Óláfr Hávarðsson

Olaf Howardson is the promising young man whose murder is the wound at the heart of Hávarðar saga. Son of the aging, lamed Howard the Halt and his fierce wife Bjargey, he is 'the doughtiest of young men', well-loved and full of promise — and he is killed by the overbearing Icefirth chief Thorbjörn, who then compounds the crime by denying the grieving father even the wergild the law allows. Olaf's death does two things: it breaks his old father, who sinks into years of helpless grief, and it plants the wrong that — kept alive by the steel of his mother — will finally rouse Howard from his bed to the vengeance the law would not give. Olaf himself is more catalyst than character, the bright son lost early; but his killing, and the long injustice that follows it, is the engine of the whole saga's slow, satisfying turn from a strong man's impunity to a crippled old man's reckoning.