Bolli Þorleiksson

Bolli Þorleiksson is the foster-brother at the heart of Laxdæla's tragedy — Kjartan's dearest friend and near-twin, raised beside him closer than kin, and the unwilling instrument of his ruin. When Kjartan lingers abroad, it is Bolli who brings word home, and Bolli whom the despairing Guðrún marries — half by his own deceiving, half by her pride. Caught between the friend he loves and the wife who hates that friend, Bolli is goaded by Guðrún into the ambush on Kjartan, and at the end strikes the blow himself against a man who throws down his weapons rather than fight him. He gets no joy of it: he is killed in turn by Kjartan's avengers, and dies knowing he destroyed the person he loved best for a woman who never quite forgave either of them. The foster-bond broken — the saga's cruelest casualty.