Kálfr Árnason

Kalf Arnason is the rebel chieftain who helps kill St Olaf at Stiklestad — and then, repenting, sails east to fetch the dead king's son home to rule. A leader of the farmers' host that cuts the king down, he is one of the men most responsible for Olaf's death. But the rule that follows — Canute's son Svein and the hated Alfifa — proves so much worse than the king they killed that Kalf, like many, turns; and in a striking act of expiation he is among those who go east to Russia to bring the boy Magnus home from Yaroslav's court to take his father's throne. Kalf is the saga's image of the killer's remorse turned to action — the man who helped slay the saint-king and then, sickened by what came after, helped restore the saint's own son, carrying the guilt of Stiklestad into the work of undoing its consequences. The rebel who killed the father and fetched home the son.