| 1 | The character gallery for Makoto Yukimura's ''Manga/VinlandSaga'' and its anime adaptation. |
| 2 | |
| 3 | '''WARNING:''' Contains unmarked {{spoiler}}s for the first major arcs of the manga. |
| 4 | ---- |
| 5 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 6 | |
| 7 | !Characters Introduced In the First Arc |
| 8 | !! The Prologue |
| 9 | [[index]] |
| 10 | * '''[[Characters/VinlandSagaThorfinn Thorfinn]]''' |
| 11 | [[/index]] |
| 12 | |
| 13 | [[folder:Askeladd]] |
| 14 | !!"Askeladd," Son of Olaf/[[spoiler:Lucius Artorius Castus]] |
| 15 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/NaoyaUchida (Japanese), Creator/DavidWald (English - Sentai Filmworks/Crunchyroll), Creator/KirkThornton (English - Netflix) |
| 16 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/askeladd_anime.png]] |
| 17 | |
| 18 | A Danish {{mercenary}} commander of mysterious origins, driven to excel through his own unknown motivations. Askeladd serves as antagonist and surrogate father-figure to Thorfinn during the first arc of the saga, pushing around the younger man through having killed his father Thors and using the promise of revenge to make Thorfinn follow him. |
| 19 | ---- |
| 20 | * AwesomenessByAnalysis: It's not his freakish strength or speed that makes Askeladd so dangerous, it's his mind and his ability to read people. Only Thors ever gets the better of him. |
| 21 | %%* BaritoneOfStrength: Courtesy of Creator/NaoyaUchida. |
| 22 | * BerserkButton: [[spoiler: Do '''not''' insult his mother or the circumstances of his childhood.]] |
| 23 | * BoomerangBigot: [[spoiler:Hates vikings and the Norse for their short-sighted violent nature while shepherding around a band of marauders and thugs, fully admitting he's really no better.]] |
| 24 | * BornIntoSlavery: [[spoiler:His mother was the thrall of his father, a Danish lord, and Askeladd lived as a slave too until demonstrating his skill with a sword]]. |
| 25 | * ButForMeItWasTuesday: During his duel with Thorfinn at Uncle Gorm's village [[note]] chapter 2/episode 8 of the anime [[/note]], Askeladd claims to not remember Thors' name and even asks Thorfinn if he's ''sure'' that he killed Thors. [[RageBreakingPoint Thorfinn doesn't take it well.]] [[spoiler: Subverted because it was all lies. Askeladd respected Thors for his ideals and deeply regretted having to kill him. It's all but said Askeladd's indulgence of Thorfinn's vengeance quest is a posthumous show of respect for Thors.]] |
| 26 | * CharlesAtlasSuperpower: Not as obvious or as much in general as Thorkell since he likes to use his head, but it's there. [[spoiler: The sight of Askeladd single-handily chopping one of his men in half, starting at the ''helmet'', frightened his men. One of them professed that he couldn't do that even with an axe, while Askeladd did it with his sword.]] |
| 27 | * CombatPragmatist: He thinks nothing of using deceit, distractions, feints and taunts to keep people off their game. |
| 28 | * CoolOldGuy: Evil version. |
| 29 | * CurbStompBattle: Askeladd has given numerous of these to Thorfinn over the years. He doesn’t even need a weapon to do it! |
| 30 | * DeadpanSnarker: Oh indeed. |
| 31 | * DragonInChief: For Canute after the rest of Askeladd's band is massacred. Canute is perfectly fine with this arrangement, recognizing Askeladd's experience and political acumen. |
| 32 | * DoubleConsciousness: [[spoiler: Averted. Askeladd takes advantage of his Danish heritage but feels no loyalty to it, outright calling Wales his true homeland.]] |
| 33 | * DyingMomentOfAwesome: [[spoiler: Verging with DeathEqualsRedemption. He ends up essentially martyring himself for Wales, saving thousands, and goes down killing a ''king'', butchering twenty royal guards, crowning his Prince, and even comforts Thorfinn in his final moments.]] |
| 34 | * EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: [[spoiler: He spent his early life caring for his ailing mother and even after she died, he fulfilled her last wish to be buried in Wales.]] |
| 35 | * FeelingTheirAge: When [[spoiler: his band turns on him and he's forced to take them all on]] he laments that he's having difficulty with mere 50:1 odds and blames it on getting old. |
| 36 | * HeWhoFightsMonsters: [[spoiler:Wanting to end the Viking Age, he became every bit as bad as his 'opponent'.]] |
| 37 | * HeroicLineage: [[spoiler:He's a living descendant of King Arthur, even if it's ''at best'' twenty generations separated.]] |
| 38 | * HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Given the choice of sacrificing Canute or Wales, Askeladd picks "himself" and assassinates Sweyn Forkbeard at the cost of his own life.]] |
| 39 | * IfIWantedYouDead: Askeladd eventually throws all pretence to the wind and makes clear [[spoiler:to Thorfinn that if he really wanted an end to the constant 'duels to the death' or grew sick of him, he could have killed him years ago]]. |
| 40 | * IGaveMyWord: Played with. If Askeladd swears an oath on the name of his father Olaf [[spoiler:whom he hated and personally killed]] you can bet he fully intends to break it at some point. However, if he swears one on the name of his ancestor [[spoiler: Artorius]], it means he'll honor it to the bitter end. |
| 41 | * KarmicDeath: [[spoiler:After years of goading Thorfinn with promise of revenge for killing his father, Askeladd finally dies at the hands of Canute, whose father figure he also murdered. Granted he knew he was done for after executing Sweyn, but he possibly wasn't expecting Canute to be the one to put him down.]] |
| 42 | * LastOfHisKind: He is, or at least believes he is, [[spoiler:the last living direct descendant of Artorius.]] |
| 43 | * LonelyAtTheTop: [[spoiler:Askeladd doesn't really have anyone he can relate to as an equal. Thors was the closest he got, and he had to kill him. Bjorn claims that his professed hate for everyone else probably mirrors a lot of hate for himself.]] |
| 44 | * LightningBruiser: He's just as quick as Thorfinn, and more physically powerful (Though not to the same extent as Thorkell). |
| 45 | * ManipulativeBastard: |
| 46 | ** He's excellent at playing politics, [[spoiler:having orchestrated his father's assassination and pinned the blame on one of his brothers. He employs this skill against Sweyn as well, but is OutGambitted at the most crucial moment.]] |
| 47 | ** He's played Thorfinn like a fiddle during their whole time together. |
| 48 | * MeaningfulName: Several levels. |
| 49 | ** The ''Askeladden'' ("Ash Lad") is a well-known Scandinavian GuileHero archetype, usually TheUnfavourite third son who saves the day when his "noble" brothers fail. |
| 50 | ** [[spoiler:Askeladd's real name ''Lucius Artorius Castus'' is identical to that of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Artorius_Castus a real Roman soldier]] who some historians think is the basis for Myth/KingArthur. In-universe, Artorius (later remembered as Arthur) was the leader of the British (Welsh) against the Anglo-Saxon (English) invaders, as well as the ancestor of Askeladd. It's implied that in-universe the original Arthur's full name would also have been "Lucius Artorius Castus", since Askeladd's mother named him after their illustrious ancestor. In real life, Arthur has a similar role as the British leader against the Anglo-Saxons in early literature such as ''Literature/HistoriaBrittonum''. But the real Lucius Artorius Castus lived centuries before the Anglo-Saxon incursions (and the name Arthur might have had a different origin) so most other historians doubt his relevance to Myth/ArthurianLegend.]] |
| 51 | * MoralityPet: [[spoiler:Askeladd has a soft spot for his mother's homeland of Wales, and for Thorfinn as well.]] |
| 52 | * MysteriousPast: He intentionally cultivates an air of mystery. If they know nothing of your origins, they cannot blackmail you. |
| 53 | * NoPlaceForMeThere: [[spoiler:All but outright states that in being no better than a viking he's lost all rights to trying to build a better world, despite having both the ability and bloodline to become king of Wales or a powerful Norse chief.]] |
| 54 | * NotSoAboveItAll: In spite of his cynic view of life, [[spoiler:he holds a kernel of belief on the Arthurian legend and his own role as the royal scion of the Britons/Welsh]]. |
| 55 | * NotSoStoic: Askeladd usually exhibits NervesOfSteel and tends to [[ThisIsGonnaSuck snark or quietly bemoan his bad luck]] when things don't go his way. [[spoiler:His facade cracks briefly when Sweyn declares his plans to invade Wales, which is all the latter needs to read him.]] |
| 56 | * ObfuscatingStupidity: Askeladd usually presents a cheerful, joking and jovial attitude to employers and strangers to catch them off their guard. His true nature is far more straight-laced. |
| 57 | * OnlyFriend: Says this to Bjorn [[spoiler:as the latter dies in his arms. Whether he was geniune or just invoking LetThemDieHappy is never made clear.]] |
| 58 | * OOCIsSeriousBusiness: |
| 59 | ** Towards the end of the first arc, [[spoiler:as he loses his men, sees Canute turn into someone who can make his dreams come true and makes an enemy of King Sweyn]], Askeladd becomes increasingly morose and introspective. It comes to head in his final 'duel' with Thorfinn which happened [[spoiler:moments after having put down Bjorn, his only friend (probably). He forgoes his usual demeanor of essentially playing around with Thorfinn and simply beats him to a pulp with his bare fists. It seems he was even planning to seriously kill an unconscious Thorfinn if Canute hadn't stepped in to stop him.]] |
| 60 | ** When [[spoiler: Thorfinn is having his emotional breakdown in "Valhalla", Askeladd's shade gives him a look of contemplation, which morphs into sincere pity and empathy, as he ''completely'' drops the snark, and proceeds to jump into the frenzied melee to protect him.]] |
| 61 | * ParentalSubstitute: [[spoiler:Thorfinn eventually realizes that ten years living as a part of Askeladd's band meant Askeladd was practically his father for much of his formative years. He only realizes this after Askeladd is dead however.]] |
| 62 | * RageBreakingPoint: While Askeladd was indeed putting on a ruse during his rampage when murdering King Swegyn and his guards, it could also be attributed to a combination of having had his mother insulted, losing nearly all of his loyal followers (minus Bjorn and Thorfinn), and the frustration of his plan being ruined that finally pushes him to the edge. |
| 63 | * RagsToRiches: [[spoiler:Legitimised bastard of a Viking lord turned mercenary commander turned advisor to the future king of Denmark, England and Norway.]] |
| 64 | * TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: He gives these to Thorfinn from time to time, though the young man often misses his points because of his sheer wrath towards Askeladd. |
| 65 | * SelfMadeOrphan: [[spoiler:He killed his own father.]] |
| 66 | * SmugSmiler: Does this a lot during the early first arc, occasionally going straight into SlasherSmile territory. [[spoiler:After losing his men to Thorkell, he drops the act completely.]] |
| 67 | * TheSocialExpert: Is an adept political operator. He can examine a person's character just from looking at their face. |
| 68 | * SpiritAdvisor: [[spoiler:To Thorfinn during the Farmland Arc, continuing in much the same fashion as when he was alive.]] |
| 69 | * TheStrategist: Being the chief of a mercenary warband, he is this by nature. As a mercenary, he has the goal of survival as his main goal and he needs to keep his men happy and content so they don't rebel against him. His methods are unpopular with them, but they don't deny he's been keeping them alive for years on end. Their run-in with Thorkell's band is the ''one'' time Askeladd's screwed up. |
| 70 | * SuperStrength: Downplayed compared to obvious examples, but when you can cleave a man in two through his helmet and padding underneath with your sword when it's outright stated you can't do that with an axe, it's clear that Askeladd is ''very'' strong on top of being a tactical genius. Even during his slaughter of King Swegyn's guards he is able to cut through most of them as if they were tissue paper, similarly to what Thorkell is famous for. |
| 71 | * SupportingLeader: A villainous version. While Thorfinn remains the protagonist and viewpoint of the first arc, Askeladd is the one who drives the plot for much of it and it is his plans that eventually become the focus of the prologue [[spoiler:and he and Canute are the ones whose actions end it.]] |
| 72 | * TakeAThirdOption: [[spoiler: When given the option of sacrificing either Canute or Wales, he feigns insanity and kills King Sweyn, setting the stage for Canute to take the throne and call off the invasion of Wales, saving both of them at the cost of his own life]] |
| 73 | * TheSvengali: He shapes Thorfinn into a viking, and indulges him in their duels to the death in order to keep the young man in his service and manipulate him for his own gain. |
| 74 | * TricksterMentor: To Thorfinn. A lot of interactions between them involves Askeladd attempting to imbue the younger man with a bit of wisdom and a sense of perspective, which he doesn't seem to pick up on consciously but eventually ends up shaping his character in a lot of ways. |
| 75 | * VagueAge: The evolving artstyle makes it hard to determine his precise age. He's obviously in his thirties upon meeting Thors and Thorfinn, though, and well into his middle-age by the time the prologue ends, with Thorfinn in his middle teens. |
| 76 | * VillainousFriendship: With Bjorn, possibly. While Bjorn clearly admires Askeladd, it's unclear if he reciprocates. [[spoiler:Askeladd claims it's the case as Bjorn lies dying, but if he was genuine or not isn't made clear. But even if he was lying, he still cared enough about Bjorn's feelings to make him feel better before he died.]] |
| 77 | ** When it comes to the rest of the vikings in Askeladd's band, [[spoiler:it's thoroughly averted. He makes it clear after they turn on him that despite years of raiding together, he has always hated every single one of them along with everything they represent. They were simply tools for furthering his own aims.]] |
| 78 | * WorthyOpponent: His view on Thors, probably the only person (besides post-CharacterDevelopment Canute) he ever held any respect for. |
| 79 | * WouldHurtAChild: He doesn't relish dueling Thorfinn, but whenever they cross blades he has no reservations about ''seriously'' hurting the kid. |
| 80 | * YouKillItYouBoughtIt: [[spoiler: Essentially replaced Ragnar, the man he killed, as Canute's right-hand man. {{Invoked}} by Canute, who demands Askeladd atone his murder of Ragnar by loyally serving Canute much like Ragnar himself.]] |
| 81 | ---- |
| 82 | [[/folder]] |
| 83 | |
| 84 | [[folder:Bjorn]] |
| 85 | !!Bjorn |
| 86 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/HirokiYasumoto (Japanese), Creator/AndrewLove (English - Sentai Filmworks), Creator/RayChase (English - Netflix) |
| 87 | [[quoteright:245:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bjorn_anime.png]] |
| 88 | |
| 89 | TheDragon to Askeladd, being his second-in-command and closest confidante. Known for his usage of mushrooms to drive him into a berserker rage. |
| 90 | ---- |
| 91 | * BarbarianLonghair: Long spiky hair. |
| 92 | * BestFriend: To Askeladd. His one and only friend. |
| 93 | * TheBerserker: After eating a mushroom he becomes little more than a wild raging animal attacking anyone he sees, even his own men. |
| 94 | * BloodKnight: He openly admits that he just likes killing, and that it's worth more than money to him. |
| 95 | * CoDragons: Shares the role of Askeladd's chief enforcer with Thorfinn for much of the first arc. Bjorn is second-in-command of the viking band, while Askeladd entrusts Thorfinn with vital solo missions. |
| 96 | * CooldownHug: Given to him by Canute. [[spoiler:Sadly, being distracted by it allows one of his opponents to mortally wound him.]] |
| 97 | * DuelToTheDeath: [[spoiler:After taking a gut wound that gets infected, he requests that Askeladd kill him this way so he can go to Valhalla.]] |
| 98 | * HiddenDepths: [[spoiler:Before dying,]] Bjorn reveals that he's always yearned for Askeladd's friendship. |
| 99 | * HonorableWarriorsDeath: His desire to [[spoiler:fight Askeladd in a duel instead of letting the infection from his gut wound claim him is implicitly a case of this.]] |
| 100 | * NoBrows: Though he has his helmet on most of the time, so it's not too noticeable. |
| 101 | * NothingPersonal: [[spoiler:He holds no grudge towards Atli stabbing him in the side, despite knowing it would be a fatal wound, and thinks it's foolish to hold grudges with people over what happens on the battlefield.]] |
| 102 | * PsychoSerum: Eats poisonous mushrooms to induce his UnstoppableRage. Although no longer widely believed in academic circles[[note]]A common hypothesis that has surged in recent times due to the increasing knowledge in medical science, is that any group of "Vikings" usually had a Shaman of some kind who's very job it was to be out-of-their-mind on shrooms and then saving his piss (Psylocybin, the hallucinogenic agent in mushrooms of this sort, ''will'' survive the digestive and urination processes of the human body and is in fact ''concentrated'' by doing this) to mix with something palatable, like mead, right before a major battle or raid in an attempt to get the Vikings alongside the Shaman into a fighting mindset.[[/note]], this is one of several hypotheses on how historical berserkers drummed themselves into battle rage. |
| 103 | * SmarterThanYouLook: It'd be a pretty natural conclusion that a huge viking who acts as a literal berserker at times and admits to being a BloodKnight who cares more about battle and killing than money isn't going to be too bright. Bjorn however, occasionally shows moments of cunning and even insight, such as knowing why Thorfinn goes to sulk on a boat after losing in a duel against Askeladd (that Thorfinn takes comfort from being there because it used to be his father's ship) and he immediately knows that the Welsh who apparently ambush Askeladd's band aren't actually looking for a fight, because there's no way that their volley of arrows wouldn't kill anyone unless the Welsh were deliberately trying to avoid casualties, and Bjorn correctly recognizes the gesture as a bluff/posturing. |
| 104 | * SuperStrength: During his UnstoppableRage he is able to perform Thorkell-like feats of lifting and throwing. |
| 105 | * UndyingLoyalty: He's one of only two people in his band that Askeladd trusts unconditionally (the other being Thorfinn). |
| 106 | * UnstoppableRage: When he consumes mushrooms. [[spoiler:It's a SubvertedTrope in that it never allows him to win any battles -- Thors defeats him easily despite Bjorn consuming one before their fight, and while he does defeat ten men in battle (apparently barehanded) during his second rage, he's mortally wounded as Canute is talking him down.]] |
| 107 | * VillainousFriendship: With Askeladd, possibly. Bjorn clearly admires Askeladd, [[spoiler:and his last words to the latter is that he always wanted to be his friend. Askeladd replies that Bjorn is and was his only friend just as Bjorn dies.]] |
| 108 | * WouldHitAGirl: When a woman stands up to him for eating her family’s food, he offhandedly backhands her into a wall so hard it knocked her out. |
| 109 | * YourDaysAreNumbered: [[spoiler:Takes a gut wound during a fight. Bjorn chooses to die fighting before the wound kills him.]] |
| 110 | ---- |
| 111 | [[/folder]] |
| 112 | |
| 113 | [[folder:Thors]] |
| 114 | !!Thors "the Troll of Jom", Son of Snorre |
| 115 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/KenichirouMatsuda (Japanese), Creator/JasonDouglas (English - Sentai Filmworks/Crunchyroll), Creator/GregChun (English - Netflix) |
| 116 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thors_anime.png]] |
| 117 | |
| 118 | Thorfinn's dead father, the mightiest and most favoured captain of the Jomsvikings mercenary band turned anonymous Icelandic farmer and family man. Thors only appears in the saga for less than ten chapters during a flashback, but Thorfinn spends the first two arcs haunted by his death or trying to live up to the ideals Thors attempted to impact on him. |
| 119 | ---- |
| 120 | * AdaptationNameChange: In history the actual name of Thorfinn's father was a man named Thórdarson, also called Thord Horsehead. Here, he's simply named Thors. |
| 121 | * AlwaysSomeoneBetter: To [[CharlesAtlasSuperpower Thorkell]], who admits that Thors is the only man stronger than him. |
| 122 | * ArtisticLicenseHistory: The real life Thors was an Icelandic native with no known connection to the Jomsvikings. Some liberties were obviously taken with his background in order to tie Thorfinn to certain historical events and characters. |
| 123 | * BadassPacifist: After retiring from the Jomsvikings by deserting, he will do ''anything'' to solve things without resorting to violence. A slave escaped from his neighbor Hafldan's farm in ragged conditions, due for death from the damage already done through Halfdan's abuse? Thors would rather trade half his sheep for the slave man to be relieved from his contract to spare him his master's abuse, [[HopeSpot even if he would go on to die shortly after from the damage already done.]]. He could have threatened his unreasonable neighbor at any time for that enslaved man's life, but did not. |
| 124 | * BareFistedMonk: Able to take on a ship full of Vikings with his bare hands. |
| 125 | * BumblingDad: Towards his children. He '''excels''' at manual labor and can easily provide for his family, but Thors' life before he left for Iceland was nothing but fighting, and as such his parenting, practical and negotiation skills (albeit the last of those somewhat slowed down by his pacifist ways) leave something to be lacking. |
| 126 | * DeathByOriginStory: Avenging his death is Thorfinn's first major step towards the DarkSide. |
| 127 | * DeceasedParentsAreTheBest: He was a compassionate warrior who loved his son and wanted what was best for him right to the end. |
| 128 | * DecoyProtagonist: Serves as this in the anime, due to the timeline beginning at his desertion and going onto Thorfinn's childhood from there. |
| 129 | * DefectorFromDecadence: Gave up his life as a professional mercenary and ran away to Iceland to become a peaceful farmer. Fifteen years later, his former life comes knocking. |
| 130 | * DiedStandingUp: After being killed by multiple arrows. |
| 131 | * DisappearedDad: Downplayed. Thors was a devoted father to Thorfinn until he was riddled to death with arrows. His son spent the next ten years training to be a pirate to avenge him. |
| 132 | * GoodParents: Despite getting killed off early in the story, he and Thorfinn really love each other. He even sacrifices his life if by any means to prevent his son from harm. Unfortunately, [[LoveMakesYouEvil Thorfinn's love for his father results in major consequences.]] |
| 133 | * GentleGiant: A tree of a man, who [[MartialPacifist has taken a vow to no longer kill]] and is a generally kind man. |
| 134 | * FakingTheDead: He faked his death during a battle to run away from his life of killing. |
| 135 | * HappilyMarried: With his wife Helga. |
| 136 | * HeelRealisation: He used to be an unrepentant killer until his daughter's birth, at which point he became a pacifist. |
| 137 | * HeroesFightBarehanded: As part of his pacifist philosophy, Thors avoids confrontation whenever possible. Once forced into a fight, however, he prefers to use his fists for non-lethal force. Given his strength and skill, it's hardly a handicap. |
| 138 | * HeroicSacrifice: Allows himself to be killed to ensure the safe passage of his crew and son. |
| 139 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: Creative liberty had to be taken since there's scarce information about the real Thors, but he's based off the real Thorfinn's father Thórd(arson) "Horsehead" Snorresson. |
| 140 | * MartialPacifist: "A true warrior needs no blade." |
| 141 | * OffhandBackhand: Beats one of Askeladd's men in this way. |
| 142 | * OneManArmy: He took on half of Askeladd's mercenary band, including a berserking Bjorn, single-handedly, un-armoured, unarmed and won without a scratch (or without killing anyone). |
| 143 | * PlotTriggeringDeath: His death due to the torturous arrows he received by Askeladd's men was the first step that put Thorfinn on the path to the DarkSide. |
| 144 | * PosthumousCharacter: In the manga, where he has been long dead in the main story. |
| 145 | * RedBaron: The Troll of Jom. |
| 146 | * SpiritAdvisor: To Thorfinn, briefly, during the first arc. |
| 147 | * TheStrengthOfTenMen: He literally rows for five men, and has a completely ridiculously huge oar to make the best use of it. |
| 148 | %%* TheStoic |
| 149 | * TechnicalPacifist: He becomes one of these after his desertion from the Jomsviking. |
| 150 | * ThatManIsDead: Tries to tell Floki that his days as the Troll of Jom are over, but things don't pan out so well. |
| 151 | * WorldsBestWarrior: Even with his vow of not-killing, none of the other warriors seen in the manga could hold a candle to him. |
| 152 | ---- |
| 153 | [[/folder]] |
| 154 | |
| 155 | [[folder:Leif]] |
| 156 | !!Leif "The Lucky"[[note]]His real title would be "Lykkelige", which's root "Lykke" is the origin of the English word "luck", but defined as more akin to "The Fortuitous", "The Joyful" or "The Happy", but "lucky" still gets the general idea right.[[/note]], Son of Erik |
| 157 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/YojiUeda (Japanese), Creator/JohnSwasey (English - Sentai Filmworks/Crunchyroll), Creator/FrankTodaro (English - Netflix) |
| 158 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/young_leif_anime.jpg]] |
| 159 | |
| 160 | |
| 161 | Based on the historical character of the same name. Son of Erik "The Red" (the discoverer of Greenland and founder of the Norse settlements there). At the start of the manga he has already discovered Vinland (Newfoundland) and come back, and spends his time as a farmer and trader between Greenland, Iceland, and the mainland. |
| 162 | ---- |
| 163 | * BoldExplorer: His tales of exploring Vinland incite Thorfinn to do the same. |
| 164 | * CoolOldGuy: Already in his thirties during Thorfinn's childhood[[note]]A little reminder that most fighting and exploring men were ''lucky'' to make it past their thirties in this time period[[/note]], and the kids in the village calls him 'old man Leif'. |
| 165 | * FatherNeptune: Has already sailed from Vinland in the west to the Baltic Sea in the east, and knows the way to Constantinople as well. |
| 166 | * HappilyAdopted: He seems to have adopted Thorfinn "Bug-Eyes" after liberating him; the latter consistently refers to Leif as his father (including to his face) and points out to Thorfinn (the main character one) that Leif has been a better father to him than his biological parents ever were. |
