Oddr Ófeigsson

Odd Ófeigsson is the self-made young man of Bandamanna saga — a trader who rises by his own effort and enterprise from modest beginnings to real wealth and a chieftaincy, without the inherited rank the great men think such things require. His success is exactly his danger: prosperous, independent, and resented, he becomes the target of a confederacy of established chieftains who band together to bleed him of his money on a manufactured legal charge. Odd is competent and proud but out of his depth in the snake-pit of Thing politics — it takes his cunning old father Ófeig to actually save him. He is the saga world's portrait of the new man: the trader whose wealth is earned rather than born, admired and begrudged in equal measure, and a standing provocation to the old order that resents anyone rising without their leave.