manuscripts are minor variations in wording. Synopsis Prelude Laxdæla saga begins in Norway in the late ninth century as Ketill Flatnose and his children leave Norway to escape the tyranny of Harald Fairhair. The saga focuses in particular on Ketill's daughter Unnr the Deep-Minded. Unnr leaves Norway to travel with her family to Iceland. Later in the saga when she hears that her father and her son are dead, she has a ship built so that she can take all of her surviving kinsmen as well as a great deal of wealth to safety. Unnr goes on to travel to Scotland and the Orkney and Faroe Islands before claiming lands in Breiðafjörður in Western Iceland. Later in life, Unnr decides to leave her wealth to Olaf, the youngest of Thorstein's children. She decided to leave her inheritance to him because he was very good looking and likable. The saga describes Unnr's dignified death and her ship burial. The next principal character is Höskuldr Dala-Kollsson, great-grandson of Unnr. He is married to a woman named Jorunn. He travels to Norway to acquire wood for house-building. While abroad, he purchases a mute but beautiful and expensive slave-girl. He also meets King Hákon the Good, who gives him wood, as well as a ring and a sword. Höskuldr then travels back to Iceland. Höskuldr and the slave-girl have a child named Olaf, later nicknamed Olaf the Peacock. One day, when Olaf is two years old, Höskuldr finds Olaf and his mother talking by a stream. Höskuldr tells the slave-girl that she can no longer pretend to be mute and asks for her name. She reveals that she is Melkorka, daughter of King Mýrkjartan of Ireland, and that she was taken captive at the age of fifteen. Höskuldr also fights the reanimated Hrappr. Olaf the Peacock grows up to be a handsome and well-mannered man. When he is eighteen years old he travels abroad. He first goes to Norway where he pays his respects to King Harald Greycloak and befriends his mother, Gunnhildr. When Gunnhildr learns that Olaf wants to travel to Ireland to seek his grandfather, she orders a ship to be made ready for him and gives him a crew of sixty men. Olaf sails to Ireland but ends up with his ship stranded in an unfavorable area, far from any port. Local Irishmen lay claim to all property on the ship,