| 167 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: The legendary explorer himself. |
| 168 | * ItWasAGift: In his EstablishingCharacterMoment, he is shown wearing a pristine Native American[[note]]Known as "Skrålings" to the Nords [[InSeriesNickname and in-series]][[/note]] feathered headwear and smoking a pipe, showing to any astute viewer that he really ''has'' made it all the way to Newfoundland and back and made friends with the locals. |
| 169 | * LikeASonToMe: Leif has two biological children, but still has this relationship with Thorfinn. Before Leif passes away, he heartwarmingly refers to Thorfinn as his son and to follow his heart. Thorfinn, on his end, sees Thors and Askeladd standing behind Leif, which implies he stands equal to Thorfinn's biological father and first ParentalSubstitute in his eyes. |
| 170 | * IntergenerationalFriendship: Was a friend of Thors and continues to be a friend of Thorfinn. |
| 171 | * LovedByAll: Everywhere he goes Leif has an abundance of friends and nobody ever speaks ill of him. Thorfinn says that Leif's ability to make friends everywhere and have good relations with just about everyone is a power that Norse society undervalues/underestimates. |
| 172 | * TheNavigator: Long years of sailing have given him an uncanny sense of direction while he's out on the sea. |
| 173 | * NiceGuy: In a society like Scandinavia he stands out, being a pacifist, a trader and having no emnity towards anyone. He even managed to make friends with the Skraelings if his own tales are to be believed, and spends several years trying to honour Thors's final wish to take care of his son. |
| 174 | * NonActionGuy: The kids in the village make fun of him for not being a strong warrior. |
| 175 | * ParentalSubstitute: Is one to Thorfinn. During the third arc, Leif is always by Thorfinn's side and helps encourage him or offers advice when needed. Shortly before setting sail for Vinland, Thorfinn has a heart-to-heart with Leif, and that's where Leif lovingly calls Thorfinn his son and to follow his heart. What makes this more of a tearjerker is that historically, Leif died later that same year. |
| 176 | * RealMenLoveJesus: Historically brought Christianity to Iceland after being converted by Haakon "the Good" of Norway, and mentions that one of his common trade goods is wine he can use in Mass. |
| 177 | ---- |
| 178 | [[/folder]] |
| 179 | |
| 180 | [[folder:Helga]] |
| 181 | !!Helga, Daughter of Sigvaldi |
| 182 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Ao Takahashi (Japanese), Creator/PatriciaDuran (English - Sentai Filmworks), [=Julia McIlvaine=] (English - Netflix) |
| 183 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/helga_vinland_saga_1.jpg]] |
| 184 | |
| 185 | |
| 186 | Thors's wife, mother of Thorfinn and Ylva. |
| 187 | ---- |
| 188 | * ArrangedMarriage: To Thors, most likely as a way for the chief to designate Thors as his heir. |
| 189 | * TheBusCameBack: Like most of the Icelandic characters, she's only seen in Thorfinn's flashbacks and dreams. [[spoiler:She's still around when Thorfinn returns home, and encourages him to seek Vinland.]] |
| 190 | * CurtainsMatchTheWindows: Both her hair and eyes are gold-coloured. Her children inherited her hair but not her eyes. She has blue eyes in the anime, though, just like her children. |
| 191 | * DelicateAndSickly: Although it doesn't get a lot of focus, it's mentioned on multiple occasions that Helga has a somewhat delicate constitution and can easily become weakened and sidelined by illness. This has required Thors, and later Ylva, to look after her when going through bad periods with her health. |
| 192 | * FamousAncestor: Her father is the semi-historical Jomsviking chief Sigvaldi Haraldsson, and through him Helga can trace her lineage to Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, the son of Ragnar Lothbrok. Uniquely, this also makes her a distant cousin to the ruling family of Denmark at the time, the House of Gorm. |
| 193 | * HairOfGoldHeartOfGold: Thorfinn and Ylva inherited her hair colour, and she's shown to be a good mother and an all-around moral person. |
| 194 | * HorrifyingTheHorror: When Thors came back to the Jomsviking fort and expressed dissapointment that his first child was a girl and was about to leave without bothering to name the child, Helga struck him with such a DeathGlare that it was enough to make him completely reverse his opinion on the "weakness" of women on the spot. |
| 195 | --> ''"Thors. Give her a name."'' |
| 196 | * LikeASonToMe: [[spoiler:When Thorfin finally returns home and introduces his [[SwornBrothers blood brother]] Einar to Helga, she is quick to take Einar into the family, stating that if Einar is like a brother to her son, then he is like a son to her. It's a gesture that clearly touches Einar's heart.]] |
| 197 | * ParentsKnowTheirChildren: [[spoiler:Helga is able to immediately recognize Thorfinn even though they haven't seen each other in 16 years. This puts her in contrast with both the rest of the villagers, who don't even remember Thorfinn, and Thorfinn's own sister Ylva, who thinks' he's just a con man.]] |
| 198 | * PerfectlyArrangedMarriage: Given she willingly left Jomsborg with Thors following his HeelFaceTurn and encouraged his new life. |
| 199 | * SilkHidingSteel: While an exceedingly gentle person, the one time she was truly angry with Thors, even he found it intimidating. And that was back in the day when Thors was a cold-blooded OneManArmy for the [[EliteArmy Jomsvikings]], which only makes it more impressive. |
| 200 | ---- |
| 201 | [[/folder]] |
| 202 | |
| 203 | [[folder:Ylva]] |
| 204 | !!Ylva, Daughter of Thors |
| 205 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/HitomiNabatame (Japanese), Creator/OliviaSwasey (English - Sentai Filmworks), Creator/AllegraClark (English - Netflix) |
| 206 | |
| 207 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ylva_1.jpg]] |
| 208 | |
| 209 | Thors's first child and the older sister of Thorfinn. |
| 210 | ---- |
| 211 | * ActionMom: Doesn't do much fighting, but she inherited Thors' physique and it's wise to not get on her bad side. |
| 212 | * AngerBornOfWorry: [[spoiler:Once Thorfinn returns home. When she mistakes him for a conman she strangles him a bit. Once she's convinced it's actually her long lost, thought dead little brother she outright assaults him.]] |
| 213 | * BrattyTeenageDaughter: Why can't her father just buy them a nice thrall like everyone else? |
| 214 | * CoolBigSis: Ylva is a multi-talented girl and a good sister to Thorfinn. She can fish, whale, knit, crochet, tend sheep, cook. |
| 215 | * DudeMagnet: Though she herself blames it on the village's small population. |
| 216 | * FamousAncestor: |
| 217 | ** Ylva is descended from the legendary Viking Ragnar Lothbrok through his son Bjorn Ironside, who is an ancestor to Thors. |
| 218 | ** Through Helga, she can trace her ancestry to Sigurd "Snake-in-the-Eye" Ragnarsson, also a son of Ragnar Lothbrok. |
| 219 | * ImproperlyParanoid: Ever since she was young and witnessed Halfdan's ability to be cold and brutal, she has been scared of him. So upon hearing that her brother [[spoiler:made off with Gudrid, who would have been Halfdan's daughter-in-law]], a dismayed Ylva has been sure ever since that Halfdan would inevitably try to gain revenge, for the sake of avenging family honor if nothing else. (Granted, this is a pretty fair assumption in medieval Norse society, as massacres and feuds have been sustained over smaller offenses to family honor.) For the next ''two years'' she is convinced that Halfdan will inevitably attack at any moment, including one incident where she immediately fired on friendly ships [[spoiler:which is actually Thorfinn, Leif, and company finally returning from Greece]] on sight because she was convinced that it was Halfdan and he has finally come for revenge, and nobody could talk her out of it. Halfdan, meanwhile, was blissfuly unaware of Ylva's concern and had no intention of taking any revenge over the matter. |
| 220 | * IndifferentBeauty: It seems like every boy in the village has attempted to propose to her. She just finds it annoying. |
| 221 | * PracticallyDifferentGenerations: Ylva and Thorfinn are nine years apart in age. At the start of the story, Thorfinn is a young child while Ylva is almost an adult. |
| 222 | * StrongFamilyResemblance: She bears a ''very'' strong resemblance towards her mother, but taller, stronger, and healthier thanks to her dad. She also possesses Thors's thicker and rougher hair as opposed to Helga's very fine locks. |
| 223 | * TheUnfavorite: Towards her father as a baby. Thors was a hardened warrior who was disappointed when she turned out to be a girl rather than a son like he had hoped. He refused to name her and treated her roughly; Helga protested and this was the only time Thors had ever seen her angry. He got over it eventually and came to love Ylva. |
| 224 | * WomenPreferStrongMen: Thors points out to Ari that his daughter has a taste for strong men and warriors. [[spoiler: She marries Ari after he becomes a strong man.]] |
| 225 | ---- |
| 226 | [[/folder]] |
| 227 | |
| 228 | [[folder:Halfdan]] |
| 229 | !!"Iron Chain" Halfdan |
| 230 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Yoshimitsu Shimoyama (Japanese), Creator/JohnGremillion (English - Sentai Filmworks), Creator/KaijiTang (English - Netflix) |
| 231 | [[quoteright:225:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/309772.jpg]] |
| 232 | |
| 233 | A powerful Icelandic farmer and money-lender, known for his harsh and unyielding nature and harsh treatment of slaves and men under his employ. |
| 234 | ---- |
| 235 | * AnOfferYouCantRefuse: Essentially what most of his loans come down to in the end: Give up your farm and serve him, or starve. |
| 236 | * BadBoss: Treats his men and his debtors as crap, and his slaves even worse. He mentions off-handedly that he's going to have one of his escaped slaves tortured to death as a warning to the rest. |
| 237 | * BreakTheHaughty: By his own admission he hates pridefulness, and sees his loans as taking the debtors' pride as collateral. |
| 238 | * TheBusCameBack: He only appears briefly in the flashback during the first arc to underline Thors's good nature. He returns for the third arc, where he becomes far more important. |
| 239 | * ChainedByFashion: He seems to treat a chain wrapped around his arm as common attire. |
| 240 | * ChainPain: He uses it to strip the flesh off the face of an employee who dishonours him. |
| 241 | * TheChessmaster: Ultimately shown to be attempting this, as he hoped his accumulated wealth and influence would lead to Sigurd somehow taking control of Iceland and bringing prosperity to the land. Sigurd argues that the land has not seen war for generations which is invaluable in its own way, and this would cease if they were to shake up the status quo. |
| 242 | * EstablishingCharacterMoment: He's introduced hunting an escaped slave and talking about how men belong in chains. Then when one of his men raises a sword against Ari, Halfdan uses his chain to punish his subordinate, [[HobbesWasRight saying the law is the chain which binds all men.]] Halfdan is a ruthless taskmaster, but he's got a philosophical side and steadfastly adheres to the law. |
| 243 | * HiddenDepths: He has a lot of thoughts about creating good government and economic systems that he doesn't generally talk about, but he does get into a philosophical discussion with Thorfinn about some of those issues. |
| 244 | * HobbesWasRight: He believes that laws are chains that make men out of savages and thinking to himself how men chain themselves to concepts like honour and pride. He later describes the concept of social contract theory and how states hold a monopoly on legitimate violence to Thorfinn, directly referencing Hobbes and Weber. |
| 245 | * InadequateInheritor: He seems to view his own son Sigurd in this way. |
| 246 | * IronicName: His name means "half Dane" but he never does things by halves. |
| 247 | * LoanShark: He wields his economic power like a cudgel, all but enslaving the people who owe him. |
| 248 | * MarryForLove: Despite forcing his son into AltarDiplomacy, his own wife was a fisherman's daughter. She sarcastically notes this when he starts talking about the benefits of marriage alliances. |
| 249 | * ThePatriarch: [[AltarDiplomacy Marries his son to Gudrid]] for a financial alliance. This is TruthInTelevision, as Icelandic farmers would frequently intermarry in this manner and family alliances are an important part of the Icelandic Sagas. |
| 250 | * PetTheDog: [[spoiler:He amicably hosts Thorfinn and Gudrid's wedding and the subsequent feast (though he makes them foot the bill, though this was custom even back then and usually what a family would save up considerable money for).]] |
| 251 | * PrinciplesZealot: He doesn't just use the law to better himself, he absolutely takes it seriously. Even one of his own men declaring an intention to defy the law draws an immediate and grisly reprisal from Halfdan, and while he thinks a King is necessary to truly give the law force, he also worries about the tendencies of Kings to abuse laws or shape them only to benefit themselves instead of all their people. |
| 252 | * TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Ends up on the receiving end of one from his wife, pointing out that [[TheChessmaster he thinks of men and women both like]] ''hnefatafl'' pieces who always move in fixed patterns, but the truth is they only do so because they ''choose'' to do so. |
| 253 | * SecretTestOfCharacter: |
| 254 | ** Inverted and then played straight. Halfdan openly attempts a BreakTheHaughty deal on Thorfinn because he expects him to act like everyone else, but Thorfinn is a HumbleHero who willingly goes along with it. Halfdan, surprised at this, backs off. This makes him decide to test Thorfinn's determination by giving him Narwhale horns as a 'gift', with the underlying understanding that he wants to see if Thorfinn is willing to go to Greece and back to sell them at a profit to fund his mission. |
| 255 | ** [[spoiler:He later offers to make Thorfinn his legally adopted heir, similarly putting him in a bind. Whatever his plan behind this test is, however, he immediately abandons it after meeting his infant grandson.]] |
| 256 | * SoProudOfYou: He's quite restrained about it but he's actually proud of Sigurd for defying his will, showing he is his father's son. |
| 257 | * TheStoic: His face never seems to change from a view of cold disdain. Except [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness the one time he gets furious]] at his son, when he appears to go ''Super Saiyan''. |
| 258 | * StrongFamilyResemblance: His son Sigurd looks almost identical to how Halfdan did when he was younger -- Ylva even confuses Sigurd for his father. |
| 259 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: He later reveals that his ultimate ambition [[spoiler:is to make Iceland wealthy and safe by centralising power, essentially creating a king of Iceland. He funds Thorfinn's expedition partially as a way to acquire wealth for Iceland without creating conflict with the Thing or the mainland.]] |
| 260 | ---- |
| 261 | [[/folder]] |
| 262 | |
| 263 | [[folder:Floki]] |
| 264 | !!Floki |
| 265 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/AtsushiOno (Japanese), Creator/JayHickman (English - Sentai Filmworks/Crunchyroll), Creator/KeithSilverstein (English - Netflix) |
| 266 | [[quoteright:225:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/floki.jpg]] |
| 267 | |
| 268 | Current captain of the Jomsvikings and recurring minor antagonist of the series. He orchestrates the assassination of Thors and later shows up in the service of the Danish royal family. |
| 269 | ---- |
| 270 | * ADayInTheLimelight: He takes centre stage during the Baltic War arc as leader of one of the two major factions gearing up for war, after having been TheDragon to one king or another for most of the storyline. |
| 271 | * AlwaysSomeoneBetter: As the leader of a faction of the Jom after Sigvaldi dies; he is a peerless warrior and seaman. The only two times he fights a named character? Well... Askeladd had carved through twenty or more opponents and ''still'' overpowers Floki in their BladeLock and brings the proud viking to his knees. When he comes across Thorfinn many years later; a Thorfinn who ''knows'' that he was the architect of Thors's demise - he doesn't even get to swing his sword before he's defeated! |
| 272 | * TheDragon: To Sweyn Forkbeard, and later one of two CoDragons to [[spoiler:Canute]]. He takes a leadership role in the third arc. |
| 273 | * DramaticIrony: The scheming and assassinations he did to ensure that his position remains secure in the Jomsvikings blows up in his face because of it. |
| 274 | * EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Despite being a venomous snake of a man most of the time, he genuinely seems to adore his grandson. |
| 275 | * EvilOldFolks: He mentions during the Baltic War arc that he's forty-nine, an impressive age for a career soldier. |
| 276 | * GoodScarsEvilScars: A reverse example in that he has a 'good' scar down the right side of his face (with no eye damage) but is not a good person at all. |
| 277 | * HoistByHisOwnPetard: [[spoiler:Thorfinn's involvement in the entire Baltic War arc]] is essentially his fault. If he'd simply let that person go on his way the whole arc may have gone a lot better for him. |
| 278 | * KarmaHoudiniWarranty: The person who orchestrated Thors death finally gets his just desserts. While he lives at the end of the Baltic Sea War arc, all his ambitions and schemes blow up in his face and he's reduced to a pathetic, sniveling wreck by the end of the arc. |
| 279 | * NonStandardCharacterDesign: Downplayed compared to the pure EarlyInstallmentWeirdness of the toad-like Frankish lord in chapter 1, but his hair and beard still make him look oddly geometrical compared to other characters. It's implied to actually be true in-universe and not just stylization since Thorkell calls him "squarehead". |
| 280 | * NotMeThisTime: Twice in the Baltic Sea War arc: |
| 281 | ** Floki kickstarted the plot of the series by covertly arranging to have Thors murdered, (partly due to resentment of Thors and partly out of fear that Thors would be able to secure a place of power in the Jomsvikings that would threaten Floki) and Vagn suspects Floki of having killed other leaders within the Jomsvikings that could be a threat to his position. So when the current chief of the Jomsvikings dies suddenly, naturally Vagn suspects Floki did it to pave the way for Floki's grandson to inherit control of the Jomsvikings. [[spoiler:But the real culprit is Canute, who knew the Jomsvikings were a threat to peace and stability and were also numerous and strong enough to pose a danger to the throne. So Canute had the leader killed hoping that the SuccessionCrisis would diminish the Jomsvikings and curtail their activities.]] |
| 282 | ** Floki had misunderstood Thorkell's motivations before, trying to bribe Thorkell (who could not care less about money, power, or position) into abandoning the English to join King Sweyn. So when Thorkell is cheated out of a fight against Vagn when Floki's minion Garm assassinates Vagn before the battle, everyone assumes that Floki made the mistake of once again misunderstanding Thorkell and how he thinks. Truth is, [[OverzealousUnderling Garm decided on his own to assassinate Vagn, actually disobeying Floki's orders in the process]]. Floki immediately realizes that Garm's action has screwed him, as Thorkell is uninterested in hearing the truth or listening to Floki's explanation and comes to get his fight by fighting Floki's faction of the Jomsvikings instead. |
| 283 | * OhCrap: [[spoiler:When he accidentally runs into Thorfinn and realizes who is standing before him, Floki panics and sics his guards upon him. Hild and Thorfinn make quick work of them, after which [[UnstoppableRage Thorfinn focuses his undivided attention]] on an increasingly terrified Floki.]] |
| 284 | * TheResenter: [[spoiler:He always secretly hated Thors, because Thors was [[AlwaysSomeoneBetter a better warrior than him]] and he felt that Thors looked down on him for being more of a political schemer than the sort of fearless warrior that the code of the Jomsvikings envisioned. Upon meeting Thorfinn and learning that Thorfinn is Thors's son, Floki almost immediately plans to kill Thorfinn, even though simply letting Thorfinn go on his way would be better for Floki.]] |
| 285 | * ShameIfSomethingHappened: Threatens Thors into joining the Danish invasion of England by holding his home village as a hostage. |
| 286 | * SmugSmiler: During his initial appearance. |
| 287 | * SmugSnake: He tends to misjudge both his allies and his enemies while holding them in contempt. |
| 288 | * VillainHasAPoint: Horrible as his setting Thors's death was, he's not wrong when he points out that Thors deserted the Jomsvikings in the middle of a battle. Such an act would not only be considered highly disgraceful and dishonorable for a [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Norse Warrior,]] but also goes against the code of the real life Jomsvikings, and even today warrants harsh punishments up to and including the death penalty in modern militaries. ''That being said,'' Floki chose to arrange for Thors's murder rather than speak his mind to the Jomsviking chieftain, and the fact he keeps having other rivals within the Jomsvikings assassinated for little other reason than it helping his own political ambitions isn't doing him much favor in the eyes of others. |
| 289 | ---- |
| 290 | [[/folder]] |
| 291 | |
| 292 | [[folder:Thorkell]] |
| 293 | !!Thorkell "the Tall", Son of Strut-Harald |
| 294 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/AkioOtsuka (Japanese), Joe Daniels (English - Sentai Filmworks/Crunchyroll), Creator/PatrickSeitz (English - Netflix) |
| 295 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thorkell_anime.png]] |
| 296 | |
| 297 | Former captain of the Jomsvikings, Thorkell is an extremely tall and mighty and above all ''jovial'' warrior based on the historical/mythological figure of the same name. He has his own band of {{Blood Knight}}s defined by their tendency to switch to whichever side is ''losing'' so they'll have the stronger side to fight against. |
| 298 | ---- |
| 299 | * AchillesHeel: [[spoiler:Despite his size and strength, Thorkell has a glass jaw ([[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/glass_jaw as in, the boxing term]]) caused by Thors clocking him something fierce there when he escaped from Jomsborg, and gets knocked out very easily if being hit there ever since. Knowledge of this from seeing Thorkell collapse from a stray hit to the jaw on the battlefield in the past allowed Askeladd to instruct Thorfinn on how to beat him.]] |
| 300 | * AdaptationalEarlyAppearance: In the manga he doesn't appear until the Battle of London Bridge, whereas in the anime he's present during the ActionPrologue of the anime's first episode, fighting alongside Thors. |
| 301 | * AntiHero: A NominalHero. |
| 302 | * AttackHello: Upon reuniting with Thorfinn after the Farmland Arc, he "greets" him by trying to fillet him with his axes. This also proves to him (since Thorfinn dodges) that it really is Thorfinn and not an imposter. |
| 303 | * BadassArmy: His band of 500 men are almost as bloodthirsty as he is. He also seems to invoke this. When deserters from Askeladd's group beg to join him, he slaughters them on the grounds that he doesn't want cowards to join him. |
| 304 | * BadassesWearBandanas |
| 305 | * BaritoneOfStrength: A very powerful warrior with a deep and strong voice to match, courtesy of Creator/AkioOtsuka. |
| 306 | * BerserkButton: Interfering with his fights. He was truly enraged when his men tried to kill Thorfinn after the boy gouged his eye out. He makes it clear that he does ''not'' like being shamed. Also stealing his kills [[spoiler: As Askeladd did with King Sweyn, as well as Garm later on with Jomsviking Commander Vagn.]] |
| 307 | * BloodKnight: This is his most prominent personality trait. Upon realizing that the Vikings would steamroll through England, he decides that sort of war is no fun, and so ''switches to the losing side''. [[spoiler:When Askeladd declares his intention to kill King Sweyn Forkbeard to his face, in front of his whole court, Thorkell's knee-jerk reaction is to demand they switch places so he can kill Sweyn.]] |
| 308 | * BoisterousBruiser: Less nice version. |
| 309 | * BoomHeadshot: Headshots a soldier with a thrown spear. He does the same thing later on again, but even more impressive, [[https://media1.tenor.com/images/4dc6fcb1e6624d826a8a8bd925d9157d/tenor.gif?itemid=15420180 having thrown]] a spear from over a kilometer away and impaling 4 soldiers, with one losing his head in the process. |
| 310 | * CharlesAtlasSuperpower: Simply put, he's utterly ridiculous even by Viking standards. He regularly chops up several men with a single swing of his [[DualWielding twin Dane-axes]], can throw logs with enough force to punch holes through ships or [[BoomHeadshot spears through one man's head and impaling three men behind him from the sheer momentum]], pick up '''boulders''' on his shoulder and throw them to sink ship with, and ''punch'' a horse into the air (with the hand where he only has 3 fingers), killing it instantly, and punch a bears' tooth out and before bear-hugging it to death. When searching for Floki in the Baltic War Arc, he even bulldozed 2 houses on his own, fought with a mutant for hours until morning until he finally won. |
| 311 | * ColonelBadass: In the past, he served as one of the four battalion captains of the Jomsvikings. |
| 312 | * CoolOldGuy: Is mentioned to be fifty in the arc he first appears in. This would make him around fifty-six by the Baltic War arc. After the two years timeskip, he would be now around fifty-eight. |
| 313 | * CoolUncle: Great-uncle, actually, to Thorfinn, as Thorfinn's mother Helga is his brother's daughter. Thorfinn would probably begrudgingly debate the "cool" part given how many times his great-uncle has nearly killed him. |
| 314 | * ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Thorkell loves to fight. If your side would be more fun to fight against, he'll switch sides to fight you instead. |
| 315 | * DisappointingPromotion: Canute promotes Thorkell to the earl of East Anglia following his campaign of England, which positively bores Thorkell. This also happened historically, though Thorkell later renounces the title (or Canute revokes it from him) some years after. |
| 316 | * TheDreaded: Despite being friendly and jovial, his legendary battle prowess makes him this to his enemies. |
