A century and a half after its last destruction, the ruins of Winterhouses stand in a remote valley enclosed by ridges and moorlands. On a spring day, the valley can be beautiful, enabling men to forget its grim history and “tempt fortune” by trying to settle there.

A man, the newest landowner of Winterhouses, defiantly refuses to place a stone on Gunnvör’s cairn, cursing her instead. He surveys his valley and tests the spring swamp grass, reflecting on how it sustains sheep which in turn sustain man. He watches his dog, Titla, savoring “the submissiveness of the dog” (11). On the knoll, he urinates to stake his claim, then chases off sheep belonging to his former master, the Bailiff of Rauthsmyri, from whom he has bought the land.

The man, Bjartur, decides to rename the place “Summerhouses” to reflect his own name which means “bright.” He inspects the ruins and imagines his new croft. He tells Titla that freedom matters more than comfort, having cost him 18 years of “slavery” to the bailiff. He paid his first installment on Easter morning and owns 25 ewes. He and Titla drink from the brook, which he declares excellent. Then he feels doubt which he suppresses by challenging Gunnvör and all specters, declaring himself unafraid. He laughs scornfully at tales of Kolumkilli, dismissing them as “old wives’ tales” (15).

By late spring, Bjartur has built a new turf croft-house at Summerhouses. He is married to Rosa, the daughter of a poor man, Thorthur of Nithurkot. Rosa was also a servant at Rauthsmyri. The wedding guests are mostly poor sheep-men, tough and independent crofters. In the Icelandic tradition, they know and can compose oral verse, as can Bjartur. The bailiff’s wife has lent a tent for the festivities. A rich, educated woman, she writes pastoral poetry while being removed from the realities of the land and is known sardonically as “the poetess” and “the Mistress of Myri.” (22) She named her son Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson after Iceland’s first Norse colonist.

At the wedding, the men discuss sheep ailments and the women discuss scandal and family illnesses. The bailiff’s wife asks Bjartur and Einar of Undirhlith to recite poetry and they decline because they do not approve of her approach to poetry.  

Reverend Gudmundur arrives. Rosa is 26, chubby-faced, reserved, with a slight cast in one eye. After a brief ceremony, the bailiff’s wife delivers a lengthy speech praising farmers as helpers of God and exhorting Rosa to create a home radiating earthly bliss. After her speech, the conversation returns to sheep diseases and the Fell King’s inadequate dog-doctoring.

The day after the wedding, Bjartur and Rosa travel to Summerhouses. With Bjartur carrying her belongings and leading her on a young foal while Titla makes the foal shy, it is a difficult journey. At Gunnvör’s cairn, Rosa asks to place a stone for luck, but Bjartur refuses, calling it superstition.

Rosa becomes sullen and unresponsive and asks to be let down, saying she is going “home.” Bjartur ignores her, and she begins to weep. Crossing the marshes, Blesi sinks in a bog, throwing Rosa into water and mud. Bjartur helps her up, saying that “women are more to be pitied than ordinary mortals” (30).

Inside the new croft—a small combined house and stable—Rosa comments that the window is small, unlike the big windows at Rauthsmyri. Bjartur is annoyed and asks if she will miss anything else from there. He lectures her on the importance of independence. Rosa says she has had bad dreams and that everyone claims the place is haunted by Gunnvör. Bjartur dismisses her fears and expresses skepticism about religion, saying his only faith is in Reverend Gudmundur’s good breed of sheep. He then accuses her of involvement with a man who hung around the women at Rauthsmyri that spring.

Rosa denies this but argues that Bjartur “is no angel” (34). He names several potential lovers, including a teacher who recently fathered a child outside marriage. In anger, Rosa cries that she regrets not having had them all instead of marrying a man who values sheep over people. Bjartur insists her lover was a man recently returned from the Agricultural College to the Myri household; they both know this is the bailiff’s son, Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson. He rages that he labored for that family for 18 years and accuses her of expecting him to raise Ingolfur’s “bastard.” In fury, he leaps from bed and drags the clothes off her.

Terrified, Rosa clings to him, swearing that no man has ever known her. She pleads for mercy, invoking the curse of Kolumkilli and the ghosts of the croft. He takes pity on her and desists. Instead, he takes snuff, lies down, and goes to sleep: “Of such a kind was their married life” (36).

Bjartur rises early in the mornings to mow, letting Rosa sleep, finding her beautiful and innocent when she sleeps but considering her “betrayal” with other men. He makes some kind advances, like writing her poems and buying her a dress, but she is uninterested. Rosa becomes listless at her work and unwell, showing signs of morning sickness. She develops intense cravings for meat and milk, neither of which are available in summer on the farm. Bjartur dismisses these. Rosa asks if they can buy a cow for milk. Bjartur angrily refuses, saying they are a sheep farm. He calls Rosa’s requests “vanity” and “nonsense”, attributing them to “nerves,” like his mother suffered.

When Rosa asks what will happen if she has a baby, Bjartur says his child will live on its mother’s milk and boiled fish, just as he did. He softens slightly, promising to start a vegetable garden in a year or two, and claps her on the shoulder like a horse.

Rosa’s condition worsens and Bjartur thinks that she has become a “middle-aged slattern” instead of the fresh young woman he married (41). She avoids his attentions at night and he feels thwarted.

