Vatnsdalur

• 1. Introduction

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  Vatnsdalur runs about 25 kilometers through Iceland's Northwestern Region, a glacial trough flanked to the west by the mountain Víðidalsfjall. Its floor barely reaches 2 kilometers at its widest. A Norwegian warrior arrived here in the ninth century, and the family he founded became the subject of one of Iceland's most enduring sagas. The valley's geology proved equally turbulent: a mountain collapsed without warning and permanently changed the landscape at the valley's northern mouth. Among the hills that grew from centuries of landslides, Iceland eventually carried out the last execution in its history. What draws this many irreversible events to one narrow valley?

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• 2. The Saga and Its Settler

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  At a Midwinter feast hosted by King Harald Fairhair, a Sámi seeress named Heiður völva made a prophecy. She foretold that the warrior Ingimundr would leave Norway and settle in Iceland. Ingimundr, born around 865, resisted the idea at first. He was a liegeman to the king, with ancestral estates in Norway he expected to inherit, and no intention of sailing west.

  Ingimundr had fought alongside King Harald at the Battle of Hafrsfjord, earning the king's trust through his courage there. For this service, the king gave him two things. One was a silver amulet of the fertility god Freyr. The other was a noble marriage to Vigdís Þórisdóttir. Vigdís was the daughter of Þórir Rǫgnvaldsson, the jarl of Møre, and the half-sister of Harald's granddaughter, Bergljót Þórisdóttir.

  Vigdís was pregnant when Ingimundr's ship reached Iceland. She went into labor near a stand of trees at the mouth of Vatnsdalur. There she gave birth to Þórdís Ingimundardóttir, the first person born in the Húnavatn district. Ingimundr named the spot Þórdísarholt, meaning Þórdís' copse. The original trees are long gone, but a small grove named Þórdísarlundur was planted in her honor. It stands at the southern edge of the Vatnsdalshólar alongside a memorial stone marking the birthplace.

  Ingimundr established the family's main homestead at a manor called Hof, or Temple in Vatnsdal. He reportedly built a 30-meter-long temple on a steep hillock above the farm, a mound called Goðhóll. Archaeologists have confirmed the remains of the farm and identified several other homesteads named in the saga. They also uncovered a cemetery at Hof that was in use from 1104 at the latest.

  Ingimundr and Vigdís raised two sons who also settled in Vatnsdalur. The Vatnsdæla saga follows their descendants through several generations, treating the valley as the inherited territory of a single bloodline. Its stories blend prophecy and the supernatural with accounts rooted in verifiable locations and people archaeologists have been able to identify. The valley Ingimundr settled has been reshaped by forces he could not have anticipated. The river running past his homestead today feeds a lake that did not exist in his time.

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• 3. The River and Its Lakes

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  The Vatnsdalsá stretches 74 kilometers through the valley, running north toward the Húnaflói. Counted among the famed salmon rivers of northern Iceland, it is fed by a series of waterfalls along its course. The tallest of these is Skinandi; Kerarfoss, Rjukandi, Dalfoss, and Stekkjafoss each mark other points in the river valley.

  At the northeastern mouth of the valley sits Flóðið, a name that translates simply as "The Flood." The lake covers 2.6 square kilometers. Its origins trace to the 8th of October, 1720. On that day, the Bjarnastaðaskríða sent scree and debris from the Vatnsdalsfjall down onto the valley floor. The slide dammed the Vatnsdalsá and flooded the grassy wetland that had stood there. Three ponds that previously occupied the wetland, named Hólatjörn, Körtjörn, and Breiðabólstaðartjörn, were submerged and absorbed into the new lake. The farm called Bjarnastaðir, which gave the rockslide its name, was destroyed. The rockslide also permanently rerouted the river. The 8-kilometer stretch of water now running north from Flóðið to the Húnavatn is called the Hnausakvísl. It did not exist before that October.

  On the valley's western side, a pond called Kattarauga sits roughly 15 meters deep, fed by a natural spring at its floor. The name translates as Cat's Eye. The spring source is visible through the water and is said to glint in favorable light. Two floating islets, each smaller than one square meter, drift across the surface in the wind. In 1975, Kattarauga was designated a Category III protected area by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The designation acknowledges it as a natural monument of unique value.

  The geology that reshaped Flóðið in a single day had been at work in Vatnsdalur for thousands of years before that October morning.

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• 4. Hills Without Number

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  Icelandic proverb names three things that cannot be counted. They are the lakes of the Tvídægra and Arnarvatnsheiði moors, the islands of Breiðafjörður bay, and the hillocks of Vatnsdalshólar.

  The mounds range in height from less than a meter to about 60 feet, though most stand no higher than 15 feet. Together they cover roughly 40 square kilometers at the northern end of the valley. Most were shaped by a massive landslide or series of landslides around 10,000 years ago, well before the period of settlement known as Landnahme.

  In 1545, the Skíðastaðaskriða struck the valley and killed fourteen people. A major slide in 1811 brought down enough material to destroy a church.

  At the northernmost reach of the Vatnsdalshólar stand three hills called Þrístapar. Their role in Iceland's legal history would be defined by an event in the winter of 1830.

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• 5. Iceland's Last Execution

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  On the 14th of March, 1828, two men named Natan Ketilsson and Pétur Jónsson were murdered in northern Iceland. Friðrik Sigurðsson and Agnes Magnúsdóttir were convicted of the murders and sentenced to death. Nearly two years elapsed before the sentences were carried out.

  On the 12th of January, 1830, Friðrik and Agnes were beheaded at Þrístapar. Their bodies were buried at the site. Their heads were placed on pikes before both were eventually reburied at the cemetery of the Tjarnarkirkja on the western Vatnsnes peninsula.

  In 1973, the Icelandic novelist Þorgeir Þorgeirsson published Yfirvaldið, translated as "The Authority," a fictional treatment of the events. A 1996 film titled Agnes, directed by Egill Eðvarðsson, returned to the story. Australian author Hannah Kent first encountered the case as a teenage exchange student spending a year in Iceland. She later wrote Burial Rites, a fictionalized account of Agnes Magnúsdóttir's final year as she awaited execution. The book was published in 2013.

  The execution block and axe from Þrístapar are held at the National Museum in Reykjavik. Burial Rites has since been translated into 30 languages, carried well beyond the northern hills where the story ended.

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