| 317 | * DualWielding: Dual-wields Dane Axes, poleaxes meant to break shieldwalls, as though they were regular battle axes. They give him a practical InstantDeathRadius in battle. |
| 318 | * EveryoneHasStandards: Yes, he's a full-on BloodKnight who's in it for fun and Valhalla, but he makes it very clear he does not employ any assassins, or make cheap shots at an enemy. He wants to have a good fight, so if they wanna be ready for a good fight, he will respect their wishes. Noticed when he was outraged at Vagn's murder by Garm. |
| 319 | * EyepatchOfPower: Receives a menacing black eyepatch after losing his eye to Thorfinn. |
| 320 | * EyeScream: Has an eye gouged out by Thorfinn. |
| 321 | * FamedInStory: Thorkell is already famous throughout Scandinavia as the story begins, [[spoiler:and beating him in a duel is what gives Thorfinn his nickname and reputation as "the one who beat Thorkell".]] |
| 322 | * {{Fingore}}: Thorfinn cuts off the ring and pinky fingers of his right hand when they first met. Didn't bother him at all. |
| 323 | * FourStarBadass: He used to be a Jomsviking captain until old age forced him to retire. He then became a general for the English (and later [[spoiler:for Canute]]). |
| 324 | * TheGiant: Part of his reputation, and he certainly lives up to it. Considering UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington was considered gigantic at 187 centimeters a full seven centuries later, at '''230cm and 187 kilos''', Thorkell's size means he can straight-up blow through lesser men like a storm. |
| 325 | * GoodParents: At best, he is this, at worst he isn't a deadbeat father, at least. When he learned he had an infant child in Ireland, he paid for child support in full, he let the mother raise the girl child on her own, he paid intermittent visits to them over the years, and when she came of age, he came to her with a man he thought she should marry. ValuesDissonance for a modern reader, but at the time period they're in, he is a great dad; someone of his power and station could've ignored such news entirely and not batted an eye, but Thorkell actually took some time out of his life to attend to the child of what could have been a mere fling. The one problem? [[spoiler: We learn that Cordelia is not a girl in a conventional sense (read: a transgender girl by modern standards), he just thinks she is]]. |
| 326 | * GracefulLoser: He admits that he doesn't ''like'' losing, but he will accept defeat and chews his men out for trying to kill Thorfinn when the boy got the upper hand on their leader. |
| 327 | * HandicappedBadass: Realistically, losing two fingers ought to be crippling for a warrior as it would impact their ability to properly wield a weapon. This is not a problem for Thorkell since he has GiantHandsOfDoom compared to a normal man, and he proceeds to waves goodbye wanting a rematch to Thorfinn with the very same hand, sputtering blood. Same goes for after Thorfinn takes out his eye later and he's still a force to be reckoned with. |
| 328 | * HeroicComedicSociopath: Thorkell's antics are almost consistently PlayedForLaughs, even as they involve insta-filleting men, starting wars for fun, or egregiously ''expanding'' the scope of an already devastating war just for a better fight. |
| 329 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: Based on the historical character of the same name, who was a jomsviking, fought for Ethelred, and eventually became one of Canute's staunchest supporters. [[spoiler:The real-life Thorkell was made an earl of East Anglia and eventually moved to Denmark. History is uncertain what became of him, save that he lived to at least his fifties and remained Canute's companion until the end.]] |
| 330 | * HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Downplayed, but the reason Thorkell fought against the Vikings was because, during a raid on England, his men drunkenly killed an archbishop and Thorkell in remorse defected and enlisted in Ethelred's service. Whereas in ''Vinland Saga'' Thorkell's only reason for switching sides was his BloodKnight tendencies getting the better of him. |
| 331 | * HiddenDepths: Canute describes him as the inversion: A man who hides nothing at all about himself. |
| 332 | ** It is played straight though, when he reveals that his greatest regret is not following Thors to find out what it means to be a "true warrior". His friendship with Thors was also deep enough for him to deny any knowledge of Thors' breaking into Jomsborg to escape anonymously with his wife in tow, [[TragicBromance even if he was still torn up about the whole thing and Thors really did have to knock him out to leave]]. |
| 333 | ** He has some amazing foresight about how things come to be. This was shown in the Baltic Sea War Arc, when he was off to fight Floki for being dishonorable. He was able to work out that [[spoiler:Canute was the one responsible for the previous Jomsviking chieftain's death and Floki couldn't pass up the opportunity to try and put his grandson on throne, and with Vagn thinking him responsible for the murder of Thors and taking up arms against him, Canute would benefit from the chaos]]. Thorkell may be a warrior through and through, but he's got political instincts like a hawk. |
| 334 | * HorrifyingTheHorror: Thorkell's sheer physical might means that even [[GeniusBruiser Askeladd]] has to take him ''very'' seriously, and when backed into a corner by Thorkell and his warband, he defaulted to instructing Thorfinn, who could make Thorkell make his men back down to turn it into a one-on-one affair because [[VillainTakesAnInterest Thorfinn was his nephew]], how to beat Thorkell because there was absolutely ''no'' beating the big guy in any other way. |
| 335 | * LaughingMad: At times, frequently while reducing Englishmen to pieces. |
| 336 | * LargeAndInCharge: Thorkell is easily over two metres tall and wide enough to look like a man who began training in the crib. |
| 337 | * LukeIAmYourFather: [[spoiler:He's the uncle of Thorfinn's mother, making Thorfinn his great-nephew. Revealed when they are dueling.]] |
| 338 | * MajorInjuryUnderreaction: Was more or less completely unfazed when Thorfinn impaled his palm and cut off his fingers when they first met. He proceeded to ''wave the boy goodbye'' with that same hand. Additionally he takes losing an ''eye'' to Thorfinn in a later fight in stride. |
| 339 | * ManChild: He's massively tall and equally wide, he's in his fifties, he's a One Man Army, he's the strongest Viking but at the same time... He's very easy-going. He loves to play jokes on Thorfinn and, when he beat the mutant in the Baltic Sea War Arc, he told his men not to kill it because he wanted to keep it as a toy but Asgeir used common sense and told him that that thing probably eats a ton of food and how food doesn't come free. Thorkell answered that he would give it half of his share then and like a kid who's talking to his mother, repeatedly pleaded to him if he could keep it. When Asgeir still gave him a no, Thorkell went into his "Can't-Give-A-Shit-Mode" and pouted. |
| 340 | * ManlyTears: Was a sobbing wreck during Thors's funeral, when he thought his comrade had died. |
| 341 | * MyGreatestFailure: He mentions that his greatest regret was not following Thors when he met him again after his [[FakingTheDead "death"]] and discovering what a "true warrior" was. [[spoiler:Which is why he'll follow post-CharacterDevelopment Canute because there's no way he's letting it happen to him ''twice''.]] |
| 342 | * NothingPersonal: He has this attitude towards killing in battle, and injuries in battle. To him it's just a profession he happens to be ''very'' good and proficient at, but he will gladly drink with a former enemy as if they were the best of friends. |
| 343 | * OldSoldier: Got old enough to be forcibly retired from the Jomsvikings, an impressive feat for someone in as violent a lifestyle as his. |
| 344 | * OlderThanTheyLook: Due to the art early on in the series, Thorkell looks like he's in his thirties during his first appearance when he's described in-story as being over fifty. Due to ArtEvolution he looks considerably more age-appropriate from the late first arc on. |
| 345 | * OneHandedZweihander: The Dane-axes he prefers would need to be wielded by both hands by anyone not named Thorkell. |
| 346 | * OneHitKill: Can pretty much one-shot any of his enemies. Thorfinn stated that one hit of Thorkell would be enough to kill him. |
| 347 | * OneManArmy: Literally the definition of it. Thorkell is a walking [[https://media.tenor.com/images/f127cd7af1bde2c7dff6f96ef9d2e1cb/tenor.gif Human Blender]], he easily can chop men into pieces as if they're butter, can throw and swing logs like quarterstaffs around, the list goes on. 4000 men are said to be not enough to stop Thorkell. He's so strong that the only thing rumored to possibly kill him would be too much peace. And indeed, during over a year of peace, Thorkell was suffering from battle withdrawal and once passed out in a comedic scene. |
| 348 | * OutOfFocus[=/=]PutOnABus: He briefly appears near the beginning of the second arc but is absent for the rest its duration. He comes back to the forefront during the third arc, where he's severely bored from being an earl in England and decides to get involved in the internal drama of the Jomsvikings, before being put back on the bus when Thorfinn leaves for Miklagard. |
| 349 | * PunchClockVillain: To Thorkell, killing and feasting, harsh training and the injuries that come with fighting wars is just a job. He just happens to be incredibly good at it and enthusiastic for it, and [[WorldsStrongestMan as the unstoppable leader of one of the greatest warbands in Northern Europe]], Thorkel will take any side and fight any fight so long as the pay is good and there's a good job to be done. He'll humor interesting but [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome outnumbered opponents]] with a one-on-hand fight and try to make friends with and debate his prisoners of war, and he'll even get wasted with former enemies. |
| 350 | * PunchedAcrossTheRoom: At one point he throws a kick at Thorfinn which, when blocked, sent him flying into the air like a rocket, with the only reason he survived it was because the branches of a nearby tree caught most of the fall. |
| 351 | * [[RealMenLoveJesus Real Men Love The Aesir]]: He and his men believe in the old gods, wanting to die in battle and be claimed by Valkyries. |
| 352 | * RewardedAsATraitorDeserves: Thorkell despises cowards, deserters, and traitors, preferring open battle. When encountering deserters he tends to chop them to pieces. |
| 353 | * ShipperOnDeck: He takes a liking to Gudrid's bravery and tells Thorfinn to marry her as soon as possible. |
| 354 | * SmarterThanYouLook: |
| 355 | ** He may seem to be just a dim, raging brute, but Thorkell is actually quite intelligent and introspective. He is a capable and charismatic leader, a keen observer of tactics and fighting styles, and has a good understanding of politics. He just can't be bothered with all the mind games and intrigue and sticks to what he is best at: battle. |
| 356 | ** When Floki tried (and failed) to negotiate with him at London Bridge, Thorkell deliberately switched into his native norse, bewildering the English troops as to how the negotiations are going, showing that Thorkell is not just well-spoken but also clever enough to not negotiate in a tongue his English allies can understand. |
| 357 | * StrongAndSkilled: His size makes him look like he's a lumbering brute against agile enough foes, but that's more from the fact that he has so much mass to move around that it inevitably ''looks'' slow, in a similar vein to [[https://youtu.be/ApQlzehYyfo George Foreman's power seeming at once slow yet completely effortless]]. He also demonstrates himself to be an absolute crack-shot with [[JavelinThrower a spear or a log]]. |
| 358 | * SuperStrength: No other way to justify his improbable feats of badass. He ''kills a charging horse and launches it into the air with a single punch'', amongst other things. |
| 359 | * TelephonePolearm: Chucks massive logs like javelins during the Siege of London. |
| 360 | * VictoryIsBoring: Finds easy victories tedious. He joins the English side when Denmark invades just so there will be a challenge for both sides. |
| 361 | ** During the third arc, we see that the lack of fighting during his tenure as the earl of East Anglia has left him tired and depressed. |
| 362 | * WarForFunAndProfit: Emphasis on the ''fun''. Thorkell enjoys battle like a boisterous toddler getting to have a romp outside. |
| 363 | * WarriorPoet: He's capable of being eloquent and thoughtful, especially on the concept of battles and duty. Most of the time, however, he doesn't want to, and he's completely unable to grasp Thors's philosophy on what a "true warrior" is. |
| 364 | * WeCanRuleTogether: Offers Thorfinn his backing if he wants to become the chief of the Jomsvikings, mainly because it would involve fighting both Floki ''and'' Vagn. [[spoiler:Thorfinn rebuffs him.]] |
| 365 | * WorldsStrongestMan: He may not be as smart as Thors or Askeladd, but his prodigious strength makes up for it. Floki and Garm constantly call Thorkel the strongest Viking and Askeladd calls Thorkell an invincible monster. Ragnar mentioned that even 4000 men wouldn't be enough to stop Thorkell. |
| 366 | * WorthyOpponent: He regards Thorfinn as this during the first arc, being the son of the one man he could never beat. |
| 367 | * WrestlerInAllOfUs: Wrestled a bear for fun. |
| 368 | ---- |
| 369 | [[/folder]] |
| 370 | |
| 371 | [[folder:Asgeir]] |
| 372 | !!!'''Voiced by:''' Creator/RyotaTakeuchi (Japanese), Blake Wier (English - Sentai), Creator/ArmenTaylor (English - Netflix) |
| 373 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/asgeir.jpeg]] |
| 374 | |
| 375 | Thorkell's second-in-command. Much smarter and calmer than his boss. |
| 376 | ---- |
| 377 | * AdaptationalBadass: While the manga implies he can hold his own on the battlefield and shows him acting as a strategist during the Siege of Jomsburg during the Baltic Sea War arc, it never really shows him actually fighting. The anime does include at least a short clip where he goes ''absolutely nuts'' on the battlefield when Thorkell breaks the Siege of London, explicitly proving that he can kick ass in his own right. |
| 378 | * ArsonMurderAndAdmiration: Unlike Thorkell, Asgeir can appreciate the effectiveness of Canute's methods in the second arc. As Canute is about to be named ''Bretwalda'' (High King) of England, Asgeir can't help but note the difference between Canute and Sweyn; Sweyn spent more than a decade waging conventional war against England only for them to rise against the Danes the moment Sweyn died, while Canute used a few targeted assassinations of royalty and terrified/blackmailed the English nobility into supporting him, and within two years they fell all over themselves to name him King. Asgeir clearly admires the efficiency of this, unlike Thorkell, who only cares about the joy of being on the battlefield and hates having been robbed of it. |
| 379 | * BeleagueredAssistant: Downplayed, because Thorkell is no PointyHairedBoss or ArmchairMilitary. However, Thorkell does have quite an immature/childish side, and Asgeir often has to try to navigate around that in the name of looking out for Thorkell's best interests and act as something of a CloudcuckoolandersMinder. At several points in the Baltic Sea War arc he is seen wearily facepalming when some new childish notion or whim strikes Thorkell. |
| 380 | * TheConsigliere: One of the only people capable of mouthing off to Thorkell and not get filleted. |
| 381 | * HypercompetentSidekick: He lacks Thorkell's strength and charisma, and knows he'd have no way of keeping Thorkell's band together without his boss, but he's the one who handles logistics and the day-to-day running. |
| 382 | * OnlySaneMan: The only man in Thorkell's band who isn't a complete BloodKnight, though the fact that he's able to ''stay'' in said band implies he probably knows his way around a battlefield. |
| 383 | * PleaseKillMeIfItSatisfiesYou: Offers to let Thorkell kill him [[spoiler:for stopping Thorkell's duel with Thorfinn]], because he knows he's replaceable but Thorkell isn't. |
| 384 | * RedOniBlueOni: The blue to Thorkell's red. |
| 385 | * SatelliteCharacter: His existence is mostly defined by his relationship to his boss, and he is virtually never seen unless Thorkell is also around. |
| 386 | |
| 387 | [[/folder]] |
| 388 | |
| 389 | |
| 390 | [[folder:Torgrim and Atli]] |
| 391 | !!!'''Atli voiced by''': Shinya Takahashi (Japanese), Ty Mahany (English - Sentai), Creator/KaijiTang (English - Netflix) |
| 392 | !!!'''Torgrim voiced by''': Hiroki Gotō (Japanese), Orlanders Tao Jones (English - Sentai), Creator/SeanChiplock (English - Netflix) |
| 393 | [[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/torgrim_and_atli.jpg]] |
| 394 | [[caption-width-right:300:Atli on the left, Torgrim on the right]] |
| 395 | |
| 396 | Two brothers who are apart of Askeladd's crew. |
| 397 | ---- |
| 398 | * AdaptationalEarlyAppearance: In the manga they're not really seen or given any characterization until most of the way through the first arc. In the anime they're consistently seen as part of Askeladd's crew all the way back to when Floki hired Askeladd and company to kill Thors. |
| 399 | * AdaptationalNiceGuy: They get featured more in the anime than the manga, and the anime consistently has Atli making small gestures of kindness that shows him as something of ALighterShadeOfBlack compared to most of Askeladd's band, like offering drinks to Floki's Jomsvikings, speaking in a more friendly manner than his fellows to a six year old Thorfinn who's hanging around their camp, and being more reluctant to betray Askeladd and carry out a mutiny against him. |
| 400 | * BashBrothers: Literal ones. They fight together as a team. |
| 401 | * TheBusCameBack: [[spoiler:Atli comes back in the Baltic War arc, being the last surviving witness to Askeladd's assassination of Thors, and more importantly the only living person who knows who hired Askeladd.]] |
| 402 | * ChronicVillainy: Askeladd let Atli go with the instructions to make an honest living for himself. So far as the audience can tell, Atli left with the sincere intention of doing so... [[spoiler:but by the time of the Baltic Sea War arc, he had turned to being a bandit before being captured by Vagn's faction of the Jomsvikings. When Thorfinn advises him to lead an honest life it's obvious that Atli is lying about his intention to do so. It's likely that after all his years as a viking he had no skills to make an honest life and failed at it.]] |
| 403 | * FatAndSkinny: Torgrim is the fat, Atli is the skinny. |
| 404 | * {{Mauve Shirt}}s: In the manga, until the mutiny against Askeladd, they are distinguished only by a tiny bit of characterization they get by speaking to the priest. The anime shows them a bit more often, showing them in the background or involved in the ups and downs of Askeladd's band over the years. |
| 405 | * NoBrows: Torgrim. |
| 406 | * RegretfulTraitor: In the anime especially, Atli is clearly reluctant to betray Askeladd and is so ashamed of it afterward that he says he feels like he can't even face Askeladd. Askeladd comments that he's surprised that he had such a sincere man among his crew of murderous marauders. |
| 407 | * RewardedAsATraitorDeserves: Both played straight and subverted. |
| 408 | ** After leading the rebellion against Askeladd during their SternChase, Torgrim tries switching sides only to discover that Thorkell hates traitors. Thorkell 'rewards' Torgrim for his part in the rebellion by fighting him personally, which causes the latter to have a breakdown. |
| 409 | ** Atli gets off lighter: As part of his OOCIsSeriousBusiness, [[spoiler:Askeladd gifts Atli a ring of silver when they part despite the latter having mutinied against him]]. He tells Atli to settle down and have children, and if he ever sees him hold a sword again he'll kill him whether they're on the same side or no. |
| 410 | * SmallRoleBigImpact: They're barely characterized [[spoiler:but end up leading the mutiny against Askeladd]], and in his second appearance [[spoiler:Atli's testimony allows Vagn to learn what really happened to Thors, and leads to Vagn being able to pass that info on to Thorfinn.]] |
| 411 | * TheStarscream: They (or really, Torgrim), wind up leading the rebellion against Askeladd in the first arc. |
| 412 | * ThoseTwoGuys: They stick together in Askeladd's crew and are never seen apart. Alti even brags to Willibald how their fighting style involves working in tandem. Disaster befalls them as soon as they split ways. |
| 413 | * UncertainDoom: [[spoiler:Both of their final fates are uncertain. Torgrim isn't seen again after the first arc, and while it's implied that Atli was still taking care of him (Atli begs for someone to look after his family if Vagn and company execute him), that's not known for sure. Atli is seen as a captive of Vagn, but what became of him after Garm assassinated Vagn is unknown.]] |
| 414 | * VillainousBSOD: Torgrim is forced to duel Thorkell, whose KillingIntent causes his mind to shatter. He doesn't recover and is last seen having regressed to a child-like state. |
| 415 | ---- |
| 416 | [[/folder]] |
| 417 | |
| 418 | [[folder:Canute]] |
| 419 | !!Prince Canute, Son of Sweyn, aka King Canute "The Great" |
| 420 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/KenshoOno (Japanese), Creator/AyaEndo (Young) (Japanese), Creator/JessieJamesGrelle (English - Sentai Filmworks/Crunchyroll), Creator/GriffinBurns (English - Netflix), Creator/DeneenMelody (Young) (English - Netflix) |
| 421 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/canute_anime.png]] |
| 422 | [[caption-width-right:250:As a Prince]] |
| 423 | [[quoteright:250:[[labelnote:As a king '''(SPOILERS AHEAD)''']]:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/77710_1.jpg]][[/labelnote]] |
| 424 | |
| 425 | Youngest son of Sweyn Forkbeard, king of Denmark and England. Based on the historical king of the same name, making his character arc somewhat of a ForegoneConclusion to any student of history. Starting the story as a girly-looking RoyalBrat, he comes into importance during the latter half of the first arc and is an important background figure and ultimate antagonist of the second arc. |
| 426 | ---- |
| 427 | * AgeLift: In the sagas which Makoto Yukimura draws from, Canute is the elder son of Sweyn while Harald is younger. In ''Vinland Saga'', he admits he switches the ages to help show Sweyn's preference for his older son and dislike of Canute. |
| 428 | * BadassPacifist: His first act of badassery in the series is done entirely nonviolently, [[spoiler:by managing to frighten a berserking Bjorn with nothing but a glare and then talking him down from his rage. He promptly takes control of the entire situation with nothing but strength of personality and talks Thorkell into joining his cause.]] |
| 429 | * BeautyEqualsGoodness: He's one of the fairest characters in the manga, and one of the kindest. [[spoiler:With becoming king, his eyes becomes noticeably harder and he gains the scar on his cheek. He also stops smiling until Thorfinn manages to coax a laugh out of him.]] |
| 430 | * BestFriendsInLaw: Canute refers to Wulf has his closest friend, and Wulf is Canute's brother-in-law through his marriage to Canute's younger sister Estrid. |
| 431 | * BigBadFriend: [[spoiler:During the farmland arc, he is the looming threat on the horizon that threatens Ketil's farm. He's also personally acquainted with Thorfinn]]. |
| 432 | * BreakTheCutie: He begins as a rather meek and introspective prince. The tribulations of losing his surrogate father figure and realizing his actual father has no love for him breaks him. |
| 433 | * BreakThemByTalking: Willibald pretty much breaks him with his speech on true love, destroying his ShrinkingViolet persona. [[spoiler:Later, Thorfinn manages a more benign version, making him realize he's not alone in trying to make a better world.]] |
| 434 | * CainAndAbel: [[spoiler:His internal narration reveals that he poisoned his elder brother, Harald, so he would [[PrincelingRivalry inherit the throne]] of Denmark]]. |
| 435 | * CoolHelmet: Owns a winged helmet during his Prince years. Later on he favors an eagle's head shaped one. |
| 436 | * CharacterDevelopment: ShrinkingViolet -> TheWisePrince -> [[spoiler:DarkMessiah -> TheGoodKing.]] |
| 437 | * CruelToBeKind: [[spoiler: Canute selling Thorfinn into slavery after he attacks him. Canute needs to cement his power and so he can't just let it go, but he also spares Thorfinn from execution too. Plus, Canute knows that if Thorfinn really wanted to, he could easily kill any potential master and escape.]] |
| 438 | * DarkMessiah: [[spoiler:What he sees himself as after the first TimeSkip. He will save the world from the predations of his own people, and some have to be sacrificed towards that end.]] |
| 439 | * DefrostingIceQueen: Played with. |
| 440 | ** During The Prologue, Canute is a {{ShrinkingViolet}} that becomes the male version of {{IceQueen}} through character development, and a literal [[spoiler: king at the end of the arc.]] |
| 441 | ** The Farmland arc plays this straight. Canute spends the arc growing increasingly coldhearted thanks to his kingly ambition, [[spoiler: but Thorfinn manages to make him reverse course and even ''laugh'' again.]] |
| 442 | * DemotedToExtra: Canute is one of the most important characters in the Prologue and Farmland arcs, but he only makes a couple of cameos in the latter two arcs. His reign continues to affect the story though. |
| 443 | * DrunkWithPower: [[spoiler:The crown corrupts him much as it did with his father, though Canute is able to resist falling into the worst of Sweyn's excesses.]] |
| 444 | * DivideAndConquer: He's rather fond of this strategy since he became a king. He used the Earl of Mercia against King Aethelred to ease his conquest of England and is implied to be behind the death of the Jomsviking's Chief, presumably for the purpose of splitting their power. |
| 445 | * DudeLooksLikeALady: In his younger years, to the point of using an actual woman as a BodyDouble; Askeladd's men even wonder if Canute is really a ''princess''. Canute sheds this image once he becomes king, though. |
| 446 | * TheEmperor: Downplayed. He refers to himself as the "Emperor of the North Sea" even though that isn't officially one of Canute's titles. He's still the sovereign of multiple nations so he fits the definition well enough. |
| 447 | ** Based on letters found written by him historically, it would be more accurate to call him "King of England, Denmark, Norway, and some of the Swedes". |
| 448 | * FamousAncestor: Canute is a member of the Denmark's royal family, the House of Gorm, which identified the semi-legendary Danish king Harthacnut I as their progenitor. He is also descended from the legendary Ragnar Lothbrok through his son, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye Áslaugsson, who was also the father of Harthacnut I. |