One morning, Bjartur wakes to find both Rosa and Titla gone. Titla appears and leads him across the marshes to Gunnvör’s cairn, where he finds Rosa asleep. Rosa had been trying to walk to Rauthsmyri to trade wool from her own sheep, Kolla (her sole personal property), for a bottle of milk. She had placed a stone on Gunnvör’s cairn, then collapsed from exhaustion. On the way back, she becomes violently ill and vomits. Rain begins, and Bjartur carries her home. He promises they will separate several ewes from their lambs next summer to milk them.

One day while raking, Rosa sees a large eel in a stream. She kills it and, despite Bjartur’s disgust at the “water-worm,” she cooks and eats the entire eel.

Late in the summer, a third of their harvested hay blows away. With rain threatening, Bjartur and Rosa work day and night to bring in the rest. Rosa is utterly exhausted, stumbling on foot and dozing off while riding, falling repeatedly, and suffering from nausea and vomiting. One dawn, she collapses by the brook. She feels as if she is peacefully dying, enveloped by the earth and the sound of the water.

Later that morning, a Sunday, Bjartur finds Rosa asleep and rain-soaked by the brook, with hay lost to the stream and the packsaddle broken. He wakes her angrily and she drags herself inside to sleep. A group of well-to-do young people on horseback arrives for a Sunday outing, including Ingolfur Arnarson Jonsson, who goes to shoot birds and fish while the girls go berry-picking.

Ashamed of her appearance, Rosa hides. Bjartur finds her and angrily drags her up to greet the guests. The girls are kind to Rosa, asking her about life on the moors. While the others are away, Rosa sits by the window, starting violently with each gunshot from the marshes.

The group returns in the evening and plays games in the home-field, coaxing Bjartur into joining them and reciting bawdy verses. Ingolfur returns with his catch and patronizingly asks Bjartur what he owes in sports rent. Bjartur proudly refuses the offered birds and fish, disparaging the food at Myri. The girls urge him not to refuse the catch for Rosa’s sake, but he persists. The young people, members of the Young Icelanders’ Association, are moved by Bjartur’s spirit of independence. They sing patriotic songs, hailing him as a “pioneer,” then leave.

Bjartur tells Rosa there is a present for her by the brook from Ingolfur. She finds the ducks and fish Ingolfur has killed. She stands in the dusk, thinking of him and the “harmless birds he had killed” (54).

Bjartur prepares to leave home to round up the sheep for winter, an absence of a few days. Rosa is afraid to be left alone but he refuses to let her go to Rauthsmyri. Instead, he catches a yearling ewe named Gullbra and tethers it in the home-field for her company. Gulbra bleats constantly.

The other shepherds, including the Fell King (the parish clerk), arrive before dawn. Rosa has an emotional reunion with her father, Thorthur, who brings her coffee and sugar. Bjartur feels jealous. The men drink coffee and discuss the weather and harvest, lamenting the hardships of life. Bjartur and Einar debate the merits of classical rhymes versus modern lyrics. The Fell King praises Bjartur and Rosa for embodying Icelandic independence.

Thorthur, old and frail, prepares to leave. Rosa sees her father off, feeling sad, and gives his dog, Samur, a scrap of fish. Bjartur kisses Rosa hastily, gives her instructions, and rides off.

That night, a heavy rainstorm isolates Rosa in the croft. She brings the ewe, Gullbra, into the stalls for shelter, but the animal dislikes being indoors and bleats incessantly. As night falls, the storm worsens, and Rosa becomes terrified of the darkness.

The sheep’s bleating becomes panicked, and Rosa hears sounds of a struggle. She becomes convinced that a supernatural evil—a ghost or fiend—is in the stalls attacking the sheep. The animal’s cries continue through the night. She hides in her bed, overwhelmed with terror, and experiences feverish, nightmarish visions. At dawn, her terror turns to rage against the animal. She takes Bjartur’s scythe-blade, chases the sheep outside and slaughters it violently. After this, she falls into exhausted sleep.

When she wakes, she remembers what she did and is surprised at herself. She realizes the slaughtered sheep means she has fresh meat and, filled with blissful hunger, she butchers the animal, cooks the offal, hides the traces of slaughter, and salts the meat. She eats a huge, satisfying meal of offal, experiencing “the first happy day” of her married life, and falls into a long sleep (75).

Bjartur returns late on the fourth day with his sheep from the roundup. The next morning, he leaves with other crofters to drive 20 lambs to town. He makes several trips to and from town to trade and bring his purchases back, arriving home exhausted each night. He finds Rosa looking fresh and healthy. He assumes she freed the ewe.

Bjartur gives Rosa a vial of pills for her nerves that he obtained from Dr. Finsen, the local member of the Althing (Parliament). He recounts his conversation with the doctor, who refused payment for the pills, asking Bjartur to “remember him” at the next election.

That autumn, Summerhouses hosts many visitors traveling to town, including drunken farmers who wake the couple at night. Some farmers’ wives also detour to visit Rosa, including the bailiff’s wife. She praises Rosa’s coffee, the charm of settling new land, and the virtue of private enterprise. She contrasts the virtue of farm life with the corruption of the towns. Rosa agrees, stating that freedom comes before everything.

The bailiff’s wife extols the happiness of life in a small house, complaining of the burdens of her own large household with 23 rooms and over 20 people. She asks Rosa when she is expecting her child. Rosa reacts with sudden, wild hostility, jumping to her feet and glaring at the visitor as if to ward her off. The bailiff’s wife is visibly disturbed and changes the subject, remarking that poor people are always happier than rich people. She tells Rosa how she and Bailiff Jon took efforts to help Bjartur buy the land and marry Rosa. When Rosa shows no gratitude or interest in this story, the woman leaves.