Agnar

Agnar is the boy whose one kindness was repaid by a god. The young son of King Geirröðr, he alone pitied the nameless prisoner his father had set to burn between two fires, and brought the suffering stranger a horn of drink against the king's command. The stranger was Odin — and for that single act of mercy Odin blessed him, declaring no better gift could be given for one drink, and foretelling that Agnar would rule the land after his doomed father. He is the small bright figure in a grim tale: proof, in the wisdom-poem's accounting, that the gods watch how the helpless are treated, and that a child's instinct toward kindness can outweigh a king's cruelty and inherit what the cruel man loses.