| 449 | * {{Foil}}: To Thorfinn. Thorfinn is a brash loner that wants to avenge his father, Canute is a well-mannered prince that has problems with his father. Not to mention Canute represents Thors's words of "a true warrior needs no blade" more than the revenge-driven Thorfinn. |
| 450 | * FromNobodyToNightmare: Not quite ''nobody'' due to having been born into royalty, but he went from an abused, neglected child to a too timid to speak teenager who only aspired to run away from his father's court to an intelligent, powerful, ambitious king commanding vast territories and the devoted loyalty of thousands of badass warriors. |
| 451 | * GenerationXerox: Most of the Farmland arc is devoted to how [[spoiler:he starts becoming just like his father in the name of building a better world. Thorfinn manages to shake him out of it.]] |
| 452 | * GoodScarsEvilScars: A clear cut on his cheek during the Farmland Saga, [[spoiler:given to him by Thorfinn in the prologue.]] |
| 453 | * IDidWhatIHadToDo: His chief rationale after becoming King is that any ruthless actions he takes are justified in pursuit of his greater goals. |
| 454 | * IHaveManyNames: Throughout the course of the story as well as history, goes from being a prince, to the King of England, then the King of England, Denmark, ''and'' Norway and finally, Emperor of the North Sea. |
| 455 | * InadequateInheritor: Sweyn views Canute as this in general, and especially to Denmark, which is why he made it go to Harald and Canute got England. |
| 456 | * HimeCut: In the Prologue arc. It emphasizes his feminine appearance and demure nature. |
| 457 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: The meek prince in the Prologue will end up becoming Canute the Great. |
| 458 | * HeterosexualLifePartners: With Wulf, his brother-in-law and closest friend and advisor. |
| 459 | * LetsGetDangerous: Following Ragnar's death and Canute's own CrisisOfFaith, he decides that [[EasyRoadToHell if mankind cannot attain Paradise no matter what]], then he will build Paradise on Earth. Canute goes on to seriously contend for his father's crown, which culminates in him becoming King of both England and Denmark in a few years. |
| 460 | * LonelyAtTheTop: The power of the crown has that effect. |
| 461 | * LongHairedPrettyboy: In the Prologue. He cuts it shorter in following arc, an between his greater confidence and putting on muscle to strengthen himself and be a good king, it makes for a very handsome but not exactly "pretty" look from that point onward. |
| 462 | * MythologyGag: The incident of Canute commanding the tide to stop in folklore (the single thing Canute is known for through PopCulturalOsmosis) happens when Thorfinn confronts him in the second arc. |
| 463 | * NayTheist: Has a grand speech in chapter 97 covering the subject. |
| 464 | * NoTrueScotsman: His lack of talent or interest in fighting, [[ShrinkingViolet shy disposition,]] cooking skills, and [[RealMenLoveJesus following the Christian faith]] have resulted in him not meshing well with the [[ARealManIsAKiller other]] [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Viking characters]], including his father, who writes him off as an InadequateInheritor. At least at first. It is notable that Canute's personality and abilities are more in line with the (comparatively more reserved) English; no coincidence that barely a few years after becoming king, all of his advisors and most of his closest bodyguards and lords were Englishmen. |
| 465 | * OddFriendship: Invokes this trope himself at the end of the Farmland Arc with Thorfinn and Einar, remarking that despite their differences, the two men share his vision of a utopia. |
| 466 | * OnlyFriend: For most of the Farmland Arc, Canute regards Wulf as this. [[spoiler: Then he meets Thorfinn again and realizes he has another.]] |
| 467 | * RageAgainstTheHeavens: He plans to build paradise on Earth to spite God for leaving His creation such a mess. |
| 468 | * RealMenCook: Inverted. In a society that puts no 'manliness' stock in cooking (it is seen as slave's work, at least to the upper class), Canute's ability to cook becomes another strike against him as someone who's not a real man. |
| 469 | * RelatedInTheAdaptation: Part of Makoto Yukimura's PragmaticAdaptation tendencies, Canute, Harald, and Estrid are all full siblings instead of being half-siblings. In the sagas, they all share a father in Sweyn, but their mothers all vary depending on the source. For the sake of simplicity, they all share the same parents. |
| 470 | * RoyalBrat: Starts off as one. Unlike most examples however Canute is less [[SpoiledBrat spoiled]] and more [[ShrinkingViolet emotionally withdrawn]] and dependent on his retainer/father-figure Ragnar. |
| 471 | * ScarsAreForever: Still has the scar that Thorfinn gave him even after four years. |
| 472 | * ShelteredAristocrat: Begins the story as an inexperienced young prince. |
| 473 | * ShrinkingViolet: Social interaction with others sends him into an anxious episode. |
| 474 | * SiblingMurder: [[spoiler:Canute killed his own brother Harald to gain the Kingdom of Denmark]]. |
| 475 | * TookALevelInBadass: |
| 476 | ** Goes from a meek and frail prince to a cold and calculating monarch. |
| 477 | ** He's also shown to have gone from utterly despising even having to touch a sword to a capable warrior who's able to hold his own against his bodyguard and stay nimble even under a full suit of armor. |
| 478 | * TookALevelInJerkass: [[spoiler:Hand in hand with his increasing confidence and regal qualities, Canute becomes much more manipulative and calculating in prosecuting his political and military campaigns.]] |
| 479 | * TranquilFury: His reaction when [[spoiler:Askeladd admitted of being Ragnar's killer]]. It was pretty clear that Canute contemplated killing him right then and there. |
| 480 | * TryToFitThatOnABusinessCard: Prince Canute, Canute "the Great", King Canute I of England, Canute II of Denmark, Canute I of Norway, and Emperor of the North Sea. |
| 481 | * {{Tsundere}}: Acts like one once Thorfinn got him to speak. |
| 482 | * TheUnFavourite: His father Sweyn vastly prefers Canute's brother Harald to him, even going as far as to try and have Canute assassinated in England and Canute only ever inherited England after his father's death due to Sweyn's explicit wishes that Harald inherits Denmark (aka, their homeland) while Canute gets England (the foreign country still bitter about being invaded). |
| 483 | * TheWrongfulHeirToTheThrone: As mentioned above, Sweyn sees Canute as this to his beloved homeland of Denmark and makes sure it goes to Harald upon his death. |
| 484 | %%* TheUnfettered: Post-CharacterDevelopment. |
| 485 | * UsedToBeASweetKid: In his youth, he is depicted as a kind and mild-mannered child under the tutelage of Ragnar. |
| 486 | * UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: He's willing to go pretty far in an attempt to create his paradise on Earth. |
| 487 | * VisionaryVillain: [[spoiler:His goal is to consolidate all the vikings in the world in order to save themselves from their own violent nature.]] |
| 488 | * VocalEvolution: Before his CharacterDevelopment kicked in, he spoke in a high, soft voice representative of his ShrinkingViolet nature and naïveté. After growing a spine and embracing his status, his voice deepens to a husky tenor that is far more appropriate for his position. |
| 489 | * YouAreNotAlone: [[spoiler:What Thorfinn eventually makes him realize by challenging Canute not to muck up too badly so Thorfinn won't have so much trouble building a place for everyone Canute neglects, which softens his stance.]] |
| 490 | ---- |
| 491 | [[/folder]] |
| 492 | |
| 493 | [[folder:Ragnar]] |
| 494 | !!Ragnar |
| 495 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Jin Urayama (Japanese), Creator/RobMungle (English - Sentai Filmworks/Crunchyroll), Creator/KyleHebert (English - Netflix) |
| 496 | [[quoteright:225:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/202837.jpg]] |
| 497 | |
| 498 | Danish nobleman and Canute's ParentalSubstitute. |
| 499 | |
| 500 | ---- |
| 501 | * CharacterDeath: Killed on Askeladd's orders. |
| 502 | * CommanderContrarian: Towards Askeladd when the two are forced to work together to aid Canute. Whenever Askeladd gives a command or makes a statement, Ragnar is there to criticize it or dispute it. |
| 503 | * EveryoneHasStandards: Aside from Father Willibald, who tries to warn the villagers about the attack, Ragnar is the only one to object to the slaughter of the village, although Askeladd forces him to shut up when he points out that it's Canute's best chance. The massacre weighs on his conscience afterwards. |
| 504 | * LikeASonToMe: Ragnar loves Canute as a son and tends to be highly overprotective of him. |
| 505 | * MentorOccupationalHazard: Invoked by Askeladd, who believes that Canute can never grow or change as long as Ragnar is around coddling him. |
| 506 | * ParentalSubstitute: He may not be Canute's actual father, but he sure as hell was a better father to him than King Sweyn. |
| 507 | * RealMenCook: Taught Canute how to cook. As mentioned above, it really underlines how he's not a 'true' viking. |
| 508 | * RealMenLoveJesus: Is a Christian, as opposed to most of the other Norse characters. |
| 509 | ---- |
| 510 | [[/folder]] |
| 511 | |
| 512 | [[folder:Father Willibald]] |
| 513 | !!Father Willibald |
| 514 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/SatoshiHino (Japanese), Kyle Jones (English - Sentai Filmworks), Creator/JMichaelTatum (English - Netflix) |
| 515 | [[quoteright:225:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/153543.jpg]] |
| 516 | |
| 517 | A drunkard English priest who's lost his faith. He considers God evil and is searching through Creation for any signs of true love that might convince him otherwise. |
| 518 | ---- |
| 519 | * ActOfTrueLove: He seeks one. [[spoiler:When told about Thors's last moments, he almost looks like he's found one.]] |
| 520 | * TheAlcoholic: Is constantly roaring drunk because he can't stand living otherwise. |
| 521 | * BreakingSpeech: Is responsible for Canute's first step of CharacterDevelopment by telling him there's no such thing as 'love' in humanity. |
| 522 | * CrisisOfFaith: He undergoes a serious case of this after witnessing numerous atrocities while in England. At one point he openly questioned God's benevolence while leading Canute on a prayer. |
| 523 | * EvilStoleMyFaith: More specifically, the idea that GodIsEvil from seeing the reality of things around him stole his faith. |
| 524 | * HumansAreTheRealMonsters: He believes God's creation ''is'' love, but that humans inherited none of it due to Original Sin -- in essence, the ''opposite'' of traditional Christianity. |
| 525 | * INeedAFreakingDrink: Constantly, or he goes into shouting fits. |
| 526 | * NeverGetsDrunk: Never seriously so, anyway. He's seen taking on several vikings in a row in a drinking contest and still looking fine after fifty-seven horns of wine. |
| 527 | * UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Thinking death is near, Willibald launches into a sermon on what he believes to be the nature of true love. [[spoiler: Said sermon shatters Canute's faith and hardens him into a man willing to do whatever it takes to obtain the crown and amass power and influence.]] |
| 528 | * YoungerThanTheyLook: When shaven he loses about twenty years. He's really twenty-three but looks like he's in his forties with the hair on. |
| 529 | ** The anime reinforces this by making his hair so pale that it looks white in direct light, making him seem a lot older than he really is. |
| 530 | ---- |
| 531 | [[/folder]] |
| 532 | |
| 533 | [[folder:Sweyn]] |
| 534 | !!King Sweyn "Forkbeard", Son of Harald |
| 535 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/TakayukiSugo (Japanese), Luis Galindo (English - Sentai Filmworks/Crunchyroll), Creator/JamiesonPrice (English - Netflix) |
| 536 | [[quoteright:225:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/72167.jpg]] |
| 537 | |
| 538 | King of Denmark and the Danelaw at the beginning of the series, father of Canute, and later the sovereign of all England. |
| 539 | ---- |
| 540 | * AbusiveParents: Towards Canute in particular, most notably when he violently lashes out when a young Canute prepared a meal for him, decrying it as a slave's work. [[spoiler: Then there's the entire [[UriahGambit ploy of sending him to a warzone]] in order to kill him without implication]]. |
| 541 | ** In fact, the whole reason Canute only inherits England after Sweyn's death is because Sweyn made it ''very'' clear that Denmark was to go to Harald, while Canute got the back-end bitter island still angry about being conquered. |
| 542 | * ArchnemesisDad: Doesn't really have any personal enmity for Canute, but becomes his political rival for kingship of England. |
| 543 | * AssholeVictim:[[spoiler:He was an abusive tyrant who plotted the death of his own son and engineered a bloody war. While it was certainly a shock, nobody, least of all Canute, was genuinely sad when Askeladd cut him down a few inches.]] |
| 544 | * BeautyEqualsGoodness: Yeah, there was no way that guy was ever going to be good. |
| 545 | * BigBrotherInstinct: When his sister Gunhilde is killed in England, he cites it as the reason to invade. It's unclear whether or not this is genuine on his part to avenge her, or simply convenient. |
| 546 | * BlackEyesOfEvil: [[spoiler:As a spirit advisor for Canute.]] |
| 547 | * BullyingADragon: [[spoiler:He takes the time to taunt Askeladd by calling his mother a worthless slave, smugly assuming the Danish rogue is powerless in royal court. It was the last mistake he ever made.]] |
| 548 | * GreaterScopeVillain: For the first arc. |
| 549 | * TheChainsOfCommanding: He likens his crown to a sentient being that drives him to commit atrocities to increase the power of the king. |
| 550 | * DecadentCourt: Rules over a court full of intrigues and plots. |
| 551 | * DeathByAdaptation: [[spoiler:Well, he died in RealLife after a very short reign of England too, but he ''probably'' didn't get his head cut off by the last scion of King Arthur.]] |
| 552 | * FamousAncestor: Sweyn is part of the House of Gorm, meaning he is a descendant of Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, the son of Ragnar Lothbrok. |
| 553 | * HateSink: He tried to kill his son and had nothing but contempt for him while blatantly favoring Harald. |
| 554 | * HeWhoMustNotBeSeen: Until Canute confronts him directly at the end of the arc, he's always shown with his face cloaked in shadows or by the camera angle. |
| 555 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: The real son of Harald "Bluetooth" and first Danish king of England. |
| 556 | * IWasQuiteALooker: Surprisingly so. When he met Canute in the present again, he said that Canute looks just like him when he was young. |
| 557 | * NervesOfSteel: Not even [[spoiler:Askeladd putting a sword to his neck]] visibly unnerves him. |
| 558 | * OffWithHisHead: [[spoiler: Pushes Askeladd too far by taunting his mother, and gets decapitated in turn. Canute still carries the memory of his disembodied head with him.]] |
| 559 | * OffingTheOffspring: [[spoiler: Attempts to do this to Canute in order to ensure his elder son would succeed him instead.]] |
| 560 | * SelfMadeOrphan: Nonlethal version, he drove his father into exile to seize the crown for himself. |
| 561 | ** PlayedForLaughs in a non-canon omake, [[spoiler:where his head introduces Canute to his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, all of whom are severed heads killed by their respective sons.]] |
| 562 | * StrongFamilyResemblance: Looks ''nothing'' like his three children, with Harald, Canute, and Estrid all having varying degrees of blonde hair while Sweyn has black, nor sharing any of his features, likely inheriting them from their mother. |
| 563 | ** {{Invoked}} however by Sweyn to Canute, who says that Canute looked a lot like him when he was that age. |
| 564 | * SpiritAdvisor: [[spoiler:His head haunts Canute for the Farmland Arc, mocking and praising him in equal measure for the DirtyBusiness he does to remain king.]] |
| 565 | * TheUnSmile: Sweyn's face is so decrepit that even his smiles become creepy by association. The fact that we know none of them are genuine probably doesn't help either. |
| 566 | * TheUriahGambit: He puts Canute in charge of besieging London -- against defenders led by ''Thorkell'' -- in a blatant attempt to get him killed or otherwise made not his problem. |
| 567 | * YoungerThanTheyLook: The historical Sweyn would have been thirty-seven during his first appearance in the manga, but when his face is finally revealed Sweyn looks like he's in his fifties. |
| 568 | ---- |
| 569 | [[/folder]] |
| 570 | |
| 571 | [[folder:Sigvaldi]] |
| 572 | !!Sigvaldi, Son of Srut-Harald |
| 573 | |
| 574 | Chief of the Jomsvikings, and father of Helga, thus making him the maternal grandfather to Ylva and Thorfinn. He is also Baldur's grandfather and the older brother of Thorkell. |
| 575 | ---- |
| 576 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: Depends on how much the sources of the time can be relied upon, but there was indeed a Sigvaldi who led the Jomsvikings and mentioned as a brother to the real Thorkell the Tall. |
| 577 | * PapaWolf: Thors seems to imply he was this towards Helga, and that him allowing them to marry was a huge gesture of friendship. |
| 578 | ---- |
| 579 | [[/folder]] |
| 580 | |
| 581 | [[folder:Gunhilde]] |
| 582 | !!Gunhilde, Daughter of Harald |
| 583 | |
| 584 | The younger sister of Sweyn Forkbeard. The aunt to Canute, Harald, and Estrid. |
| 585 | ---- |
| 586 | * DisposableWoman: She's mentioned ''once'' in the entire series, and it's that King Aethelred had her killed to expel the Danes from England. This prompts Sweyn to invade England as revenge. |
| 587 | * TheGhost: Only mentioned in the manga and it's unclear if the anime shows her in person. If it does, she may be the towel-clad blonde in a bathhouse with a few other women during a massacre scene, but then that woman could be just a FanserviceExtra. |
| 588 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: Based off [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunhilde Gunhilde]], who was married to a Danish earl that served King Aethelred. She was killed in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Brice%27s_Day_massacre St Brice's Day massacre]], which had Aethelred execute any Danish or allies to the Danes he perceived as a threat to his reign. As the sister of the King of Denmark, Gunhilde qualified. |
| 589 | * MinorMajorCharacter: She is mentioned only one time, but her death in 1002 is what prompts Sweyn to invade England out of revenge. |
| 590 | ---- |
| 591 | [[/folder]] |
| 592 | |
| 593 | !Characters Introduced In the Second Arc |
| 594 | !!Ketil's Farm |
| 595 | |
| 596 | [[folder:Einar]] |
| 597 | !!Einar |
| 598 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/ShunsukeTakeuchi (Japanese), Creator/IanSinclair (English - Crunchyroll), Creator/AlejandroSaab (English - Netflix) |
| 599 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/einar_profile_image.png]] |
| 600 | A slave from the Danelaw who is the first character introduced in the second arc. Purchased by Ketil to work on his farm, he encounters Thorfinn and becomes his first true friend and blood-brother. Having only seen the world from the viewpoint of the oppressed, he is extremely focused on social justice. |
| 601 | ---- |
| 602 | * AdaptationalEarlyAppearance: Shows up briefly during a montage in the final moments of the anime covering the first story arc. A very downplayed example as he is the first character to appear during the second arc. |
| 603 | * AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent: The first chapter of the second arc doesn't even include Thorfinn until the very end. Einar continues to be the viewpoint character for a good while afterwards. |
| 604 | * BigBrotherInstinct: Since Thorfinn spent almost his entire life up to that point in a band of vikings, he is pretty ignorant of anything that isn't combat-related. Things such as farming. Einar helps teach Thorfinn about all these things and generally helps him stand up for himself (Thorfinn having essentially become an ExtremeDoormat at this point in the story). The whole effect is helped by the fact that Thorfinn only comes up to Einar's shoulders and is about 2 years younger than him. |
| 605 | * TheBigGuy: He is tall, large, and strong, something that other characters make note of on multiple occasions. Amusingly, it leads some characters to assume he's a fighter or a warrior, when Einar is very much ''not''. |
| 606 | * BrokenPedestal: [[spoiler: Einar initially views Ketil as a ReasonableAuthorityFigure and SympatheticSlaveOwner, but after he beats Arnheid to death, Einar's feelings understandably turn to hatred and even murderous rage (until Thorfinn talks him down).]] |
| 607 | * DoggedNiceGuy: Towards Arnheid, a fellow slave, who either never picks up on it or chooses not to. |
| 608 | * GetAHoldOfYourselfMan: [[spoiler:He attempts to take vengeance on Ketil for killing Arnheid. Thorfinn, who has already been down that road, has to knock it out of him.]] |
| 609 | * IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy: He is hopelessly infatuated with Arnheid, but when he learns that the fugitive slave from the neighboring village is Arnheid's husband Gardar, he immediately wants to reunite the former couple and help them escape, even though he knows it will almost certainly mean never seeing Arnheid again. [[spoiler:Tragically, it doesn't work out. He, Sverkel, and Thorfinn are unable to protect Gardar, and Arnheid dies from punishing wounds inflicted by Ketil for trying to escape.]] |
| 610 | * IronicName: His name comes from the "Einherjar" - the warriors who died and went to Valhalla, and yet he's the NonActionGuy of the group. |
| 611 | * TheIshmael: For much of the beginning of the second arc. The story is still Thorfinn's, but Einar is the POV character. |
| 612 | * LikeASonToMe: [[spoiler:When Thorfinn finally returns to Iceland, Helga immediately decides that [[SwornBrothers if Einar is like a brother to Thorfinn]], then he's like a son to her and treats him as one of the family. Einar is clearly touched by the gesture and feels a lot of fondness and respect for Helga.]] |
| 613 | * MadeASlave: Enslaved by Norse raiders when they attacked his village. By the time he first appears he's already been a slave for a while. |
| 614 | * NiceGuy: Just in general. |
| 615 | * NonActionGuy: He is one of the only main characters who has no fighting skills and has never killed anyone. He also hates warriors until he meets Thorfinn. That said, he manages to fight off three farmers single-handed in a fistfight, and displays impressively quick thinking during Thorfinn's knife-fight with a bear. [[spoiler:And more impressive again is trying to protect Thorfinn from Hild.]] |
| 616 | * NumberTwo: In Arnheid's Village, the Norse settlement of Vinland, Einar naturally serves as Thorfinn's second-in-command given their history. Later on, Einar shares the role with Hild. |
| 617 | * OnlyFriend: To Thorfinn. At first, anyways. |
| 618 | * RedOniBlueOni: The Red to Thorfinn's blue, being much more passionate and optimistic. |
| 619 | * RevengeBeforeReason: Averted. After learning that Thorfinn used to be a viking who fought alongside the Danish army who pillaged Einar's town, Einar contemplates violence on a sleeping Thorfinn. But he sees that Thorfinn is suffering from his own problems and lets it go, acknowledging that it's not like Thorfinn was responsible for Einar's family's deaths. |
| 620 | * ShoutOut: His name stands out as peculiar for a man born in Danelaw and is likely a reference to Einar Haugen, a Harvard Professor who translated the ''Sagas of Vinland'' into English. It is also possibly a reference to Einar Jonsson, an Icelandic sculptor who created a well-known statue of Thorfinn. |
| 621 | * SwornBrothers: Becomes one to Thorfinn during the second arc; after everything they went through together (the years of slavery, buying back their freedom, and [[Canute's attempt to requisition the farm]]), both men decide to go to Vinland together and start a country free of slavery and war ([[DueToTheDead in Arnheid's memory]]), addressing each other as "brother" henceforth. |
| 622 | * WhatTheHellHero: Since Thorfinn is mostly stoic, Einar is usually the one of the two to speak up. |
| 623 | |
| 624 | [[/folder]] |
| 625 | |
| 626 | [[folder:Ketil]] |
| 627 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Hideaki Tezuka (Japanese), Doug Jackson (English - Crunchyroll), Sean Burgos (English - Netflix) |
| 628 | !!"Iron Fist" Ketil, Son of Sverker |
| 629 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ketilpng.png]] |
| 630 | A rich Danish farmer with a rumoured past as a great warrior known as "Iron Fist" Ketil. He is the master of Einar and Thorfinn during the second arc. |
| 631 | ---- |
| 632 | * AfraidOfBlood: He's shown to be clearly uncomfortable with blood and violence. |
| 633 | * AmbitionIsEvil: More like 'Ambition is Well-Intentioned but Ultimately Foolish'. Ketil constantly expands his farmland and hires on more people, which Sverker claims [[TallPoppySyndrome will only cause trouble down the line by attracting attention]]. [[spoiler:Sverker is eventually proven right.]] |
| 634 | * BenevolentBoss: Downplayed but eventually Subverted. He acts as one and ''does'' treat Thorfinn and Einar relatively well, making a deal with them to let them buy their freedom when he has no need to make them such an offer at all, then upholding his end of the bargain and generously offering them jobs as free men if they want to continue working on the farm. He evens stands up for the slaves against the bullying of the free retainers, once he finally learns about it. But Ketil's actions in the later parts of the arc show how a "kind" slaveowner is ''still'' a slaveowner. He uses Arnheid as a SexSlave in addition to her other duties (and unlike Thorfinn and Einar, he gives her no chance of earning her freedom from being his slave), and when facing being made an outlaw by Canute, he uses both the slaves he owns and the debts that free workers owe him to march them into a hopeless battle, where he callously keeps ordering them forwards and to keep fighting despite obviously being on the wrong end of a CurbStompBattle, throwing away their lives and livelihood for the sake of maintaining his own property. |
