Óspakr

Uspak is the shifty, violent steward of Bandamanna saga — the bad servant whose treachery sets trouble loose. Taken on by the self-made young trader Odd to manage his affairs, Uspak proves untrustworthy: grasping, quarrelsome, and ready with his hands, he becomes embroiled in a killing that gives Odd's enemies — the confederacy of grasping chieftains — the pretext they need to move against him at law. Uspak is the saga's image of the dangerous dependent, the servant whose own violence and bad faith drag his master into peril; he embodies the everyday hazard of the saga world, where a man's household is only as safe as the least trustworthy person in it, and a single shifty steward's crime can be turned by ill-wishers into a lever against the whole family. The bad servant whose misdeeds the powerful are only too glad to use.