Helping Thorir and buying the bear

There were no towns or nucleated settlements in Iceland, so there were no regular markets. Audun provides Thorir the Norwegian with some help, and the help takes the form of finding creditworthy customers, people who could take away the goods now and be trusted to have enough wool and access to enough people to weave it in time so that Thorir could collect his payment and set sail before the weather turned bad in early autumn, as in his case, or next spring if he must. The detail about Audun’s precise service to Thorir, about finding good debt placement, is missing in the more popular Morkinskinna version and it is crucial to giving a deeper sense to the story. Audun and his bear, bought with all he had, then sailed with Thorir back to Norway.Keywords: Audun; bear; Iceland; Morkinskinna version; Thorir