in the baðstofa may have been understood by a contemporary learned audience as rendering her more receptive to demonic attack. Humoral theory (see above) dictated that the body's poroi, “pores,” or channels into the body, could be opened through changes in temperature and moisture to release humoral excesses, but opening pores through bathing could also unbalance the bathers and allow evil and harmful things to infiltrate their bodies, something that educated doctors and urban planners could manage through their expertise but that a promiscuous woman on a remote Icelandic farm might not have fully grasped.55Although the majority of baðstofa victims are men, it is not only men who find themselves attacked in the baðstofa. The tragic ballad Kvæði af Tófu og Suffaralín (ÍF 53), preserved in the seventeenth-century songbook of Gissur Sveinsson (AM 147 8vo, ff. 4r–7r) but probably of late medieval origin, depicts a king's jealous fiancée, Suffaralín, inviting his lowborn longtime lover Tófa to join her in the baðstofa, where she disposes of her rival by suffocating her. 56Kvæði af Tófu og Suffaralín is clearly younger than Eyrbyggja saga and Sturlunga saga, and the murder scenario is not unique to Icelandic literature: its foundations are in Valdemar og Tove (TSB D 232), a ballad also attested in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the Faroe Islands and best preserved in Danish recordings.57 However, the wicked Suffaralín's declaration that the king's murdered lover is absent because she is baðstofumóð, “out of breath from the baðstofa,” darkly evokes the imagery of the baðstofa in Eyrbyggja saga.In this ballad, the murder in the baðstofa is most clearly that of an innocent victim: the Icelandic variants of the ballad portray Tófa as willing to accept Suffaralín as the king's bride, and it is arguably the king's behavior in expecting the two women to share a continued presence in his court (and even, it would seem, to establish a friendly relationship post-marriage) that leads to the tragedy. The baðstofa murder in Kvæði af Tófu og Suffaralín is not narrated directly and must be inferred from the dialogue of Tófa, Suffaralín, and the king. This is easiest to do if one is already familiar with the fatal baðstofa from Eyrbyggja saga and other deadly baðstofa attacks.Female friendship is rarely depicted in medieval Icelandic literature, and relationships depicted in the Í