Þorsteinn Egilsson

Thorstein Egilsson is Egil Skallagrímsson's son — and a striking contrast to his violent, brilliant father. Where Egil was ugly, grasping, and dangerous, Thorstein is handsome, fair-minded, and peaceable, the mild master of Borg who would rather settle than fight; the saga marks the wolf-clan's wildness cooling into gentleness in him. He is also the father of Helga the Fair, the beauty whose love two poets destroy each other over in Gunnlaugs saga, so that through Thorstein the great line of Borg passes into that small perfect tragedy. He appears as the calm, reasonable patriarch trying to manage the passions of the younger generation — the betrothal, the rivalry, the duel — and failing, as such fathers do, to save them from themselves. Thorstein is the saga's image of inheritance softened: the quiet good son of a terrible great man, through whom the famous blood runs on into new griefs.