Höskuldr Dala-Kollsson

Höskuld Dala-Kollsson is Hallgerd's father in Njáls saga — the chieftain whose fateful consent gives the beautiful, dangerous Hallgerd to Gunnar in the marriage that helps doom him. A man of standing in the Dales, he is fond of his lovely daughter and pleased by the great match with the peerless hero Gunnar — overriding, or not heeding, the plain warning of his shrewd brother Hrút that there is something fatal in the girl's eyes. His consent to the marriage is one of the small fateful decisions on which the whole tragedy turns. Höskuld is the saga's image of the indulgent father — the man who gives his cherished daughter to a great hero without weighing the warning, and so sets in motion, through her thefts and grudges and unforgiving heart, the chain of killings that brings the hero down. A father's fondness, and a marriage that should never have been made.