Hænsa-Þórir (Hen-Thorir)

Hen-Thorir is one of the sagas' great portraits of the self-made man gone sour — a despised, low-born peddler (a 'hen-seller', hence the contemptuous name) who claws his way to wealth and then turns miserly and grasping with it. Risen but never respected, he buys himself a fosterling and a place among his betters, but his meanness is his ruin: in a hard season he refuses to sell hay to his neighbours though his barns are full, and when the well-liked chief Blund-Ketil takes the hay by force to save others' starving stock and leaves fair payment, Hen-Thorir's wounded pride drives him to gather a band and burn Blund-Ketil alive in his house. The burning of a good man over a load of hay sets the whole feud ablaze. Hen-Thorir is the saga world's study of money without grace — the newly rich man whose greed and thin-skinned vanity make him more dangerous than any warrior.