Óláfr Pái (the Peacock)

Olaf the Peacock is the most splendid of the Laxdæla men — a chieftain of such beauty, bearing, and magnificence that he earned his bird's-name, and grandson, on his mother's side, of an Irish king. His mother Melkorka was an Irish princess taken as a slave, who hid her royal birth and her speech until Olaf, grown, sailed to Ireland and was acknowledged by his grandfather the king — so that the finest Icelandic clan carried foreign royal blood. Olaf is the wise, generous, peace-loving patriarch at the center of the saga's tragedy: father of the golden Kjartan and foster-father of Bolli, he loves both almost equally, foresees the doom growing between them, and is powerless to stop the two young men he raised from destroying each other. The magnificent father who can give his sons everything but the wisdom to spare one another.