| 635 | * CluelessBoss: A downplayed case. He's very good at farming and generally a decent enough boss, but his farms employ so many people spread out over such distance and with so little organizational oversight that the workers and "guests" there can get away with a lot without him knowing it. The "guests" try to arrange for the death of at least one slave, and the casualness with which they do so implies they may have made other slaves disappear on a whim before without being caught. At the same time at least some of his free retainers spend their work days goofing off, shirking their work, and finding any excuse to bully, torment, and withhold resources or even food from slaves who actually are doing valuable work for Ketil. |
| 636 | * CoolSword: He's in possession of an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulfberht_swords Ulfberht sword]], which are swords stamped with a maker's mark and considered very high-quality for European swords made at that time... Not that he gets to use it. |
| 637 | ** A close examination reveals the sword is missing part of the normal dedication of an Ulfberht sword[[note]]Ulfberht swords commonly contain the dedication "+VLFBERH+T" or "+VLFBERHT+"; Ketil's sword lacks the first cross. Note that not all Ulfberht swords found have the dedication, or any maker's mark at all, so the lack of a cross cannot for certain disprove whether or not it's genuine[[/note]], leading to the possibility it might be a counterfeit. [[spoiler:Whether this was intentional on the author's part is unknown, but owning a counterfeit Ulfberht sword [[PhonyVeteran would fit Ketil's character perfectly]].]] |
| 638 | * DespairEventHorizon: [[spoiler:When he's made an outlaw by Canute.]] |
| 639 | * DirtyCoward: [[spoiler:Ketil is a weak-willed man who shies away from conflict or violence, freezes up when stressed, and when pushed to his limit, takes his anger out on those weaker than him.]] |
| 640 | * EmptyShell: [[spoiler:By the end of the Farmland arc he's left a one-eyed, shell-shocked mess in a deep depression, unable to do much beyond sitting on his porch and bemoaning Arnheid.]] |
| 641 | * {{Foil}}: To Thors. At first it seems that Ketil, like Thors, is a former warrior who now lives a peaceful life. [[spoiler: But it's later revealed that unlike Thors, who was an actual warrior and left the battlefield to become a pacifist, Ketil is a coward who has the same name as another famous warrior, and he never corrected anyone on that point because of the advantages such a reputation conferred.]] |
| 642 | * KickTheDog: His cold-hearted beating of [[spoiler:a pregnant Arnheid]]. It wound up [[spoiler:causing her to first lose the baby and then die.]] |
| 643 | * LegendaryImpostor: [[spoiler:There is or was a real "Iron Fist" Ketil, but it's not this Ketil. Ketil the farmer simply realized that there were major benefits to people thinking he was the famous warrior; namely it made most people too afraid to either attack his farm or try to steal from him. Snake, who was trained by the actual "Iron Fist" states that the two men are about the same age and have [[StoutStrength roughly the same build]], but the similarities end there.]] |
| 644 | * TheLostLenore: The anime adds to Ketil's backstory by revealing that as a young man he loved a woman that both he and a rich and powerful man named Ebbe wanted to marry. Sverker feared inciting the wrath of a man as powerful as Ebbe was, especially since this was before Ketil became rich and prosperous himself. So Sverker convinced Ketil to step aside... and then a rival of Ebbe's killed both Ebbe and the woman Ketil loved at their wedding. |
| 645 | * MeaningfulName: "Ketil" means "cauldron" or "metal pot" (in fact it's related to English "kettle") which fits with his "Iron Fist" sobriquet. |
| 646 | * NonActionGuy: Despite having once had a reputation as a famous warrior, Ketil now always seems reluctant to engage in violence, and becomes nervous around violent situations. [[spoiler:This is because he isn't actually "Iron Fist" Ketil. Being a non-action guy among the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Norsemen]] gives him a considerable problem, so he appropriated the famous name and reputation of "Iron Fist" Ketil to keep people from challenging him.]] |
| 647 | * NonIdleRich: No matter how rich his farmland gets, he constantly strives to improve upon it, and is likely to be seen tilling the fields right beside the farmhands that he employs. This is a marked contrast to his son Olmar, who despite growing up on a rich farm has never paid any attention to how to become a farmer and thus makes a hash out of things on the few occasions where Ketil gets him to try doing farm work. |
| 648 | * PetTheDog: He spends a lot of the early farmland arc showing what a kind, fair, and soft-hearted man he is. [[spoiler:This only makes it all the more tragic when he breaks.]] |
| 649 | * ReasonableAuthorityFigure: A generally kind-hearted man who allows his slaves to buy their freedom through honest work, and trusts Snake and his fellow outlaws as household guards. Subverted in that he regularly beds his female slave Arnheid, who of course cannot refuse, and he does not offer her the same bargain. [[spoiler:Being outlawed by Canute greatly exaggerates his worst attributes.]] |
| 650 | * ReplacementGoldfish: The anime adaptation shows that [[spoiler:Arnheid is a replacement for a woman Ketil loved and lost when he was a young man. Before becoming rich, Ketil loved a woman, but a rich and powerful man named Ebbe proposed to her. Ketil was prepared to try to fight for her, but Sverker convinced him not to, worried what would happen if they started a feud with someone as powerful as Ebbe was. So Ketil reluctantly stepped aside... and Ebbe and the woman were both killed at their wedding by a rival of Ebbe's. This is part of why he utterly flips out when he learns that Arnheid supposedly tried to run away from the farm with Gardar.]] |
| 651 | * RetiredBadass: He is supposed to have been a famous warrior, although now [[ShellShockedVeteran he seems so sick of battle and violence that he becomes squeamish around violent situations]] and has to force himself to uphold his famous reputation. [[spoiler:The truth is that he's a subversion, Ketil is actually a PhonyVeteran who [[LegendaryImpostor stole the reputation of a famous warrior]] who just so happened to have the same name as him.]] |
| 652 | * SignificantNameOverlap: A plot point. [[spoiler:He's not actually the famous warrior "Iron Fist" Ketil people thought him to be. He simply exploits their shared names to serve as a deterrent for people from attacking his farm or steal from him.]] |
| 653 | * SympatheticSlaveOwner: {{Deconstruction}}. Ketil seems to be playing this straight at first, a fairly nice man who treats his slaves with respect and even promises Thorfinn and Einar their freedom once they finish preparing his new fields for harvest in a few years, but you soon see the problems as you get further into the farming arc. Ketil does not offer the same promise to his female slave Arnheid, and uses her as a SexSlave to boot. [[spoiler: After he suffers a DespairEventHorizon, he beats Arnheid nearly to death despite her being pregnant with his child, and still refuses to part with her after Leif offers to buy her. When all is said and done with the Farming Arc, Ketil is left grieving over Arnheid's death.]] Through all this we can see that, while Ketil does not go out of his way to treat slaves badly, he still uses them for his own needs and is not above exploiting his status as the master to take out his frustrations on them or to make them suffer. |
| 654 | * VerbalTic: He tends to say "aye" to himself a lot, particularly when lost in thought. |
| 655 | [[/folder]] |
| 656 | |
| 657 | [[folder:Sverker]] |
| 658 | !!Sverker |
| 659 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/{{Mugihito}} (Japanese), Creator/WilliamSalyers (English - Netflix) |
| 660 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sverkellnolaughing.png]] |
| 661 | The "old master", Ketil's (mostly retired) father and former owner of the farm who spends his retirement working his own small and private field. |
| 662 | ---- |
| 663 | * BeautyEqualsGoodness: An inversion. Sverker looks exactly as old, decrepit, and weather-bitten as you'd expect from a man of his age and status, but despite a fair bit of grumpiness and gruff manners, he's an honest and moral man. |
| 664 | * JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Despite his blunt demeanour and his tendency to quarrel with anyone within sight, he's genuinely good at heart, offering to give Snake his remaining farm so he can keep an honest job and [[spoiler:even offering to sell it to pay ''weregild'' for the men Gardar killed.]] |
| 665 | * PerpetualFrowner: He has a constant sour look on his face. He's a nice man despite it, however. |
| 666 | * {{Reconstruction}}: He offers one to Thorfinn's character, pointing out that being "empty inside" can be a good thing because it means you can be filled by something constructive. |
| 667 | * RealMenLoveJesus: One of the things that makes him amicable towards Snake is that Snake is able to read Greek and thus able to recite a genuine Greek Bible perfectly to the elderly man for comfort. It's implied that Sverker's weakening body and eyesight are what prevents him from reading the scriptures himself, and as such these session are one of their biggest points of bonding. [[CulturedBadass Thorfinn even starts listening in on these impromptu sermons.]] |
| 668 | * ReasonableAuthorityFigure: All throughout the arc, he makes decisions that result in the betterment of the farmlands as well as the slaves' well-being. |
| 669 | * ScrewPolitenessImASenior: Constantly brutally honest and has little regard or care for things like social class and thralldom in how he deals with people. |
| 670 | * SoProudOfYou: While he doesn't say it outright to the character in question, [[spoiler:he is clearly pleased by Olmar's CharacterDevelopment.]] |
| 671 | * VitriolicBestBuds: With Snake, who seems to pay more attention to him than his own flesh-and-blood family. |
| 672 | |
| 673 | [[/folder]] |
| 674 | |
| 675 | [[folder:Thorgil]] |
| 676 | !!Thorgil, Son of Ketil |
| 677 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/TaitenKusunoki (Japanese), Earl Baylon (English - Netflix) |
| 678 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thorgil.jpg]] |
| 679 | Ketil's older son. A picture of the Norse warrior ideal, he is a man who enjoys nothing more than fighting and killing. He left the farm to serve in Canute's household and dislikes the rest of his family for their peaceable nature. |
| 680 | ---- |
| 681 | * TheApprentice: Not currently, but apparently he was one to [[MasterSwordsman Snake]], and learned his terrifyingly effective brand of swordsmanship from Snake. |
| 682 | * BigBrotherMentor: To his little brother, in the stern, disapproving style only a real big brother who's been looked up at all his life can manage. About the only thing he succeeds at is to make Olmar realise what he's ''not''. |
| 683 | * BloodKnight: Absolutely loves fighting and carnage, and he relishes the thought of [[spoiler:having to fight his former liege lord.]] |
| 684 | * CoveredWithScars: He has a couple of prominent scars on his face that get the most attention from the artwork, but whenever he bares his arms numerous scars from his various battles can be seen. When he takes off his shirt there are numerous scars on his shoulder and torso areas. |
| 685 | * DecapitationStrike: His plan for how to defeat [[spoiler:Cantue's personal guard and Jomsviking allies]]. Thorgil knows perfectly well that despite having a large numerical advantage the farmers and hired hands are no match for their opponents, so Thorgil uses them as a distraction and sneaks around back of the enemy army to make a surprise attack from the rear on the enemy commander. [[spoiler:It comes ''oh so close'' to working.]] |
| 686 | * EvenEvilHasStandards: While he bullies and threatens Olmar during his duel in Jelling, [[spoiler:Thorgil refrains from outright harming his brother. When Olmar decides to surrender and Snake and Sverker takes his side, Thorgil doesn't make any attempt to seize control of the farm.]] |
| 687 | * {{Foil}}: To Olmar. A lot of Olmar's character arc is realizing that Thorgil is everything he ''thought'' he wanted to be, but once Olmar actually sees the reality of what his brother and similar men are truly like, he's repulsed and wants nothing to do with that life. |
| 688 | * GeniusBruiser: Despite his menacing appearance and bloodlust, he's also quite savvy. [[spoiler:He immediately smells a rat about his brother's duel, realizes Canute has set them up, and later concocts a scheme to assassinate Canute which comes very close to succeeding.]] |
| 689 | * GlorySeeker: Above everything else he seeks fame and renown. When [[spoiler:Canute turns against his family and moves to seize their land]], Thorgil is ''ecstatic'', because facing such a powerful foe means becoming a legend if he prevails. |
| 690 | * GoodScarsEvilScars: He's got a large scar on his forehead and a split lip from a wound, which aids in making him look thuggish and menacing. |
| 691 | * {{Irony}}: Thorgil is a great warrior who desired fame for his ability in battle above all other things. After the battle for Ketil's farm, the narration simply says that after the battle nobody ever heard from him again. If he doesn't pop up in the story again, the implication is that he will be forgotten and die without the fame/infamy he so coveted despite the lengths he went to seek that fame out. |
| 692 | * LockedOutOfTheLoop: Despite both his surprisingly savvy nature and his experience that should tell him that [[spoiler:his father is a PhonyVeteran]], he seems to completely believe that [[spoiler:his father truly was "Iron Fist" Ketil]]. Unless [[spoiler:he caught onto the truth and is trying to uphold the ruse, perhaps even while simultaneously trolling his dad.]] |
| 693 | * ProudWarriorRaceGuy: As opposed to his brother. Thorgil is as hung-up on being a 'true warrior' as Olmar but he has the strength and skill to live up to it. |
| 694 | * PutOnABus: [[spoiler:He disappears after the Farmland Arc, with the narration only mentioning his current location is unknown.]] |
| 695 | * ARealManIsAKiller: Lets his brother Olmar know in no uncertain terms that he won't forgive him if he tries to weasel his way out of fighting and killing the men who insulted him. |
| 696 | * SmarterThanYouLook: Between his large, muscular build, ''incredible'' bloodlust, and scarred face, Thorgil looks like a large, ferocious, but none too bright thug. This impression is quite flawed. In addition to his strength and fighting skills, Thorgil also possesses a cruel and vicious cunning, as he [[spoiler:immediately sees through Canute's plot regarding Olmar's duel]], and is a capable tactician who nearly won what should have been an unwinnable battle with a perfectly played DecapitationStrike. |
| 697 | * SocialDarwinist: Believes that battle is the means in which the worthy are separated from those who aren't. |
| 698 | * SociopathicSoldier: Collects the ears of people he's killed, slaughters [[spoiler:former comrades and liege lords]] without hesitation, regret, or any feeling whatsoever after falling out with them, willingly beats orphaned children forced to resort to thievery to survive (and Thorgil hit the boy so hard that Ketil immediately panicked and feared that Thorgil would kill the poor kid with just a couple of blows) etc., etc. He's not a nice guy. |
| 699 | * WouldHurtAChild: He hit a kid with a stick hard enough to send him flying. |
| 700 | |
| 701 | [[/folder]] |
| 702 | |
| 703 | [[folder:Olmar]] |
| 704 | !!Olmar, Son of Ketil |
| 705 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/YuHayashi (Japanese), Anthony [=DiMascio=] (English - Crunchyroll, first[[note]]replaced due to allegations of sexual abuse[[/note]]), Creator/BenBalmaceda (English - Crunchyroll, second), Creator/RyanColtLevy (English - Netflix) |
| 706 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/olmar_s2_anime_design.png]] |
| 707 | Ketil's younger son and heir to the farm. Starts out the arc as a bratty rebellious teen with designs of following in his brother's footsteps, who goes through severe CharacterDevelopment [[spoiler:and ultimately proves himself a better man than his father]]. |
| 708 | ---- |
| 709 | * ARealManIsAKiller: Inverted: Olmar only becomes a 'real man' by realising that this trope ''isn't'' true [[spoiler:after killing a man in a fixed duel]]. |
| 710 | * ActualPacifist: [[spoiler:He's become one at the end of his character arc, realizing that he personally isn't made for battle and having seen the horrible face of war and what it does to people during the battle for the farm.]] |
| 711 | * ArtEvolution: He becomes noticeably better-looking the more his character develops. |
| 712 | * BoisterousWeakling: All the swagger of his brother, but none of the strength or fighting skill. |
| 713 | * EmoTeen: Starts the second arc in this position. |
| 714 | * {{Foil}}: To his father. At first glance Olmar comes across as a wastrel nobody compared to his hardworking father. However, [[spoiler: unlike his father Olmar actually cares about the people on the farm more than the farm itself. He's unwilling to throw their lives away in a hopeless battle just to preserve his family's wealth and position like his father did. He opts to surrender to Canute in order to save their lives, even if that means exile and the loss of his former status. Later he sells off much of his father's land to help support the families of those who died in the battle, an act which his father never would have considered.]] |
| 715 | * HeroicWannabe: He really wants to be like his brother and the stories of the great Norse warrior made famous in songs. |
| 716 | * NoMoreHoldingBackSpeech: Delivers one near the end [[spoiler:when he decides to surrender to Canute and accept outlawry to spare further loss of life, pointing out that he can never live up to the Nordic warrior ideal of 'death before dishonour', nor does he want to after seeing what it actually entails.]] |
| 717 | * UnwittingPawn: He is the (unwilling and unwitting) linchpin in [[spoiler:Canute's plan to appropriate his family's farm]]. |
| 718 | |
| 719 | [[/folder]] |
| 720 | |
| 721 | [[folder:Pater]] |
| 722 | !!Pater |
| 723 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Hiroshi Yanaka (Japanese), Creator/BenLepley (English - Netflix) |
| 724 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pater_vinland.jpg]] |
| 725 | |
| 726 | A freedman farmer and former slave on Ketil's farm. He serves as Ketil's main assistant and is responsible for Einar and Thorfinn. |
| 727 | ---- |
| 728 | * TheConsigliere: Serves as Ketil's main voice of reason and provides a point of view from the farmers and farmhands to his boss. Ketil appears to genuinely appreciate him for his role. |
| 729 | * DeliberateValuesDissonance: About as unambiguously good a character as exists in the series, and he still insists that a young pair of siblings be brutally beaten with a stick as punishment for theft. A modern viewer would likely be horrified at the prospect of beating a minor half to death, but from Pater's perspective it was a ''mercy'' compared to the initially proposed punishment of severing a limb. |
| 730 | * EyesAlwaysShut: His character model. He has a 'opens his eyes fully' scene in an expanded scene in the anime, but not in the manga. |
| 731 | * GoodIsNotSoft: He might be one of the few unambiguously good characters in the series, but he's not a pushover. He has no problem with punishing child thieves with beatings though it's still vastly better than the [[AnArmAndALeg alternative punishment]]. |
| 732 | * HypercompetentSidekick: His enormous competence and devotion to overseeing the farm and its resources is a big part of the reason why it has thrived so much. |
| 733 | * MeaningfulName: His name means 'father' in Latin. True to his name, he is a kind and fatherly figure to the younger Einar and Thorfinn. |
| 734 | * ReasonableAuthorityFigure: To Einar and Thorfinn. It's notable that even [[spoiler:after Ketil's FaceHeelTurn, Einar and Thorfinn still hold Pater in extremely high regard.]] |
| 735 | [[/folder]] |
| 736 | |
| 737 | [[folder:Arnheid]] |
| 738 | !!Arnheid |
| 739 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Mayumi Sako (Japanese), Creator/NatalieVanSistine (English - Crunchyroll), Gilli Messer (English - Netflix) |
| 740 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/chapter_066.jpg]] |
| 741 | A beautiful Swedish houseslave on Ketil's farm. Einar has a rather transparent crush on her. |
| 742 | ---- |
| 743 | * BeautifulSlaveGirl: She is a beautiful Swedish girl who's also used as a SexSlave by her owner. |
| 744 | * CharacterDeath: [[spoiler:Killed by Ketil, of all people, when he snaps and gives her a terrible beating.]] |
| 745 | * DeathByDespair: [[spoiler:While she was killed by wounds likely to have proved fatal no matter her response, her misery over her husband's death prevented her cooperating with someone who could give proper medical treatment.]] |
| 746 | * DueToTheDead: [[spoiler:Thorfinn and Einar bury her, and at her grave they swear to make a new world in Vinland together in her memory. Later during their travels among the Byzantines, they salvage the sculpture of a woman that reminds them of her. They bring the bust to Vinland and make a sort of ShrineToTheFallen with it, telling the colonists she was their kind friend, and their settlement is named after her.]] |
| 747 | * ImperiledInPregnancy: She is secretly pregnant with her master Ketil's child. When her former husband comes to take her back - slaying several guards of the farm in the process - and she tries to escape with him, Ketil does not take it well. [[spoiler:Just before her punishment, she reveals to him she is pregnant with his child; his response is to suspect that the child isn't his, and beat her half to death. And not only half, as she dies shortly after.]] |
| 748 | * MadeASlave: Over "pots and pans" as she tells it, as she and the other women of her village were captured and enslaved while the men were away fighting another village over an iron mine. |
| 749 | * SexSlave: She does common slave labor as well, but Ketil also makes her have sex with him. |
| 750 | [[/folder]] |
| 751 | |
| 752 | [[folder:Badger and Fox]] |
| 753 | !!"Badger" and "Fox" |
| 754 | !!!'''Badger voiced by''': Hiroki Goto (Japanese), Michael C. Pizzuto (English - Netflix)\ |
| 755 | '''Fox voiced by''': Shinya Takahashi (Japanese), Creator/DerickSnow (English - Crunchyroll), Creator/KaijiTang (English - Netflix) |
| 756 | Two of the 'guests' of Ketil's farms, functioning as guardsmen to their 'host'. |
| 757 | ---- |
| 758 | * AnimalMotifs: They even look a bit like the animals they're named after. |
| 759 | * ButtMonkey: Every time they show up, someone or something ends up pummeling them. [[spoiler:First Fox gets his nose broken by Snake for messing around with Thorfinn. Then Gardar ambushes and defeats them both. Finally, they fight for Ketil during the battle of the farm and Badger loses an arm.]] |
| 760 | * DarkAndTroubledPast: Fox mentions that he's outlawed for killing a noble. |
| 761 | * EyesAlwaysShut: Fox. When he realizes [[spoiler:that Canute has brought the Jomsvikings to the farm]] Snake notes that this is the biggest he's ever seen his eyes. |
| 762 | * FatAndSkinny: Badger is the fat, Fox is the skinny. |
| 763 | * TheFettered: [[spoiler:They end up joining Snake in defending the farm despite it being hopeless because they want to stick to their guns.]] |
| 764 | * ICanStillFight: In the anime, [[spoiler:Badger keeps fighting after losing his arm, and has to be pulled from the battlefield by Fox.]] |
| 765 | * OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: All the 'guests' of the farm use nicknames because they're outlaws. The anime reveals Badger's name is Gudmund. |
| 766 | * {{Outlaw}}: In the classical sense. They have no legal rights at all, but since no-one on the farm wants them dead it doesn't matter. |
| 767 | * PunchClockVillain: They're not as nice or reasonable as Snake is, but they're (mostly) not malicious either. Fox attacks and mocks Thorfinn because he's a thrall, and not because he's got anything against him personally. |
| 768 | * ThoseTwoGuys: Their role in the series, functioning as viewpoint characters whenever the guards are involved. |
| 769 | * TranslationConvention: Like Snake and the rest of the guards, their animal names are in the reader's language instead of Norse or other period languages, to show they're just aliases. In Japanese, Fox is "Kitsune" and Badger is "Anaguma". |
| 770 | * UncertainDoom: [[spoiler:Fox is seen surviving at the end of the arc, but Badger is not seen again after being pulled from the battlefield by Fox during the Battle for Ketil's Farm, at which point he's lost an arm to a Jomsviking. The anime removes the ambiguity by showing Badger picking rocks in the field with the other former guests during the epilogue.]] |
| 771 | [[/folder]] |
| 772 | |
| 773 | [[folder:Snake]] |
| 774 | !!"Snake"/[[spoiler:Roald, Son of Grim]] |
| 775 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/FuminoriKomatsu (Japanese), Creator/ChristopherSabat (English - Crunchyroll), Creator/JasonGriffith (English - Netflix) |
| 776 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/snake_profile_image.png]] |
| 777 | |
| 778 | Unofficial 'captain of the guards' of Ketil's farm as the leader of the warrior band who have settled on the grounds. Snake serves as an on-off antagonist and/or ally to Einar and Thorfinn during the farmland arc. He is hinted to have been a former member of the Varangian Guard (the foreign bodyguard and elite soldiers of Byzantine Emperors), given his use of a sabre and his ability to read an Orthodox Greek Bible. |
| 779 | ---- |
| 780 | * AdaptationExpansion: In the manga, his backstory wasn't explored outside of his relationship with [[spoiler: the ''real'' Iron Fist Ketil]] and the fact that he was on the run from the law at some point. In the anime, it's revealed that he's a warrior of Miklagard,[[labelnote:Note]]Constantinople (Present day Istanbul, Turkey)[[/labelnote]] and that would explain where his sword came from, as well as the fact that he knows how to speak and read Greek, seeing as Miklagard has historically had a sizeable Greek minority. It's also worth noting that the Byzantine Emperor had a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard personal bodyguard primarily composed of Norsemen]] at the time, which would also explain why Snake is among the best fighters in the series. |
| 781 | * AFatherToHisMen: He takes the responsibility he has as a leader seriously. While he can be hard on his men, nobody messes with them and gets away with it. |
| 782 | * ArtisticLicenseHistory: Snake's SinisterScimitar strongly resembles a Persian shamshir. While it's not impossible for him to have a foreign sword, as detailed above, that particular type of sword would not exist for another couple of centuries. |
| 783 | * ArmourPiercingQuestion: Asks Thorfinn very openly [[spoiler:why Gardar's life should be more valuable than the five of Snake's men he killed. Thorfinn is unable to answer him.]] |
| 784 | * AsskickingLeadsToLeadership: He's the strongest of his band by far, and as such none of his men dare question his orders. |
| 785 | * BiblicalMotifs: He has a genuine, hand-written Greek Bible which he knows is by far his most valuable possession, and would probably sell for a nobleman's fortune. Snake just uses it as light reading, though Sverker's interest means he's often made to recite from it. In one scene where Thorfinn is listening in, [[https://youtu.be/BRdm8cFSdZ8 he's shown reciting Matthews 5:43-48]], which he reads with some reluctance even as the words within are immensely relevant to the [[ForeShadowing current arc and Thorfinn's character]]. |
| 786 | * BrilliantButLazy: He may look like a scruffy vagrant, and he mostly ''acts'' like a scruffy vagrant, but Thorfinn considers him in a fighting class similar to Askeladd. He could probably have joined the Jomsvikings or the household of a king (and is implied to have done just that in the past), but chooses to live on a farm instead. |
| 787 | * CallToAgriculture: [[spoiler:Is last seen learning how to work the fields at Sverker's farm.]] |
| 788 | * CoolSword: A fancy, thin, ornate, single-edged blade with a distinct curve, in quite the contrast to the large, straight, double-edged viking swords everyone else uses. Snake knows Greek, so it's possible that the sword itself is from Greece. |
| 789 | * TheFettered: He may not have much pride, honour or friends left, but by gum he's sticking to what little he's got. |
| 790 | * HiddenDepths: He's literate (very rare in 11th century Scandinavia) and can read Greek (even moreso; Latin would not be uncommon for a traveling man or someone in the upper classes, but Greek? Incredibly rare), and hides a very strong sense of fairness and loyalty under his scruffy, jerkish behaviour. His relationship with Sverker is also a lot warmer than it looks on the surface. |
| 791 | * HonestAdvisor: He tries with Ketil [[spoiler:by telling him just how outmatched they are against Canute's forces. Ketil shoots down every piece of advice, though Olmar proves much more receptive.]] |
| 792 | * JerkWithAHeartOfGold: He's coarse as all heck and the only one who seems to tolerate him at length is Sverker, but he has a strong sense of justice and loyalty and respects both Thorfinn and Einar. |
| 793 | * LightningBruiser: As fast as Thorfinn, but considerably taller and more muscular. |
| 794 | * MasterSwordsman: He's shown to be a very skilled swordsman, [[spoiler:able to put down a berserk Gardar with a single well-placed blow to the temple, and decapitates a Jomsviking in a single cut during the Battle for Ketil's Farm]]. During the Baltic War Arc, Thorfinn considers [[spoiler:one of his Jomsviking opponents]] to be peanuts compared to fighting Snake. |
| 795 | * NonIndicativeName: His alias, Snake, is an animal associated with evil and deviousness in European tradition, but the man himself is a honorable warrior who is highly loyal. His ability to move and strike very quickly is certainly snakelike, however. |
| 796 | * NoodleIncident: We never learn exactly what he did that outlawed him. |
| 797 | * NotSoDifferentRemark: During his fight with Thorfinn both men find themselves wondering what the heck someone this skilled is doing as a thrall/'houseguest' at some mid-sized farm in the Jutland peninsula instead of being out in warzones taking heads. |
| 798 | * OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Like the rest of his men he's outlawed and refrains from using his true name as a result. [[spoiler:His real name is Roald, son of Grim, as he reveals to Thorfinn and Einar at the end of the arc.]] |
| 799 | * {{Outlaw}}: Like the rest of his men. As such, they stick together and serve Ketil because he's willing to shelter them. |
| 800 | * ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Saves [[spoiler:Arnheid]] even though he blames [[spoiler:her]] for the deaths of his men. |
| 801 | * SecretSecretKeeper: He's known all along that [[spoiler:Ketil isn't, as claimed, the same man as the famous warrior "Iron Fist" Ketil, because Snake fought alongside and was taught by the real "Iron Fist". Part of the reason he came to Ketil's farm in the first place is because he heard a rumor that his old mentor had become a successful farmer, but as soon as he met Ketil he knew Ketil wasn't the same man. Snake kept quiet about it, however, apparently for years.]] |
| 802 | * ShoutOut: He's a man known as snake who looks quite similar to [[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid Solid Snake]]. |
| 803 | * ThresholdGuardian: He ends up becoming one to Thorfinn, [[spoiler:who is forced to choose between his pacifism or protecting Gardar from him.]] |
| 804 | * TranslationConvention: Like the rest of the guards, his animal name is in the reader's language instead of Norse or other period languages, to show it's just an alias. In Japanese, he's "Hebi", though in-universe it's probably something like "Orm" or "Slange". |
| 805 | * VitriolicBestBuds: With Sverker, who lets him bum around his house and eat his food in return for company and copious amounts of SnarkToSnarkCombat. |
| 806 | |
| 807 | [[/folder]] |
| 808 | |
| 809 | [[folder:Gardar]] |
| 810 | !!Gardar |
| 811 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Takuya Matsumoto (Japanese), Jarrod Greene (English -- Crunchyroll), Creator/KyleHebert (English - Netflix) |
| 812 | |
| 813 | A Swedish slave from a nearby farm who decided to kill his master, his master's whole family, and burn down the house. He is now running into the territory that Thorfinn and Einar work. |
| 814 | ---- |
| 815 | * AxCrazy: As a result of his time enslaved, he's immensely angry and dangerous to almost everyone around him. [[spoiler:Only being effectively killed by Snake and Arnheid giving him a MotivationalLie down calms him down in the end.]] |
| 816 | * TheBerserker: He spends most of his time in a state of near-perpetual rage, and only [[spoiler:Arnheid's presence]] makes him capable of being temporarily coherent. |
| 817 | * CrusadingWidower: He starts out as this [[spoiler:until he learns Arnheid is still alive.]] |
| 818 | * DyingDream: In the anime, [[spoiler:the second half of season 2, episode 17 is given over to Gardar's thoughts as he bleeds out. This is in contrast to the manga, where his death is only seen from Arnheid's point of view.]] |
| 819 | * FieryRedhead: In the anime, his hair is auburn with a distinct reddish hue. As seen on the rest of his character page, Gardar is extremely emotion-driven. |
| 820 | * JekyllAndHyde: Most of the time he's a dangerous man who is at least half mad due to everything he has endured. When he [[spoiler:finds Arnheid]] however, we get a glimpse of the man he used to be: kind, unfailingly polite and respectful to all. The trouble is that he can swing between one side and the other with little warning, and given his tenuous (at best) hold on his sanity and reality, it's hard to tell when he's going to snap again. |
| 821 | * LetThemDieHappy: [[spoiler:Courtesy of Arnheid, who lies to him and tells him their son is still alive and that they can still go home and be a family. Gardar spends his last moments happily talking about his regrets and planning to turn over a new leaf as he slowly dies of blood loss.]] |
| 822 | * MadeASlave: Was captured during his attempt to claim an iron mine for his village, and sold into slavery as a result. |
| 823 | * ManBitesMan: [[spoiler:He kills one of Snake's men by tearing his throat out with his teeth.]] |
| 824 | * PayEvilUntoEvil: He kills his owner and escapes. |
| 825 | * PowerBornOfMadness: Gardar has been driven mostly mad by his experiences. That in turns manifests by giving tremendous physical strength, a terrifying lack of restraint, and near immunity to pain and injury. |
| 826 | * RasputinianDeath: [[spoiler:Receives several wounds that look like they come from a blade during his escape from his owner. Snake then knocks him out and likely gives him a concussion. During his second escape he takes a wound to the side that incapacitates him, and is then stabbed in the heart by Snake. He ''still'' almost manages to kill Snake (despite suffering another stab wound that likely would have been fatal by itself in the process) until talked down, and manages to cling on to life for almost an hour afterward until he bleeds out.]] |
| 827 | * UnskilledButStrong: He's a large, fast, and immensely powerful man who is almost immune to pain, but the far more skilled Snake is able to defeat him (non-lethally) with ease when forced into a stand-up fight. That said, he often doesn't need the skill; sheer ferocity and physical strength allows him to defeat or kill the farm's guards on several occasions, and during his last encounter with Snake, Gardar catches Snake by surprise and would have tanked multiple lethal wounds long enough to kill Snake had he not been talked down. |
| 828 | * UnstoppableRage: His fighting skill is entirely based on 'too angry to hold back'. |
| 829 | |
| 830 | [[/folder]] |
| 831 | |
| 832 | [[folder:Thorfinn "Bug-Eyes"]] |
| 833 | !!Thorfinn "Bug-Eyes", Son of Leif |
| 834 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Tatsumaru Tachibana (Japanese), Creator/ChrisHackney (English - Netflix) |
| 835 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bug_eyed_thorfinn.jpg]] |
| 836 | This Thorfinn, nicknamed "Bug-Eyes", is the adoptive son of Leif Eriksson who ransomed him out of slavery while searching for Thorfinn Karlsefni. He accompanies Thorfinn, Leif, and Einar on a trading mission to Greece. |
| 837 | ---- |
| 838 | * AdaptationalAttractiveness: A downplayed example in the anime; while his WideEyesAndShrunkenIrises are still noticeable, his face is still drawn similarly to everyone else's instead of being near-OffModel which he is in the manga. |
| 839 | * AscendedExtra: He is introduced in chapter 76, but doesn't get much focus until the third arc. |
| 840 | * BrilliantButLazy: Isn't stupid by any means and is the most experienced trader within Arnheid Village, paired with being knowledgeable in at least three languages and a hardened sailor. But he often tries to take the easy way out of things if he can. |
| 841 | * BrutalHonesty: He often whines about their predicament in the third arc, although his complaints are usually well-founded. He rightly points out that bringing a SoleSurvivor baby and a RunawayBride that attracts the attention of the groom-to-be will give them additional problems in their already hard journey. |
| 842 | * ComicallyMissingThePoint: Is encouraged to join the voyage to Vinland, but not out of a desire to build a land without violence, or to make a name for himself. He ends up going to build a land free of gambling debt. |
| 843 | * TheComplainerIsAlwaysWrong: Averted. See BrutalHonesty above; most of his points make sense (from his perspective) even if they're usually delivered in a harsh way. |
| 844 | * {{Foil}}: To Thorfinn (the main character). Both named Thorfinn, former slave, short, blonde. While Thorfinn is a former soldier who [[CharacterDevelopment became]] a NiceGuy and an {{Atoner}}, Bug-Eyes is a {{Jerkass}} former friar, already has a fully developed personality and is the PluckyComicRelief. |
| 845 | * TheGadfly: When teaching Nisqauji'j' the Nordic language, he tells her that "Gudri" (referring to Gudrid, who was making fun of him) means "idiot". Niskawaji'j repeats it, much to Gudrid's frustration. |
| 846 | * TheGamblingAddict: One of his addictions (he insists is merely a vice) is gambling. He ends up joining the voyage to Vinland to build a land free of gambling debt. |
| 847 | * HappilyAdopted: Treats Leif as his father, noting that his biological parents are likely long dead. |
| 848 | * InSeriesNickname: Everyone calls him "Bug-Eyes", to prevent confusion. |
| 849 | * JerkassHasAPoint: In Chapter 100, Thorfinn sits sulking after Ylva doesn't recognize him after returning to Iceland. Bug-Eyes tells Thorfinn bluntly that he's jealous of his situation because Bug-Eyes doesn't even ''know'' his biological family or even what happened to them since he was separated from them from a young age, and at least Thorfinn knows his mother and sister are alive. |
| 850 | * JerkWithAHeartOfGold: He's not really a bad guy, but he's kind of selfish and he complains a lot. |
| 851 | * MadeASlave: Twice in his backstory; his parents sold him to a monastery because they couldn't afford to feed him, and then he was kidnapped by vikings and enslaved again before Leif rescued him. |
| 852 | * NoSocialSkills: Ditzy, oafish, and quick to overreact or panic at the drop of a hat, but he's a skilled sailor and one of the more practical-minded members of the crew. |
| 853 | * OddFriendship: With Niskawaji'j, the young apprentice of the Lnu's shaman. |
| 854 | * OneSteveLimit: The notable exception. |
| 855 | * OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Is referred to as "Bug-Eyes" even though his real name is Thorfinn, as to not confuse him with Thorfinn Karlsefni. |
| 856 | * OnlySaneMan: What he ''claims'' to be. |
| 857 | * PluckyComicRelief: Next to {{Atoner}}!Thorfinn, Einar, Hild, Gudrid, and Leif he's sure to stick out in the crew. |
| 858 | * SitcomArchNemesis: To Gudrid. The two rib on and mock each other constantly and they're hardly friends, but as members of the same crew they have to rely on each other. When they arrive in Vinland, it's lessened somewhat, but Bug-Eyes still finds the time to annoy her. |
| 859 | * SmarterThanYouLook: Tends to be dramatic and complain, but is well versed in seafaring, trade, and knows a variety of languages. When Thorfinn needs someone to map out the territory of Vinland, Bug-Eyes is the man for the job. |
| 860 | * TranslatorBuddy: In the Vinland settlement, Bug-Eyes serves as the translator between the native Lnu and the Norse settlers. Owing to his history as a travelling merchant, of course. |
| 861 | * HowDoYouSay: He and Nisqauji'j have exchange basic and fundamental words in their respective languages. He's annoyed at first, but realizes that he's arguably the most qualified since he's an experienced trader. |
| 862 | ** He tells Nisqauji'j that "Gudri" means "idiot", referring to Gudrid who was annoying him at the time. Nisqauji'j innocently believes this to be the case, though Gudrid yells at Bug-Eyes to stop "telling her lies!". |
| 863 | * WideEyesAndShrunkenIrises: Always has a goofy facial expression, leading to his nickname. |
| 864 | |
| 865 | [[/folder]] |
| 866 | |
| 867 | !!Kingdom of Denmark |
| 868 | [[folder:Estrid]] |
| 869 | !!Estrid, Daughter of Sweyn |
| 870 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/ChinatsuAkasaki (Japanese), Creator/MollyZhang (English - Crunchyroll), Creator/KiraBuckland (English - Netflix) |
| 871 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/c5a63898457611ddd2966311f034757a.png]] |
| 872 | [[caption-width-right:350:]] |
| 873 | The only daughter of King Sweyn, and sister to Harald and Canute. |
| 874 | ---- |
| 875 | * BigSisterInstinct: Estrid is actually younger than her brothers, but when she sees Canute fighting Wulf, she gets nervous and hopes they're not using real swords. {{Justified}} in that Harald is sick on his deathbed and she's worried about Canute getting injured. |
| 876 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: She's based off of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrid_Svendsdatter Estrid Svendsdatter]], the sister (or half-sister, depending on the source) of Canute, and the mother of future king Sweyn II. |
| 877 | * FamousAncestor: Like her brothers, Estrid is part of the legendary House of Gorm that traces it's lineage to Harthacnut I, who is the son of Sigurd "Snake-in-the-Eye" Ragnarsson, the child of legendary Ragnar Lothbrok. |
| 878 | * MoralityPet: By the time Estrid is introduced into the story, Canute has undergone his CharacterDevelopment as a DarkMessiah, though notably still seems to have a place in his heart for Estrid. |
| 879 | * ObliviousYoungerSibling: While she picks up on Canute's sudden change of character following his return to Denmark, she doesn't piece together [[spoiler:Canute might have had something to do with Harald's sudden decline in health]]. |
| 880 | * RelatedInTheAdaptation: Part of Makoto Yukimura's PragmaticAdaptation tendencies, Estrid and her brothers are all full siblings instead of being half-siblings. In the sagas, they all share a father in Sweyn, but their mothers all vary depending on the source. For the sake of simplicity, they all share the same parents. |
| 881 | * ShipTease: Canute points out to Wulf that he's much more boastful when Estrid is around, and Canute internally thinks that Estrid came specifically to see ulf fight him. As history tells us, Estrid and Wulf eventually do get married! |
| 882 | * SmallRoleBigImpact: She's the only living relative of the Danish royal family, making her Canute's heir for a time until he has his children. Estrid's eldest son, Sweyn, would go on to found the House of Estridsen and become the ruling house of Denmark following the succession crises of Canute's sons. |
| 883 | * StrongFamilyResemblance: Is a blonde like her brothers Harald and Canute. |
| 884 | |
| 885 | [[/folder]] |
| 886 | |
| 887 | [[folder:Harald II]] |
| 888 | !!King Harald II, Son of Sweyn |
| 889 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Takuya Sato (Japanese), Creator/BrysonBaugus (English - Crunchyroll), Earl Baylon (English - Netflix), Caden Shaffer (Young) (English - Netflix) |
| 890 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/56e663b0ba10533018bc19f91df79397.png]] |
| 891 | [[caption-width-right:350:]] |
| 892 | |
| 893 | The elder son of Sweyn Forkbeard, and his successor to Denmark while Harald's younger brother Canute got England. |
| 894 | ---- |
| 895 | * AdaptationDyeJob: In the manga and in real life, Harald was blonde. In the anime, he has a more reddish-blonde variant. |
| 896 | * AdaptationExpansion: The anime includes a flashback of Harald and Canute playing together as children, to emphasize Harald as a CoolBigBro [[spoiler:and the evil of Canute's betrayal]]. |
| 897 | * AgeLift: In the sagas, Harald is the younger son of Sweyn while Canute is older. In ''Vinland Saga'', Harald is older and Canute younger. The author admits it was to enforce Sweyn's preference for the heir of Denmark (Harald) and his disdain for Canute. |
| 898 | * CoolBigBro: Estrid thinks highly of him. Canute's internal dialogue also reveals that Harald loved his younger brother and aided him in his conquest of England. |
| 899 | * FamousAncestor: Through his father, Harald is part of the legendary House of Gorm that traces it's lineage to Harthacnut I, who is the son of Sigurd "Snake-in-the-Eye" Ragnarsson, the child of legendary Ragnar Lothbrok. |
| 900 | * FictionalizedDeathAccount: Harald historically dies in 1018 and while his real cause of death is unknown, he likely wasn't [[spoiler:poisoned by his brother in order to seize the throne of Denmark.]] |
| 901 | * HairOfGoldHeartOfGold: In the manga Harald is blonde, while in the anime he has a more reddish color, but Harald is still one of the most respected and beloved individuals in the whole series who's authority, kindness, and patient nature was known to all. |
| 902 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: He is based off [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_II_of_Denmark Harald II of Denmark]], the oldest son of Sweyn Forkbeard and brother (or half-brother) to Canute the Great and Estrid Svendsdatter. |
| 903 | * MinorMajorCharacter: Harald himself only appears for a few chapters before dying, but his death allows Canute to become King of Denmark and further consolidate and later expand his power and influence. |
| 904 | ** Sweyn's preference for him also drives his motivation to have Harald inherit Denmark and try to get Canute killed so Harald can just inherit England as well. |
| 905 | * NiceGuy: Everyone respected Harald and admired him for his kindness and authority. |
| 906 | * ParentalFavoritism: His father Sweyn clearly preferred him over Canute. |
| 907 | * RelatedInTheAdaptation: Part of Makoto Yukimura's PragmaticAdaptation tendencies, Harald, Canute, and Estrid are all full siblings instead of being half-siblings. In the sagas, they all share a father in Sweyn, but their mothers all vary depending on the source. For the sake of simplicity, they all share the same parents. |
| 908 | * SmallRoleBigImpact: Harald is only mentioned in passing before making an appearance. When he does appear, it's revealed that he is dying and does so a few issues later. It is significant because [[spoiler: Harald did not have an heir and the throne of Denmark would pass to Canute by default]]. |
| 909 | * StrongFamilyResemblance: Is blonde (though in the anime he has a reddish variant) like his siblings Canute and Estrid. |
| 910 | * TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: Harald is an honorable, honest, and morally sound man who looks out for his younger siblings and is highly respected as both a person and a king. When he dies, ''everyone'' mourns. |
| 911 | [[/folder]] |
| 912 | |
| 913 | [[folder:Wulf]] |
| 914 | !!Wulf, Son of Thorgil |
| 915 | [[quoteright:225:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ulf_vinland.jpeg]] |
| 916 | !!!'''Voiced by''': Creator/YasuhiroMamiya (Japanese), Creator/ChrisGuerrero (English - Crunchyroll), Michael C. Pizzuto (English - Netflix) |
| 917 | A jarl (Norse nobleman) serving as Canute's right-hand man during the second arc. He is also Canute's brother-in-law through his marriage to Estrid, Canute's younger sister. |
| 918 | ---- |
| 919 | * ActuallyPrettyFunny: He's genuinely amused by Thorfinn's suggestion that Canute and Ketil settle their differences over a game of ''hnefatafl''[[note]]essentially a Norse version of Chess[[/note]] rather than fighting a battle. |
| 920 | * BestFriendsInLaw: Wulf and Canute are close companions, with Canute referring to him as his only friend at the end of the Farmland Arc. Wulf is also married to Canute's younger sister Estrid. |
| 921 | * TheDragon: To Canute. |
| 922 | * EyeScream: Thorgil pokes one of his eyes out. |
| 923 | * FamousAncestor: The sources on his ancestry are spotty at the absolute ''best'', but it's possible he's a descendant of Bjorn Ironside, thus making him a distant cousin to ruling House of Denmark (which he marries into via Estrid) as well as Thorfinn's family. |
| 924 | * {{Foil}}: To [[DirtyCoward Eadric, a powerful earl of Mercia]] under Aethelred II. Both Eadric and Wulf are in-laws to their respective lieges and rather powerful vassals at that, but Wulf remains loyal to Canute and opts to discuss his doubts with him. Eadric ends up betraying Aethelred for Canute. |
| 925 | * GoodScarsEvilScars: Scars on his brow and a clean cut over an eye that still works. He's also presented as an honourable man. |
| 926 | * HonestAdvisor: To Canute, who respects him for his honesty. |
| 927 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: Based on Ulf Torgilsson, a real Danish Jarl from the 11th century and one of Canute's most trusted men. Unfortunately he [[spoiler: ended up betraying Canute by making Canute's son Harthacanute (whom Ulf was assigned as guardian, with Estrid) king, which in practice would make Ulf [[EvilChancellor Denmark's real ruler.]] When Norway and Sweden invaded Denmark in a joint attack, Ulf helped Canute defeat them. However Canute never forgave Ulf for his treachery and later had him murdered.]] Moreover, in the future he actually becomes Canute's brother-in-law by marrying Canute's sister Estrid, and their son Sweyn becomes King of Denmark some fifty years later. |
| 928 | * HeterosexualLifePartners: With Canute, his liege ''and'' brother-in-law. |
| 929 | * HypercompetentSidekick: In terms of fighting, he's stronger than Canute. |
| 930 | * JealousRomanticWitness: Canute invokes this when dueling Wulf by saying Estrid seems interested in the man next to her, causing Wulf to begrudgingly check to make sure. |
| 931 | * ThePoliticalOfficer: During the Baltic War arc, where he represents Canute's interests in the Baltic Sea. [[spoiler:Thorkell eventually tires of his presence and [[PutOnABus ejects him from the arc]] -- forcibly.]] |
| 932 | * ShipTease: With Canute's sister Estrid. |
| 933 | * TheStoic: He never shows much affect about anything. [[ShipTease unless it's about Estrid]]. |
| 934 | * UnderestimatingBadassery: He underestimates Thorgil's willingness to try and defeat Canute, leading to nearly being killed and losing an eye. In the Baltic War arc [[spoiler:Wulf underestimates just how much Thorkell understands of who is behind the Baltic War, which leads to Thorkell humiliating and almost strangling Wulf when he tires of his presence.]] |
| 935 | * VillainRespect: Thorfinn's total repudiation of war before a crowd of warriors strikes a genuine chord with him, and he agrees to escort Thorfinn to Canute for an audience. Later, when Canute decides to abandon his annexation of Ketil's farm due to his talk with Thorfinn, Wulf chimes in that he agrees with the decision. |
| 936 | |
| 937 | [[/folder]] |
| 938 | |
| 939 | !!Kingdom of England |
| 940 | [[folder: Aethelred II "The Unready"]] |
| 941 | !! King Aethelred II "The Unready" |
| 942 | [[quoteright:190:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/images_501.jpg]] |
| 943 | King of England and father of Edmund Ironside. Is poisoned on behalf of Canute by Eadric in order to obtain the throne. |
| 944 | ---- |
| 945 | * FamousAncestor: King Alfred "the Great", who is mentioned in Chapter 203 by Canute. |
| 946 | * FictionalizedDeathAccount: He was most likely not poisoned in real life. There are indications that he suffered from bad health for awhile before his death, and was not well enough to play much of a role in the war after returning from exile. (Not that anyone on his own side ''wanted'' him to play a role in the war, as Aethelred had long since proven himself to be a GeneralFailure while his son and heir Edmund Ironside had a reputation as a WarriorPrince.) In the story his illness is just an excuse/cover story. |
| 947 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: Based upon [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86thelred_the_Unready Aethelred the Unready]], one of Canute's primary enemies during his conquest of England. |
