the great drápa. This twenty-stanza long head-ransom poem appears in Chapter 63 of Egils saga. Eiríkr is so surprised by the quality of the poem that he decides to give Egil his life, even though Egil has killed Eiríkr's own son. The complex nature of these poems, with complex poetic metres and metaphors (including kennings), as well as the fact that they were often about kings reliably attested in the historical record, provides some basis for supposing that they might have been composed by a historically real Egil Skallagrímsson, descending more or less unchanged through oral tradition from the time of their composition to the writing of Egils saga. Egils saga and some other Icelandic sagas appear to hang on a skeletal framework of such complex poetry, a spine of historical truth. Egil also fights at the Battle of Brunanburh in the service of King Æthelstan; his brother Þórólfr dies there, for which Egil receives two chests of silver from Æthelstan in compensation. Ultimately, Egil returns to his family farm in Iceland, where he remains a force to be reckoned with in local politics. He lives into his eighties, grows blind, and dies shortly before the Christianisation of Iceland. Before Egil dies he buries his silver near Mosfellsbær. In his last act of violence he kills the servants who help him bury his treasure. When a Christian chapel is constructed at the family homestead, Egil's body is exhumed by his son and re-buried near the altar. According to the saga, the exhumed skull bone was hit with an axe, and it only turned white, showing the strength of the warrior, but also, according to one modern interpretations, suggesting the traits of Paget's disease. Physical appearance In chapter 55 of Egil's Saga, his appearance is described as follows Issue According to Egils saga, Egil has five children with Ásgerðr Björnsdóttir: Þorgerðr Egilsdóttir, Bera Egilsdóttir, Böðvar Egilsson, Gunnar Egilsson and Þorsteinn Egilsson. In later years, Iceland's Mýrar clan claimed descent from him. Poems Apart from being a warrior of immense might in literary sources, Egil is also celebrated for his poetry, considered by many historians to be the finest of the ancient Scandinavian poets and Sonatorrek, the dirge over his own sons, has been called "the birth of Nordic personal lyric poetry". His poems were also the first Old Norse verses to use end rhyme. The following works are attributed to Egil: