Ófeigr Skíðason

Ófeig Skíðason is the wily old farmer at the comic heart of Bandamanna saga — poor in goods but rich in cunning, who out-thinks a whole confederacy of greedy chieftains. When the great men of the district gang together (the 'banded men' of the title) to strip his self-made son Odd of his wealth on a trumped-up charge, it is the old father, not the young hero, who saves the day — moving among the chieftains at the Thing with flattery, bribery, and a shrewd reading of each man's vanity and greed, turning them against one another until their grasping alliance collapses. Ófeig is a rare saga type: the comic trickster-elder whose weapon is words and whose triumph is bloodless. His saga is the corpus's satire on chieftainly greed — and its argument that an old man's wits can defeat a roomful of powerful fools.