The peasant had to make all the clothes for the young unmarried king. Since Ingibjörg came everything was so much more beautifully made, sewed, and splendidly embroidered that the king wondered about it and resolved to investigate the matter. As he came to the peasant's house he saw there the beautiful princess and he was consumed with love for her. He offered her his hand and Ingibjörg agreed gladly to the marriage.
Now he had to promise her never to take in a strange winter guest without her knowledge. The king promised. After some years an old man came who begged the king to take him in and put him down as a hen-pecked husband because he must first ask his wife about such a little thing. The king was ashamed of his promise and received the guest without the consent of the queen. The motive of the now beginning persecution by the winter guest (the father) who kills her children and drives her into misery is a resuming of the original theme. With the help of a princess bewitched by a wicked stepmother in an ox's maw, Ingibjörg, after many difficulties, is returned to her husband again, the father (winter guest) is annihilated.
The "unity of scene" demanded by the dream is thus respected in a beautiful manner by the fairy tale: The king (that is the husband) is seated on a golden chair, the winter guest, however, who has become his minister, is seated on an iron chair with iron braces, which close tightly about his breast (anxiety? bad conscience?). He must now, as is usual in Icelandic fairy tales, relate the story of his life. When he begins to lie and to conceal his misdeeds the iron braces press tighter and tighter and iron prods bore into his breast. Finally he has confessed everything and now a rock opens beneath him and he falls in a kettle full of boiling pitch and is consumed.
The ox's maw as a reward marries the king's brother and is delivered from the spell on the marriage night.
There are still other fairy tales in Rittershaus of analogous content.
Bjorn Bragastakkur (from the collection of Jón Arnäson, cited by Rittershaus) is no king but a wild soldier of fortune who lives deep in the solitary forest. He stole a princess and compelled her to marry him. When his wife died he also wished to marry the daughter, named Helga. She escapes from him in the
