Egill Skalla-Grímsson: The Dark Figure as Survivor in an Icelandic Saga
In Jesse Byocks article he states that
A wanderer and a poet, Egill Skalla-Grímsson is the most thoroughly developed dark figure in the Icelandic family sagas. Egill’s family tree included werewolves, berserkers and shapechangers, and he inherited not a little of his ancestors’ fierceness. On one occasion Egill wins a duel by biting through his opponent’s windpipe; on another he vomits on a stingy host. He is self-centered. His poems, although ostensibly intended to honor others, are chiefly about himself. Intensely ugly, swarthy, and at his best in middle age, Egill is anything but the fair-haired or tragically fated hero. He is obstinate and greedy. At the end of his life, he, like his father, throws his viking treasure into a bog rather than share it with his children.
First published in “The Dark Figure in Medieval German and Germanic Literature”, ed. E. R. Haymes and S. C. Van D’Elden. Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 448. Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1986, 151-163.
Full paper here
Of Wolf and Man 