Njáls saga: Gunnar, Njáll and the Burning

Iceland's parliament, the annual Althing, first met at Þingvellir in the summer of 930, and in the saga it is where Gunnar arrives in splendour and meets Hallgerður. She tells him her name and her father's, and says she is "hard to please in husbands". They talk long, and soon they are betrothed, despite warnings from Hrútur and misgivings from Njáll. Today Þingvellir is a national park, one of the three key attractions of the Golden Circle, with a visitor centre that explains its history and nature.

Location precision: The saga sets the meeting at the assembly, not at one spot; the pin marks the old assembly site by Þingvellir church.

Visitor guidance: Þingvellir National Park has a visitor centre; allow time to walk the assembly site.

Gunnar and his brother Kolskeggur are sentenced to three years abroad. As he rides away his horse trips; he looks back at the slope and says, "Fair is the Lithe; so fair that it has never seemed to me so fair." He stays, and becomes an outlaw. His enemies come, he defends himself until his bowstring is cut, and Hallgerður refuses him her hair, in revenge for a slap he once gave her. They take the roof off to reach him. The turf farmhouses are gone, but a church and churchyard remain at Hlíðarendi.

Visitor guidance: Only the church and churchyard remain from the old farm; Fljótshlíð is the valley around it.

Njáll's sons, with Kári, prepare to ambush Þráinn and his men beside a river with a bridge of ice over it. Skarphéðinn overtakes his brothers, leaps the river, slides on the ice past Þráinn and splits his skull in passing. Afterwards the men go to the Fleet and measure the jump with spear-shafts: twelve ells. Skarphéðinn later recalls it as the leap "across Markfleet", the Markarfljót, a river about 100 km long in the south of Iceland.

Location precision: The saga names the river but not the spot of the fight; the pin marks a point on the Markarfljót, which is about 100 km long.

Lawsuits have reached a deadlock, Njáll tells Skapti and the other chiefs, and he proposes a Fifth Court to hear what the Quarter Courts cannot end. The change also wins a chieftaincy for Höskuldur. The Law Rock was where the Lawspeaker sat and where anyone could argue a case before the assembly, but its exact site is unknown. Candidates are a ledge on Hallurinn, now marked by a flagpole, and a rock wall in the Almannagjá fault.

Location precision: The exact location of the Lögberg is unknown, because the rift valley has changed over a thousand years; the pin marks one of two candidate sites.

Visitor guidance: The candidate sites lie inside Þingvellir National Park; a flagpole marks the Hallurinn ledge.

Höskuldur is killed as he sows his field, walking to the fence with a corn-sieve; Skarphéðinn springs up from behind it. All men mourn, none more than Njáll, his foster-father. Flosi, Höskuldur's wife's uncle, comes with a hundred men to Bergþórshvoll, where about thirty stand ready. He lets the women leave, but Njáll and Bergþóra refuse to go. "Keep up your hearts," Njáll tells those inside, "this is but a passing storm." Eleven die. Kári escapes along the beam, and his revenge fills the rest of the saga.