Hólmkell

Holmkel is the worthy chief of Foss on Snæfellsnes — Ketilrid's father, and one of the few wholly decent elders in the saga romance of Viglund the Fair. Well-disposed toward the young lovers Viglund and his daughter Ketilrid, who are fostered side by side and clearly made for each other, Holmkel would see them happily matched; but the malice of others — his own wife's scheming and the enmity of rivals — works to part them and marry Ketilrid off against her heart, driving Viglund abroad through the romance's many reverses. Holmkel stands as the saga's image of the good father caught in currents stronger than his goodwill: a fair man who wishes the lovers well and cannot, against scheming kin and bad fortune, simply give them the happy ending he would choose. The decent elder of the corpus's gentlest, most romance-shaped tale.