A favorite passage, characteristically ending with Thorkel's riddle: that this, this falling asleep, this passing out, this lack of ... that "for some reason seemed a greater grief than anything that had happened before"?
-- Thorkel's grief, vulnerability?
--Thorfinn surpassing his rip-roaring father Earl Sigurd in such a way, and Thorkel finally realizing something that lay years in the past and lay behind our very first chapter?
--And, of course, all the horrible, thrilling, tragic context of the hall-burning and the "gift" (as Groa calls it) from Thorfinn to Groa in suffering that hall-burning--and the escape--together.
