Ásmundr the Grey-haired

Asmund the Greyhaired is Grettir's father — a prosperous, respected farmer at Bjarg who never warms to his difficult, troublesome son. Where Asmund is settled, careful, and well-liked, the young Grettir is wild, lazy at chores, and given to cruel pranks, and the two clash constantly; the saga draws a cold, recognisable portrait of a father who simply cannot like his own child. He prefers his gentler son Atli, and sends Grettir off to make his own way with little blessing. Asmund is the saga's image of the disappointed father — the solid, ordinary man baffled and exasperated by the extraordinary, ungovernable son fate has given him, who dies before Grettir's greatness and greater doom unfold. The household friction at Bjarg, between the steady father and the wild boy, is where the saga of Iceland's mightiest outlaw begins.