| 948 | * HistoricalInJoke: Early in the story, a young and injured Thorfinn is briefly taken in by a kindly Saxon woman. Just before encountering Thorfinn, she tells her daughter that Aethelred is a fool and the actions he took antagonizing the Danes were stupid. Aethelred's nickname "the Unready" comes from an Old English term that would be translated as something like "evil plan" "bad advice" or "folly", and is a play on his given name, which means something like "well advised" or "noble advice". |
| 949 | * PunnyName: His name and epithet more or less translates to "King Smart the Stupid". Needless to say, he wasn't a very popular or effective king. |
| 950 | * SmallRoleBigImpact: Barely appears in the main action, but his decision to attempt to throw out all Danish settlers from England (the remnants of Danish settlers from what once had been the Danelaw before its reconquest by the Anglo Saxons), began the 15 years of conflict and war between England and Denmark whose impact dominates the first two story arcs. |
| 951 | [[/folder]] |
| 952 | |
| 953 | [[folder:Edmund II "Ironside"]] |
| 954 | !!King "Ironside" Edmund II of England |
| 955 | [[quoteright:268:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/07409bbfb72caa10799df4a4ab2e3996.png]] |
| 956 | Eldest surviving son of Aethelred II and his successor to the Kingdom of England. |
| 957 | ---- |
| 958 | * FamousAncestor: King Alfred "the Great", who is mentioned in Chapter 203 by Canute. |
| 959 | * FictionalizedDeathAccount: In the story he is strongly implied to have been poisoned as his father was and his death passed off as illness. It depends on which historical account you want to believe, but in some he was violently assassinated and in others he most likely died as a result of lingering wounds from his battles against Cnut. |
| 960 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: He is based off [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Ironside Edmund Ironside]], who cooperates with Canute's claim to England and the two reign as joint monarchs until Edmund's sudden death months later, leaving Canute as the undisputed ruler. |
| 961 | * RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: Unlike his father Aethelred at least. Edmund, then the prince and heir, led many of the battles against Canute's conquest of England and was considered his main rival for control of the kingdom. |
| 962 | * TheGoodKing: Compared to his father, though the bar wasn't particularly high. |
| 963 | * TheMagnificent: His epithet of Ironside refers to his prowess in battle. More specifically, his valour against Canute's invasions. |
| 964 | * WarriorPrince: ''Thorkell'' respected his abilities as a fighter and a general, saying during the Battle of London Bridge that Edmund was the only leader the English had who could stand up to the invading Danes. In the second arc it's noted that he was able to give Canute trouble for years after Aethelred returned from exile and the war between England and Denmark resumed. |
| 965 | [[/folder]] |
| 966 | |
| 967 | [[folder:Eadric]] |
| 968 | !!Eadric, Earl of England |
| 969 | An earl (English nobleman) of England and advisor to Aethelred II, who is also his father-in-law. |
| 970 | ---- |
| 971 | * BegoneBribe: Tries to bribe Canute to leave Mercia, likely as part of a strategy to let the English consolidate their power and grow their forces. Canute refuses and will have none of it, since Canute considers himself king of all England. |
| 972 | * DirtyCoward: Played with. Floki initially dismisses him as one, but Canute realizes that Eadric has most likely coordinated his "cowardly" submission to Canute with Aethelred and it's meant simply to stall Canute and buy time for the English. When forced into a corner he drops the pretense of cowardice and says he will fight Canute to the bitter end, but seeing [[KillItWithFire the exact fate]] Canute plans not just for him, but all of Mercia, terrifies him into switching sides and joining Canute. |
| 973 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: Seems based off of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadric_Streona Eadric Streona]], who was a powerful earl of England and married Aethelred II's daughter, thus tying him to the House of Wessex. The historical Eadric did side with Canute in 1015, about 8 months before Aethelred's death. |
| 974 | * HistoricalVillainDowngrade: His historical counterpart is generally seen by both contemporary/near contemporary writers and modern historians as an example of an EvilChancellor; a highly ambitious social climber who used both politics and brutal deeds to connive his way into power (the real Eadric served as something of a hatchetman to Aethelred, assassinated other nobles to increase his own standing, and arranged the deaths and blindings of more nobles so Aethelred could consolidate and centralize power), betrayed Aethelred and fought alongside Cnut against his country, returned to the side of the English after Aethelred's death, only to apparently betray them ''again'' by abandoning Edmund during the pivotal battle of Assandun, leading to the defeat of the English and eventual ascendance of Cnut. The fictional version does betray Aethelred, but seemingly was genuinely loyal at first and only did it because he saw the threat Canute presented as having hit the GodzillaThreshold. Whether the fictional version also did any of the historical Eadric's other deeds is skipped over. |
| 975 | * RewardedAsATraitorDeserves: Canute kills him about a year after taking the throne of England. Happened in real life as well, as the historical Cnut killed several English nobles who had switched sides to join him, including Eadric. |
| 976 | * SmallRoleBigImpact: Not much screen time, but it's implied that he (and/or any other English nobles who may have turned on England) may have been responsible for assassinating Aethelred and Edmund, allowing Canute to subdue England with far greater ease than he would have otherwise. |
| 977 | [[/folder]] |
| 978 | |
| 979 | !!!Einar's family |
| 980 | Einar's family, who were Anglo-Scandivian farmers in northern England. |
| 981 | [[folder:Emma]] |
| 982 | !!!Emma |
| 983 | |
| 984 | Einar's mother. |
| 985 | ---- |
| 986 | * DeadpanSnarker: Good humored and when Einar tries to explain why he wants to fight to avenge his father, Emma sardonically replies that they've rebuilt their farm and Einar is surrounded by "two beauties", refering to herself and Róta. |
| 987 | * DisposableWoman: Was killed during a raid on their farm, along with her daughter. This hardens Einar as he was sold into slavery. |
| 988 | * StrugglingSingleMother: Her husband was killed some years ago by Vikings, and so she had to pick up the work. Thankfully, her children are old enough to help. |
| 989 | ---- |
| 990 | [[/folder]] |
| 991 | |
| 992 | [[folder:Einar's father]] |
| 993 | !!!Einar's and Róta's father. |
| 994 | |
| 995 | Former husband to Emma and the father to Einar and Róta. |
| 996 | ---- |
| 997 | * DisappearedDad: Mentioned in passing, but he was killed by Viking raiders some years before. |
| 998 | * DeceasedParentsAreTheBest: Einar wants to fight to avenge his father, who died protecting their farm years before. |
| 999 | ---- |
| 1000 | [[/folder]] |
| 1001 | |
| 1002 | [[folder:Róta]] |
| 1003 | !!!Róta |
| 1004 | |
| 1005 | Einar's younger sister. |
| 1006 | ---- |
| 1007 | * AnnoyingYoungerSibling: Einar seems to view her as this, though loves her all the same. |
| 1008 | * CharacterDeath: Tries to fight back her kidnappers, but is overpowered and killed. |
| 1009 | * DisposableWoman: She is killed in the raid by men who were attempting to kidnap her. |
| 1010 | * IronicName: Róta's name comes from that of a Valkyrie, who helps choose which will be slain and "govern the killings". This Róta is killed effortlessly by a raider. |
| 1011 | ---- |
| 1012 | [[/folder]] |
| 1013 | |
| 1014 | |
| 1015 | !Characters Introduced In the Third Arc |
| 1016 | While the arc is built around Thorfinn's merchant voyage, it's divided into mini-arcs with their own titles. |
| 1017 | !!The Fettered Tern |
| 1018 | [[folder:Gudrid]] |
| 1019 | !!Gudrid |
| 1020 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/eee4zfrxyaachmx.jpg]] |
| 1021 | A young, feisty woman who longs to become a sailor and travel the world. She is a widower - Gudrid was once married to Leif's brother and thus she is his sister-in-law. She is set to be re-married to Halfdan's son, Sigurd, but dreads living the life of a "normal woman" where she will be locked in the house for life and will never experience adventure. Through many circumstances, she ends up journeying with Thorfinn and his crew to find and settle in "Vinland", falling in love with Thorfinn along the way. |
| 1022 | ---- |
| 1023 | * ActionSurvivor: Not a warrior or ActionGirl by any stretch. After Thorfinn and crew are embroiled in the Baltic Sea War between Jomsviking factions, she gets stranded in the Jomsburg fortress and has to be rescued, but manages to stay alive before that by posing as a servant. |
| 1024 | * AdaptationalEarlyAppearance: In the anime version, she shows up briefly during a montage at end of the first story arc. |
| 1025 | * AltarDiplomacy: Gudrid's marriages to Thorvald Eriksson and Sigurd were this. |
| 1026 | * AmicableExes: She and Sigurd don't interact much after he realizes their marriage won't work out, but the few times they do it seems on positive terms. |
| 1027 | * ArrangedMarriage: With Sigurd, entirely unwillingly. [[spoiler:Sigurd ends up letting her go after seeing how much in love she is with Thorfinn.]] Her first marriage was also arranged to Leif Eriksson's younger brother, Thorvald, who died in Vinland. |
| 1028 | * ExpositoryHairstyleChange: After a long voyage, she shows up with shoulder-length hair. |
| 1029 | * ForegoneConclusion: [[spoiler:If you're up to scratch with your Nordic history then you'll know she is Thorfinn's future wife and mother of his child, Snorri (who is the first European born on American soil).]] |
| 1030 | * HappilyMarried: With Thorfinn. It's also somewhat implied her marriage with Thorvald wasn't terrible, though it was never consummated and the marriage was short lived. |
| 1031 | * ImportantHaircut: Cuts her long braided hair to look "less like a woman" because she wants to perform masculine duties. |
| 1032 | * LethalChef: She's a terrible chef. |
| 1033 | * TheLoad: Gudrid is considered by others to be this, since she doesn't have "proper" woman skills (like cooking and cleaning), can't fight to defend herself (often needing her teammates to save her) and generally gets into trouble. However, she does make efforts to better herself and her closest friends, especially Thorfinn, think she's worth having around. |
| 1034 | * LuminescentBlush: Whenever Thorfinn is involved, she has this happen to her. [[spoiler:Two notable instances is when Thorfinn hugs her in relief for staying safe and alive during the Baltic Sea War and when she confesses to Thorkell that she has feelings for Thorfinn, while he's nearby.]] (She also has perpetually rosy cheeks, unlike most characters, though it's drawn as lines instead of BlushStickers.) |
| 1035 | * OfficialCouple: [[spoiler: With Thorfinn following the second time skip.]] |
| 1036 | * RunawayBride: Stabs Sigurd (nonfatally) on their wedding night and runs off. |
| 1037 | * ShipTease: She develops a crush on Thorfinn (Karlsefni, not Bug-Eyes). [[spoiler:This later evolves into outright love and she even admits to Thorkell that she likes Thorfinn, ''who is within listening distance''.]] |
| 1038 | * ShownTheirWork: Gudrid's desire to travel the world lines up very well with what we know about her from historical records. In real life she not only traveled to Vinland, but also went on a pilgrimage to Rome later in life. This easily made her one of the most well traveled women in Medieval Europe. |
| 1039 | * StaringDownCthulhu: She stares down and chews out ''Thorkell'' for trying to force Thorfinn to fight in a duel he doesn't want to participate in, even willing to take Thorfinn's place. This impresses Thorkell so much that he backs down, even telling Thorfinn that Gudrid is awesome and that he should marry her right away! |
| 1040 | * TomboyAndGirlyGirl: She's very tomboyish compared to the other women in this series but is quite girly when put against Hild. |
| 1041 | |
| 1042 | |
| 1043 | [[/folder]] |
| 1044 | |
| 1045 | [[folder:Sigurd]] |
| 1046 | !!Sigurd, Son of Halfdan |
| 1047 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sigurd_ch_101.jpg]] |
| 1048 | Gudrid's fiancee and Halfdan's son. Because Gudrid stabbed him and ran on their wedding night, he must chase the crew to Grikland and capture Gudrid to reclaim his honour. |
| 1049 | ---- |
| 1050 | * ArrangedMarriage: With Gudrid, entirely unwillingly. |
| 1051 | * ArtEvolution: He starts out looking like a young version of his father, and becomes less and less similar the more the arc progresses. |
| 1052 | * CharacterDevelopment: His time away from Iceland changes his point of view about many things, especially about the horrors of war, how much importance to put on Norse warrior pride, how people should live, etc. He has also learned enough to see some of the holes in his father's plans and ambitions, especially in Halfdan's hope that raiding or war could ever bring Iceland the wealth it needs. |
| 1053 | * TheChewToy: Nobody gives him any respect and the story seems to delight in causing him setback after setback in humiliating fashion whether that is being brought into slavery or getting his boat burned up. |
| 1054 | * ChainedByFashion: Like his father, he favours the chain as part of his imagery. |
| 1055 | ** ChainPain: Also like his father, he can use it as a weapon. |
| 1056 | * HappilyMarried: His Marriage with Hallgerd is going in this direction, she’s happy with helping him escape and wants to marry him despite him having nothing to his name. Sigurd will be happy with it too, [[HenpeckedHusband if he knows what’s good for him]]. |
| 1057 | * HeelFaceTurn: After a long HumiliationConga in the third arc, Sigurd slowly begins to realize that he just doesn't want to be like his father and only does what he wants to try and gain his approval. At the end, when Gudrid ''willingly'' goes back to him in order to save her friends, he gruffly tells her that their arranged marriage is broken off and he can see she loves Thorfinn. Heck, years later when he and Hallgerd return to Iceland, he's nothing but friendly to Thorfinn and his friends. |
| 1058 | * HenpeckedHusband: Played with, Sigurd is shaping up to be this in his marriage to Hallgerd, despite being his stubborn streak and pride. But when she gets mad, he trembles and obeys! |
| 1059 | * HiddenDepths: A couple of farmers lampshade that despite his severe and forbidding appearance, he is very polite and his manners could only have come from from strict education. |
| 1060 | * HumiliationConga: Tries to get his wife back but ends up getting caught in every setback after setback whether that is being brought into slavery or getting his boat burned up. |
| 1061 | * IGaveMyWord: He swears never to set foot in his home again until he brings Gudrid back. After he willingly lets her go, he sails home only to bid his father farewell without disembarking, as he has resolved to make his own way in the world... unfortunately, Halfdan won't have any of it and has him clapped in chains. |
| 1062 | * InadequateInheritor: His father, in his way, thinks he is this. |
| 1063 | * IneffectualSympatheticVillain: His mission to essentially abduct Gudrid after almost raping her aside, Sigurd isn't exactly 'evil'. What with all the barriers the story throws in his way, he's no threat to the heroes at all and as a result is presented sympathetically. [[spoiler:He undergoes a HeelFaceTurn -- for what little that's worth at that point -- at the end of the arc.]] |
| 1064 | * InSeriesNickname: His friends call him "Siggy". He hates it. |
| 1065 | * LieBackAndThinkOfEngland: Male example. He neither loves nor cares about Gudrid, and the feeling is mutual, but attempts to go through with it anyway. Gudrid chooses not to and stabs him. |
| 1066 | * MachiavelliWasWrong: Halfdan is a feared man, and has no real friends except people who follow him because they have no other choice. Sigurd's crew, meanwhile, consider him a friend and follow him willingly into dangerous situations and put their lives at risk for him despite Sigurd repeatedly trying to tell them off. |
| 1067 | * MadeASlave: [[spoiler:He and his crew get captured by pirates and he is briefly made a slave. He's ready to go down fighting, until he learns that he's to be a slave on Thorkell's ship, and promptly fanboys around Thorkell.]] |
| 1068 | * MaritalRapeLicense: His attempt to consummate his wedding with Gudrid is done when she's clearly not in the mood, and she ends up stabbing him and running off rather than go through with it. |
| 1069 | * PetTheDog: |
| 1070 | ** He eventually comes around to the fact that Gudrid is her own person and should be free to live her life, and lets her go. |
| 1071 | ** He saves one of Ylva's children from drowning in the sea since his ship was fortunately passing by. |
| 1072 | * StrongFamilyResemblance: He's the spitting image of his father -- [[InadequateInheritor physically anyway]]. |
| 1073 | * SurroundedByIdiots: Practically his CatchPhrase when dealing with his friends. |
| 1074 | * TheKnightsWhoSaySquee: Is a ''huge'' fan of Thorkell. [[spoiler:He's even willing to endure being a slave when he realizes he's been made a galley slave on Thorkell's ship, and expresses the wish to fight alongside Thorkell on the battlefield.]] |
| 1075 | * WellDoneSonGuy: He is very clearly craving his father's respect. |
| 1076 | [[/folder]] |
| 1077 | |
| 1078 | [[folder:Hallgerd]] |
| 1079 | !!Hallgerd |
| 1080 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hallgerd_vinland.jpeg]] |
| 1081 | |
| 1082 | Sigurd's original fiancee before Gudrid. |
| 1083 | ---- |
| 1084 | * ArrangedMarriage: She was betrothed to Sigurd until Halfdan decided that Gudrid would be a better business match. She slaps Gudrid for her trouble and grouses that she would be just considered a concubine now. |
| 1085 | * ChekhovsGunman: Introduced soon after Gudrid, she reappears much later to free Sigurd from captivity after getting his guard drunk. |
| 1086 | * ChildhoodFriendRomance: She grew up beside Sigurd and they seem to be already in some sort of relationship prior to Sigurd's marriage. |
| 1087 | * ClingyJealousGirl: She's very possessive of Sigurd and does ''not'' like Gudrid because of their arranged marriage. |
| 1088 | * HiddenDepths: While first appearing to be a typical snooty aristocrat (as far as wealthy Early Middle Ages farmers can be aristocrats), she defies Halfdan to run away with Sigurd. In a flashback, she's also shown playing at being warriors with Sigurd as a child, the only girl to do such so far. |
| 1089 | * InSeriesNickname: She’s been called "Hall" since she was a child, as an adult she’s not a fan of others using it, though Sigurd seems to be an exception. |
| 1090 | * TheOjou: Played extremely straight, to the point of having large OjouRinglets. |
| 1091 | * {{Yandere}}: She gets furious when Sigurd admires Gudrid's free spirit, and demands that he praise her alone and never speak about the other woman ever again. After a stunned Sigurd complies, she gives him a sweet smile. |
| 1092 | [[/folder]] |
| 1093 | |
| 1094 | [[folder:Karli]] |
| 1095 | !!Karli, son of Thorfinn |
| 1096 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/eiuksg7wwaibvjk.jpg]] |
| 1097 | A baby that Thorfinn's crew comes across and adopts on the Shetlands, after they find his own family slaughtered. |
| 1098 | ---- |
| 1099 | * ChildrenAreInnocent: ...He's a child. The worst he'll do is cry loudly and soil his diaper. |
| 1100 | * CycleOfRevenge: Thorfinn points out that as a 'true Norse', Karli's first priority when he comes of age should be to avenge himself on the clan that killed his own family. |
| 1101 | * HappilyAdopted: [[spoiler: Thorfinn and Gudrid have officially adopted him by the time they return from Constantinople.]] |
| 1102 | * SoleSurvivor: Of his family. |
| 1103 | * TagalongKid: The crew picks him up in the Shetland Islands. They eventually try to leave him with a foster family, but Gudrid and Thorfinn can't go through with it. |
| 1104 | [[/folder]] |
| 1105 | |
| 1106 | [[folder:Karli's Mama]] |
| 1107 | !!Karli's Mama |
| 1108 | |
| 1109 | Karli's protective pet dog. |
| 1110 | ---- |
| 1111 | * CanineCompanion: To the main characters during much of the third arc. |
| 1112 | * HeroicDog |
| 1113 | * HumansAreBastards: In an omake set from her point of view, she has a dim view of humans and considers it her duty to ensure Karli doesn't end up like the rest of them. |
| 1114 | * UndyingLoyalty: To Karli. |
| 1115 | |
| 1116 | [[/folder]] |
| 1117 | |
| 1118 | |
| 1119 | !! The Hunter and the Hunted |
| 1120 | [[folder:Hild]] |
| 1121 | !!Hild, Daughter of Hrafnkell |
| 1122 | [[quoteright:225:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/290104.jpg]] |
| 1123 | |
| 1124 | A hunter/trapper Thorfinn and company meet in Norway. She harbours a grudge against Thorfinn, as she encountered him when he was part of Askeladd's band; they attacked and destroyed her village and Thorfinn killed her father right before her eyes. |
| 1125 | ---- |
| 1126 | * AcademicAthlete: She's definitely at least one of the smartest characters in the series, and has a pretty good claim to being ''the'' most intelligent character. She is also a fierce and highly skilled huntress and warrior. |
| 1127 | * AceCustom: Her crossbow. After examining her teacher's crossbow and seeing that it required more strength than she possessed to set the string, she drew up an entirely new design that had a winch to draw the string instead of having to draw it manually, and more importantly, [[AutomaticCrossbows could rapidly fire shots]]. This makes a standout fighter with her bow and much more dangerous than anyone else wielding one. |
| 1128 | * AdaptationalEarlyAppearance: Shows up in a brief cameo -- alongside her mentor -- during a montage in the final moments of the anime's first season, which covers the first story arc. In the manga there's a whole second arc (which is longer than the first), and part of a third arc before she is seen for the first time. |
| 1129 | * AmbiguouslyChristian: Makes the sign of the cross and thanks God for leading her to Thorfinn. It's questionable if she's actually a believer/devout, however, or if this is just a leftover from her father, who appears to have been a believer and explicitly mentions the teachings of Jesus. |
| 1130 | * ActionGirl: Hunts bears and other animals for a living. |
| 1131 | * AloofAlly: While she joins Thorfinn, Leif, and their crew, she's not exactly a warm and cuddly ally. She tends to stay apart from everyone else, and often reminds Thorfinn that she's there to kill him if he shows any sign that he isn't actually trying to atone for his past. Nonetheless, as the only other member of the group who's capable in a fight, she is very valuable to have around and saves Thorfinn on several occasions. |
| 1132 | * AloofArcher: Handy with a crossbow and has the cool, focused, and distant mindset associated with this trope. |
| 1133 | * AutomaticCrossbows: A weird version, combining the reload time of the Zhūgé Nǔ [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow historical examples]], but the strength and accuracy of an Arbalest [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbalest]]. |
| 1134 | * BadassesWearBandanas |
| 1135 | * BatmanGambit: Hild sees that Thorfinn's friends won't let her fight him one-on-one, so she says that she poisoned the soup she made and that only she has the antidote (a PoisonAndCureGambit). If Thorfinn wants to save his friends, he (and only he) would have to fight her. Since Thorfinn would sooner claw his eyes out than leave his friends to die, he follows her into the forest, as she knew he would. |
| 1136 | * BigDamnHeroes: Does this several times throughout the story. |
| 1137 | * BrutalHonesty: She tends to speak her mind and doesn't care how condescending or cruel she can be about it. Though, after opening up more to Thorfinn and his crew, she tends to try and be more constructively critical about things. Though, she certainly voices her dislike of various aspects and people all the same. |
| 1138 | * CoolAunt: She isn't biologically related, but Hild is this to Karli, teaching him the physics of the world and even crafting him a toddler-sized bow for him to practice with. Likewise, Karli thinks highly of Hild and enjoys spending time with her. |
| 1139 | * CrazyPrepared: In both hunting and her fight against Thorfinn, she makes use of prepared traps and a crossbow that can fire multiple bolts without having a long reload time, ensuring that her prey can never escape from her. Thorfinn also notes her using several other tactics, like backtracking, to throw him off and keep him from being able to find her position. |
| 1140 | * DeathGlare: Hoo boy. If looks could kill, she wouldn't even need a crossbow. |
| 1141 | * DefrostingIceQueen: When the group meets Hild, she's cold, reserved, and full of hatred and resentment towards Thorfinn. However, as she spends years with the group and making it to Vinland, she noticably begins to open up more. In Chapter 191 [[spoiler: she realizes that holding onto the past and hatred accomplishes nothing, and openly forgives Thorfinn and wishes to call him a friend.]] After that, she effectively serves as Thorfinn's closest advisor next to Einar. |
| 1142 | * DoomedHometown: She lost her family years ago when raiders led by Askeladd attacked her village. |
| 1143 | * {{Determinator}}: Whatever she sets her mind to, she'll stop at nothing to accomplish it; from building a water-powered sawmill, to learning how to track and hunt, to reverse engineering (and improving) a crossbow, to killing Thorfinn. |
| 1144 | * EstablishingCharacterMoment: Snipes a rampaging bear from at least 30 meters away, through the space between a pot and its handle (that was being waved around), and killing it in one shot. Shows that she's the Viking equivalent to a ColdSniper. |
| 1145 | * EveryoneHasStandards: Despite her hatred of Thorfinn, she refuses to put Karli in danger when she realizes an infant is present. Even after Karli is adopted into his family, she never takes out her vengeance on him even though she knows full well it would hurt Thorfinn more than killing him. It probably helps that Karli absolutely adores Hild and loves spending time with her. |
| 1146 | ** When she and Thorfinn come across women kidnapped and forced to become prostitutes, she's furious and works with Thorfinn (begrudingly, on her part) to free them. |
| 1147 | * {{Foil}}: Is an obvious one to Thorfinn. Her character motivation mirrors younger Thorfinn to a tee. |
| 1148 | * ForgingScene: Works with a blacksmith to help reverse-engineer a crossbow. |
