Hrútr Herjólfsson

Hrút Herjólfsson is the shrewd, plain-spoken uncle of Njáls saga whose clear sight no one heeds — and whose own marriage is undone by a curse. A capable, honourable man, he warns Gunnarr plainly against marrying the beautiful, fateful Hallgerd, his own niece, seeing the trouble in her that others ignore; the warning, like so much wise counsel in the sagas, goes unregarded, and the marriage brings the ruin he foretold. Hrút's own story is touched by the uncanny: a spurned queen's curse leaves him unable to consummate his marriage, and his wife divorces him, leading to a famous, faintly comic lawsuit over her dowry. He is the saga's image of the clear-eyed elder whose plain good sense is always right and never followed — the uncle who reads the danger in a woman's eyes before anyone else, and watches the disaster he predicted unfold because no one would listen to the man who saw it coming.