Starkad was the son of a prominent cartoon pirate, Bork Black-Tooth-Beard, son of Thorkel Whose Leg Was Tied Up. His wife was Hallbera, daughter of Hroald the Red and Hildigunn, the daughter of Thorstein Sparrow. Hildigunn’s mother was Unn, the daughter of Eyvind Karfi and sister of Modolf the Wise, progenitor of the Modylfing clan.
Despite all these wise genes in the family, Starkad and Hallbera’s sons Thorgeir, Bork, and Thorkel got none of them. Instead, their sister Hildigunn the Healer ended up with every last intelligent chromosome, as her brothers ran rampant over Iceland getting into drunken fights and pulling stupid pranks.
Whenever those pranks verged on grounds like “property rights” or “human dignity,” the brothers would scoff and go into a long screed about their rights as free men on the land, pointing out that they’d never signed any social contract.* Dealing with them was more trouble than it was worth, so for the most part, the neighbours tried to ignore them.
* Strictly speaking they were correct; however, Iceland had a technical legal term for those not party to the social contract. Perhaps this line of argument was poorly thought through.
Saxo Dramaticus 