Blund-Ketill

Blund-Ketil is the generous, well-loved chieftain whose murder ignites the feud of Hænsa-Þóris saga — and the saga's image of decency destroyed by another man's spite. In a hard season, when the miserly risen peddler Hen-Thorir refuses to sell hay though his barns are full and others' stock is starving, Blund-Ketil takes the hay by need to save his neighbours' animals — leaving fair payment behind, doing the decent thing by the older code of helping in a dearth. But Hen-Thorir's wounded pride will not have it: he gathers a band, surrounds Blund-Ketil's house, and burns the good chieftain alive inside it. The burning of a generous man over a load of hay sets the whole saga ablaze with the lawsuits and vengeance that follow. Blund-Ketil is the wronged innocent at the feud's root — the open-handed man whose very generosity, in a grasping neighbour's eyes, became the offence that got him killed.