Otkell Skarfsson

Otkell is the neighbour whose small meanness lights one of Gunnarr's deadliest feuds — a study in how trivial offences become fatal in the saga world. In a hard season Otkell refuses to sell Gunnarr hay and food though he has plenty, and then, when Gunnarr's household is reduced to taking what it needs, Otkell compounds the insult publicly — and in one careless, humiliating moment rides over Gunnarr and wounds him with a spur while passing. These are not great wrongs, but in a culture of honour they cannot be left unanswered, and the killings spiral outward from Otkell's pettiness until they help doom Gunnarr himself. Otkell is the saga's reminder that the feud often begins not in some great crime but in a refusal of food, a public slight, a careless injury — the small, ungenerous act that a proud man cannot let pass, and that ends in blood.