The Shepherd Who Came Back After Yule

They found Glam after the storm.

The ground around him looked as though two enormous bodies had fought there. Stones had been torn up. Tracks larger than a man's crossed the ground. Blood led towards the rocks.

Glam lay among them, dead and blue.

He had been Thorhall's shepherd, hired because the men who came before him would not stay.

Something in the valley frightened them.

Glam did not care.

He was enormous, foul-tempered and unimpressed by stories about hauntings.

On Yule Eve, while the household fasted, Glam demanded meat.

He ate.

Then he went out to the sheep.

He did not come back alive.

The men who found him tried to carry his body to church.

They could barely move it.

Later, when a priest joined the search, the corpse could not even be found. Glam was eventually buried away from the church.

It did not keep him there.

People began seeing him around the farm.

At night he rode on the roofs hard enough to damage them.

The next shepherd was found with his neck broken and his body crushed.

Livestock died.

Families left the valley.

Then Grettir the Strong came to Thorhall's farm.

He waited inside the hall at night.

Glam entered and grabbed what looked like a bundled shape lying inside.

Grettir grabbed back.

They tore through the room wrestling. Benches shifted and timbers broke as Glam tried to drag Grettir outside.

Grettir drove him backwards through the doorway.

Roof timbers and frozen thatch broke around them as they fell out together.

Then the moon came clear.

Its light fell across Glam's face.

For the first time in the fight, Grettir was afraid.

The dead shepherd looked directly at him and began to speak.

He told Grettir that his strength would never grow beyond what it was that night. Violence and bad luck would follow him. He would be driven away from other people.

“An outlaw shalt thou be made, and ever shall it be thy lot to dwell alone abroad.”

Glam told him that his eyes would remain in Grettir's sight whenever he was alone.

When the curse was finished, Grettir cut off his head.

They burned Glam's body until only ash remained.