| 1149 | * {{Forgiveness}}: [[spoiler:In Chapter 191, Hild realizes that holding onto her anger and revenge towards Thorfinn accomplishes nothing, seeing time and time again how much he tries to repent and change for his past. Hild bluntly tells Thorfinn that she has verified his atonement, and forgives him, remarking he is a "true warrior". This makes Thorfinn break down in front of her, clearly not expecting her to have said that.]] |
| 1150 | * FriendToAllChildren: It's begrudingly on her part and doesn't understand it, but children (especially Karli) adore Hild and think very highly of her, whether it's her prowess as an archer or her inventions. Over time, she becomes a teacher of sorts to them, teaching kids the Norse language and harmless bows and swords for them to practice with. |
| 1151 | * GadgeteerGenius: She used to design advanced (and anachronistic) mechanisms at home, like a circular saw for her father's sawmill. Her crossbow is a bit too advanced for the period also, hinting at this. |
| 1152 | * GeniusBruiser: One of the smartest people in the series, and a formidable foe. |
| 1153 | * GoodScarsEvilScars: Has a large scar on her face from where her face hit a rock when she fell off a cliff running from the vikings that raided her town. It looks like an evil scar, but she is generally a good person. She does have a huge amount of hate for Thorfinn however. |
| 1154 | * HiddenHeartOfGold: While surly and resentful of Thorfinn, she otherwise demonstrates sound morals and never harms the innocent. She makes a point of targeting only Thorfinn when they encounter each other, and although she claims to have poisoned his companions' soup and keeps them from interfering by threatening to destroy the antidote, it's later revealed that this was merely a bluff. She is also infuriated when she comes across Vagn's men forcibly prostituting kidnapped women, all of whom she saves with Thorfinn's help. |
| 1155 | * HunterTrapper |
| 1156 | * IronicEcho: "'This is just a hunt. It's only natural for the strong to hunt the weak. That's how it is for every living thing in this world. If you want to hate someone, hate yourself for your own weakness. I'm the hunter, and you're the hunted. That's all there is to it.' Remember now? Those were the words you said to me. I've longed to return these words back to you." |
| 1157 | * ItsPersonalWithTheDragon: Even though it was Askeladd who led the attack on her village (with presumably someone having paid Askeladd to do it), and the killing of her father, Hild's main enemy is Thorfinn, who was Askeladd's most competent follower at the time and was the one who actually carried out the deed. |
| 1158 | * LettingHerHairDown: She removes her bandanna when she [[spoiler:finally forgives Thorfinn]] in Vinland. Since she started wearing it when she became a hunter, it symbolizes her giving up her prey. |
| 1159 | * LuminescentBlush: Gets easily flustered, such as when the settlers of Arnheid Village compliment her intelligence and crafting skills. |
| 1160 | * NoOneCouldSurviveThat: Said almost word for word by one of her pursuers when in her flashback when she fell off a cliff. She did come ''very'' close to not surviving it, as she smashed her head against a rock, broke her leg, and nearly drowned a marsh below. Only the fact that she was found and saved by the "Bear Man" allowed her to survive. |
| 1161 | * NumberTwo: In Arnheid's Village, the Norse settlement of Vinland, Hild serves as Thorfinn's second-in-command alongside Einar. |
| 1162 | * PreAssKickingOneLiner: "I'm the hunter, and you're the hunted." |
| 1163 | * RedRightHand: Or eye, specifically. The eye underneath her scar is visibly bloodshot, giving her a sinister appearance (TruthInTelevision: Some eye injuries can cause bleeding in the whites of the eyes, called subconjunctival hemorrhages. However, since subconjunctival hemorrhages usually heal quickly, it might be something more serious. Then again, she still has vision in that eye, so the injury probably wasn't too bad). |
| 1164 | * ScarilyCompetentTracker: Spent much of her teens learning to track bears and is a skilled hunter. |
| 1165 | * ShoutOut: |
| 1166 | ** The water wheel she invented in her backstory is a reference to ''Literature/VickyTheViking'', who also invented a water wheel. [[WordOfGod Makoto Yukimura watched the show as a child]]. |
| 1167 | ** Just as Snake resembles Solid Snake, she resembles the Boss with her bandanna on. |
| 1168 | * TheStoic: Normally a PerpetualFrowner who doesn't emote. |
| 1169 | ** NotSoStoic: When she wants revenge. |
| 1170 | * TeenGenius: In a flashback. Some of her designs are similar to what Creator/LeonardoDaVinci was thinking up centuries later. |
| 1171 | * TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou: This is her attitude towards Thorfinn. Even after she initially agrees to spare him and becomes part of the crew, she does so only because she believes she will inevitably see that Thorfinn hasn't changed after all and will then be able to kill him with a clear conscience. So she always tries to keep him in sight and intends to put a crossbow bolt in his heart before any other enemy can strike him down. |
| 1172 | * TokenEvilTeammate: More like token antagonistic teammate. She isn't evil and is in fact pretty upstanding morally speaking, but she only agrees to join Thorfinn's crew so she can kill him if he shows that he hasn't changed. |
| 1173 | * TrainingFromHell: It's not easy to learn how to track, hunt, and survive in the wild. She learned everything from her mentor Old Bear, who was a gruff teacher. |
| 1174 | * UsedToBeASweetKid: She was much happier then, though introverted. |
| 1175 | * WouldNotHurtAChild: She would have nailed Thorfinn with her very first bolt, but she hesitates upon noticing the baby Karli on his back. This gives Einar the opening to throw himself in front of them, which also deters her as since she is [[WouldNotShootACivilian reluctant to kill anyone who isn't her target]]. |
| 1176 | * YouKilledMyFather: Thorfinn killed her father during his time in Askeladd's band. When she confirms his identity, she wants revenge. |
| 1177 | [[/folder]] |
| 1178 | |
| 1179 | [[folder:Hrefna]] |
| 1180 | !!Hrefna, Daughter of Hrafnkell |
| 1181 | [[quoteright:176:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/9b127def1f80d6e94188eed2106eeb57.png]] |
| 1182 | Hild's younger sister. She went missing after Askeladd and his band attacked her village. |
| 1183 | ---- |
| 1184 | * ArrangedMarriage: Her father plans to marry her to one of his apprentices. Of her choosing, no less. |
| 1185 | * MeaningfulName: "Hrefna" is the feminine version of "Hrafn", which means "raven". |
| 1186 | * WhatHappenedToTheMouse: We're not shown what happened to her after Askeladd's band attacked Hild's village. Hild tries to explain to her father that she lost Hrefna in the chaos while escaping, but it's never conclusively proven if she died or not. |
| 1187 | [[/folder]] |
| 1188 | |
| 1189 | [[folder:Hrafnkell]] |
| 1190 | !!Hrafnkell |
| 1191 | [[quoteright:225:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hrafnkell.jpeg]] |
| 1192 | |
| 1193 | Hild's kindhearted and encouraging father, he was a Norwegian carpenter who was killed by Thorfinn when Thorfinn still part of Askeladd's band. |
| 1194 | ---- |
| 1195 | * DeliberateValuesDissonance: His wife is worried that at fourteen Hild hasn't learned to cook or done anything to attract a potential husband, which would be normal worries for the time. Hrafnkell takes the more modern outlook that Hild's gifts as an engineer are too valuable to be wasted and she doesn't have to marry anyone if she doesn't want to, a notion that visibly stuns both his wife and other daughter. |
| 1196 | * {{Forgiveness}}: He urges a traumatized Hild to remember the teachings of Christ and to embrace forgiveness within minutes of their village being attacked and the rest of their family killed. |
| 1197 | * GoodParents: He's an encouraging father who recognizes his daughter's gift for engineering and potential, and he wants her to reach that potential instead of doing the socially acceptable thing of marrying as soon as she can. |
| 1198 | * MightyGlacier: He may not necessarily be slow, but he definitely isn't fast enough to deal with a speed demon like Thorfinn. Using a large, predictable weapon doesn't help either. |
| 1199 | * PosthumousCharacter: He died long before the narrative gets to Hild, so he is seen only in flashbacks and when Hild has a vision of his spirit, along with her teacher, stopping her from killing Thorfinn when he is at her mercy. |
| 1200 | * RealMenLoveJesus: A kind family man able to kill soldiers with a hammer who also clings to the teachings of Christ. |
| 1201 | * RetiredBadass: Strongly implied. He recognizes Thorfinn as a member of Askeladd's band and immediately asks who is behind the raid, suggesting Floki and King Sweyn as possible candidates. That level of familiarity with warriors and rulers of the Scandinavian world and his ability to defeat and kill armed men at moment's notice all but say that he was once a warrior himself, possibly even a high ranking or notable one, but has since retired, possibly after getting sick of battle, similar to Thors. |
| 1202 | * StoutStrength: A pudgy man who strong enough to beat experienced soldiers to death with a large hammer. |
| 1203 | [[/folder]] |
| 1204 | |
| 1205 | [[folder:The Bear Man]] |
| 1206 | !!The Bear Man/Old Bear Man |
| 1207 | [[quoteright:225:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bear_man_8.jpeg]] |
| 1208 | |
| 1209 | A solitary hunter who specializes in hunting bears, he found Hild when she was unconscious and left for dead after the raid on her village. He nursed her back to health and took her on as an apprentice when she asked. |
| 1210 | ---- |
| 1211 | * TheAloner: He's a hunter who lives out in the woods away from people and until he took on Hild as an apprentice, buying goods in town seems to be the only human interaction he normally had. |
| 1212 | * FeelingTheirAge: In his last appearance he notes that he's past his best, that his senses are getting duller with age and that inevitably it'll lead to him getting killed. This turns out to be FiveSecondForeshadowing. |
| 1213 | * HunterTrapper: An expert in hunting and wilderness knowledge who taught Hild. |
| 1214 | * MasterArcher |
| 1215 | * MentorOccupationalHazard: Hild's mentor, he died after training her and teaching her his ways. |
| 1216 | * MountainMan: He's basically one in medieval Scandinavia. |
| 1217 | * NatureHero: Even after spending years as his apprentice, Hild thinks that his knowledge of nature seems like it's more than what is possible for a human being to simply learn, and is more likely a talent from the gods. |
| 1218 | * NothingPersonal: He approves of this, saying that while animals might eat or be eaten, kill or be killed, they don't hate like humans do and that makes them better than people. |
| 1219 | * OldMaster: It's not clear exactly how old he is, but he's got a grizzled look to him and probably knows everything there is to know about hunting. |
| 1220 | * PosthumousCharacter: He died while hunting a bear sometime before Thorfinn and Hild encounter each other in the third arc. He is only seen in Hild's flashback and her vision of him, along with her father, wishing her to spare Thorfinn. |
| 1221 | * SternTeacher: His gruff, blunt, no nonsense style carries over to his teaching methods, but he has good intentions throughout and Hild not only learns a lot as a result, but grows much stronger and more physically capable than she was when she first met him. |
| 1222 | * TheStoic: He's not the sort to display his feelings, and he generally speaks no more than is absolutely necessary. The one major exception is when he tries to convince Hild to let go of her anger. |
| 1223 | [[/folder]] |
| 1224 | |
| 1225 | !!The Baltic Sea War |
| 1226 | |
| 1227 | [[folder:Baldur]] |
| 1228 | !!Baldur |
| 1229 | [[quoteright:214:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/baldur_vinland.jpg]] |
| 1230 | |
| 1231 | Floki's ten-year-old grandson, who he's planning to set up as the next chief of the Jomsvikings. |
| 1232 | ---- |
| 1233 | * ClashingCousins: His relationship with Thorfinn. A strange example too, as neither of them wants anything to do with it. Rather, the problem mostly comes from their supporters. Floki had more or less put it on himself the duty to make Baldr the Jomsviking's chief regardless of Baldr's own feelings while Vagn's [[spoiler:and later Thorkell's]] side props up Thorfinn as their nominal leader to give them a veneer of legitimacy. |
| 1234 | * ChildrenAreInnocent: Doesn't really want to be a chieftain and wants to solve the Baltic War peacefully. |
| 1235 | * HairOfGoldHeartOfGold: Shares his uncle's blonde hair, though unlike him he's a good person. |
| 1236 | * MoralityPet: To Floki. |
| 1237 | * PuppetKing: Floki essentially rules the Jomsvikings through him. A more benign example than most as Floki is genuinely fond of him. |
| 1238 | * UnknownRelative: He's Thorfinn's cousin, as both of them are Sigvaldi's grandsons. {{Downplayed}} as while Thorfinn was unaware of this fact at first, Baldr and plenty others already knew about it. |
| 1239 | [[/folder]] |
| 1240 | |
| 1241 | [[folder:Vagn]] |
| 1242 | !!Vagn |
| 1243 | [[quoteright:225:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/vagn_vinland.jpeg]] |
| 1244 | |
| 1245 | An old captain of the Jomsvikings. Following Sigvaldi's death, Vagn attempted to become chief of the Jomsvikings, which put him in direct conflict with Floki and his own ambitions to put Baldur in that position. The two are currently gearing up for war as a result. |
| 1246 | ---- |
| 1247 | * AffablyEvil: He's very nice to Thorfinn and lives by Norse virtues of honour, honesty, and glory in battle... Rape, slavery, and piracy, meanwhile, he has no problems with and allows his men to commit atrocities as they please. |
| 1248 | * DecapitationPresentation: [[spoiler:Garm beheads him and parades his head around on his spear.]] |
| 1249 | * InelegantBlubbering: His reaction upon meeting the son of Thors (i.e. Thorfinn). |
| 1250 | * KilledOffscreen: [[spoiler: His death by Garm wasn't shown to the audience]]. |
| 1251 | * PublicDomainCharacter: Likely based on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagn_%C3%85kesson Vagn Åkesson]], a man who was an actual member of Jomsviking, becoming so at the tender age of ''12'' due to impressive feats in battle, despite the Jomsvikings usually only accepting men over the age of 18. |
| 1252 | * WeHardlyKnewYe: Despite being the one who sets the Baltic War arc in motion by splitting the Jomsvikings, he barely gets three chapters of runtime [[spoiler:before Garm kills him off-screen]]. |
| 1253 | [[/folder]] |
| 1254 | |
| 1255 | [[folder:Garm]] |
| 1256 | !!Garm |
| 1257 | [[quoteright:225:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/garm_vinland.jpeg]] |
| 1258 | |
| 1259 | A young warrior who lives to fight anyone who's known to be strong. Floki hires him to kill Thorfinn. Looks and acts like a [[JapaneseDelinquents Japanese Delinquent]] despite living in 11th century Scandinavia. |
| 1260 | ---- |
| 1261 | * AxCrazy: Lives to fight and casually talks about the desire to fight and kill people he's just met. [[spoiler:He has been this way since he was a young boy. In a flashback he has while unconscious, Garm is shown to have been a psychopath since he was very young, easily killing teenagers and adults in a fight, without any qualms or understanding of why this might be wrong. The flashback implies that his bloodlust stems more from the fact that he has no sense of restraint rather than actual malice. In his mind, people who are fighting to the death are just playing a game that you enjoy right up until you die and [[EvilCannotComprehendGood he doesn't understand why Thorfinn doesn't want to play with him]]]]. |
| 1262 | * BastardBastard: His parents are pretty much absent from the story and he never gives his father's name. Some of Thorkell's men joke that he might be Thorkell's get with the way he fights, and though it's never remarked upon, they have similar appearances to an extent. In a flashback, his putative father tells his mother "he's ''your'' son, not mine", which could be a metaphorical IHaveNoSon sort of declaration, or it could actually say something more concrete about Garm's parentage. |
| 1263 | * BifurcatedWeapon: His favoured weapon is a long spear that can be split into two shorter spears when he needs a closer range weapon or to get an advantage from DualWielding. |
| 1264 | * BloodKnight: Just as battle-crazy as Thorkell, and much less PlayedForLaughs. [[spoiler:The two eventually end up fighting. They're so alike that people speculate that he actually might be Thorkell's bastard son.]] |
| 1265 | * CreepyChild: [[spoiler:He was AxCrazy from a very young age, his father and villagers gave him the nickname 'Garm' or 'Hellhound Puppy' for such tendencies as... biting off his opponent's ear while play fighting.]] |
| 1266 | * DeathSeeker: Apparently wants Thorfinn to fight him seriously to the death because he wants to fight someone who will kill him in combat. It comes up again after his fight with Thorkell. |
| 1267 | * DefeatEqualsFriendship: Subverted. [[spoiler:After Thorfinn offers to one day become his friend after defeating him, Garm just gets confused. To him, they're ''already'' friends, because fighting to the death is something friends do in his world.]] |
| 1268 | * DissonantSerenity: Constantly has a boyish grin on his face, even while talking about killing people. (Or actually killing people.) |
| 1269 | * DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Garm is [[StalkerWithACrush constantly following Thorfinn around pressuring him into doing something he doesn't want to do, refuses to take no for an answer, does not at all understand that what he is doing is wrong or why Thorfinn keeps running away from him, and is so obsessed with getting what he wants that he kidnaps and puts Thorfinn's friends in danger to ensure that Thorfinn has no choice but to 'have fun with him' if he wants to save them.]] This guy sounds a lot more disturbing and menacing the more you think about it, huh? |
| 1270 | * EnfantTerrible: [[spoiler:His memories show Garm to have been a cute little boy who looked just like a girl, but he was still an AxCrazy CreepyChild from the very beginning.]] |
| 1271 | * EvilCannotComprehendGood: Cannot for the life of him figure out why Thorfinn ''won't'' fight him in a battle to the death, and finds the idea of living a nonviolent life to be incredibly boring. |
| 1272 | * EvilCounterpart: Mostly to Thorfinn, but also to a lesser degree to Thorkell. |
| 1273 | ** Both Thorfinn and Garm are or were young men who survived battling older, larger, stronger men with the advantage of superior speed and unorthodox/reckless moves and tactics, and the Baltic Sea War arc even sets up numerous parallels between the two. [[note]]Just a few of the parallels include contrasting the flashback of Thorfinn killing Hild's father Hrafnkell (who was wielding a hammer when they fought) to Garm killing Vagn, who was using a warhammer as his weapon, both Thorfinn and Garm commenting on how the weight of armor just slows their opponents down and makes them easier to beat, both face Thorkell and fight him to more or less a draw, both reluctantly follow or followed the lead of a commander they disliked in order to pursue their own agenda, etc., etc.[[/note]] The difference is that even at his worst Thorfinn was more or less a PunchClockVillain, who only killed as required for a mission, took no pleasure from it, refrained from committing any other atrocities, and thought it was crazy to actually enjoy war and fighting, things which Thorfinn took part in solely to avenge his father. Meanwhile Garm is a AxCrazy BloodKnight whose only joy is battle, and who thinks of fighting and killing as a game he plays. Furthermore Garm is willing to kill anyone he comes across, whether he was assigned to do so or not. [[spoiler:In their last confrontation during the arc, Thorfinn defeats Garm by verbally goading him into [[BlindedByRage a reckless, predictable attack]], just as Askeladd did to Thorfinn on several occasions.]] |
| 1274 | ** Both Thorkell and Garm are battle crazed blood knights, but Garm utterly lacks the affability, friendliness, or code of honor that Thorkell has. |
| 1275 | * {{Foil}}: Set up as an obvious one to Thorfinn, being about the same age and just about as skilled, but having a completely opposite view on the value of life. |
| 1276 | * NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: 'Garm' was the name of a monstrous wolf in Myth/NorseMythology that guarded the realm of Hel: For comparison, imagine someone called 'HellHound' or '[[Myth/ClassicalMythology Cerberus]]'. |
| 1277 | * ObliviouslyEvil: Garm's mind has a break with reality that means he has some very basic and dangerous misunderstandings of the world around him. Notably, he's convinced that life and death battles are games that everyone is playing, and that everyone involved is having a great time. A flashback shows us that this goes back to when Garm was a child, and he couldn't differentiate between friendly childhood play fighting and ''beating another boy to death'', which he viewed as just another part of their game. |
| 1278 | * OverzealousUnderling: He decided on his own to kill Vagn for Floki, this threw [[SpannerInTheWorks an enormous wrench into Floki's plans]], as Thorkell was intent on fighting Vagn and his forces, and Garm [[KillSteal stealing the kill]] so infuriates Thorkell that Thorkell promptly turns his back on Floki's faction of the Jomsvikings and goes to war with Floki and company. |
| 1279 | * PsychoForHire: Originally hired to kill Thorfinn. Quickly ends up derailing Floki's plans with his bloodlust. |
| 1280 | * WorthyOpponent: Is looking for one and hones in on Thorfinn for this reason. After drawing a lengthy fight with Thorkell, he also says Thorkell was truly fun to fight. |
| 1281 | [[/folder]] |
| 1282 | |
| 1283 | !Characters Introduced In the Fourth Arc |
| 1284 | !!Sailing West |
| 1285 | |
| 1286 | [[folder:Cordelia]] |
| 1287 | !!Cordelia |
| 1288 | |
| 1289 | A slave of Halfdan who wishes to join Thorfinn's expedition to Vinland. |
| 1290 | ---- |
| 1291 | * HeroicBastard: The bastard child of a Viking warlord and his Irish mistress who is nevertheless given a sympathetic portrayal [[spoiler:particularly for being transgender. Physically male and named Halvor at birth by the father, the mother lied to him about the baby's sex (and he apparently never bothered to check) because she didn't want her child to go off to war like his father. She raised her child as a girl named Cordelia, but puberty hit like a longboat. When the father came back with a prospective husband for her, Cordelia and her mother fled before he could find out. Eventually she became a slave and ended up listening to Thorfinn's invitation and call for aid to make a new world.]] |
| 1292 | * ShoutOut: Named after the daughter of the legendary Celtic King Leir (better known as Theatre/KingLear thanks to Shakespeare). |
| 1293 | * StrongFamilyResemblance: It's extremely obvious that Cordelia's father is [[spoiler:none other than Thorkell]], who later appears heavily shadowed in flashback. Everyone picks up on it immediately, but Cordelia never knew his name. |
| 1294 | [[/folder]] |
| 1295 | |
| 1296 | [[folder:Ivar]] |
| 1297 | !!Ivar |
| 1298 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ivar_vinland.jpg]] |
| 1299 | |
| 1300 | An Icelandic shepherd who has bought into the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Norse Warrior Tradition]]. |
| 1301 | ---- |
| 1302 | * BloodKnight: Gudrid accuses him of wanting to go to war for sake of showing off how manly he is and that he is just looking for an excuse to go to war. Given his HairTriggerTemper and that he has to be held back by his own right-hand man not to hurt her, she's in the right. |
| 1303 | * CoolSword: How he managed to get hold of a ULFBERHT sword while living in Iceland is an interesting story in itself. |
| 1304 | * EveryoneHasStandards: Ivar shows that while he wants a war so he can show off and become a leader, he doesn't want to be the ''cause'' for a war. If a war should start, it shouldn't happen because of him. Ironically, his actions might just be the justification the Lnu could use if they want a war. |
| 1305 | ** When Styrk reveals his plan to test and usurp Thorfinn's leadership with the threat of war looming, Ivar is genuinely surprised and argues that he doesn't ''want'' to betray Thorfinn, just disagree with his ideals. |
| 1306 | * {{Foil}}: Serves as Thorfinn's foil during the expedition arc. Where Thorfinn wants to avoid violence at all costs, Ivar sees it as a possible first resort. Thorfinn believes in relations between different people that are built on mutual benefit, while Ivar believes in relations built on deterrence and balance of power calculations. Finally, Thorfinn is a war veteran with decades of fighting under his belt (which is exactly why he wants to avoid fighting), while Ivar is implied to have never seen proper battle (which is why he is not trying to avoid it). |
| 1307 | * JerkassHasAPoint: He is quick to resort to violence, he wants to go to war because it is war, and he accuses Thorfinn of being too much of a pacifist. However, his argument that having weapons as a means of deterrence to prevent others from exploiting you is a valid one, and Thorfinn even admits it during their first meeting. Thorfinn still insists that there must be no swords on the expedition as he sees bringing a "pure weapon" (as opposed to "tools" like knives, axes, spears and bows, which can be used for civilian use like felling trees and hunting) as a betrayal of the principles their settlement was founded on: A land where there would be no war or slavery. |
| 1308 | * TattooedCrook: Has a noticeable facial tattoo and is a distinctly villainous figure. |
| 1309 | * TheStarscream: Joins the expedition with the intention of taking over for Thorfinn when the latter is proven a "weak man." The problem here is that he wants to be the leader for the sake of being the leader. He doesn't seem to have a plan on what to do as the leader, except going to war with the natives. |
| 1310 | [[/folder]] |
| 1311 | |
| 1312 | [[folder:Styrk]] |
| 1313 | !!Styrk |
| 1314 | |
| 1315 | A friend of Ivar's who joins the expedition to Vinland. |
| 1316 | ---- |
| 1317 | * ManipulativeBastard: Reveals that he wants the threat of war to happen so the people can turn to Ivar for leadership, and goading Ivar into cutting off Miskwekepu'j's hand was part of that. |
| 1318 | * CoolHelmet: Wears one ''constantly'' and is never seen without it. |
| 1319 | * SmarterThanYouLook: He doesn't say much, but proves himself quite observant and manipulative. More explicitly, manipulating Ivar into testing Thorfinn's leadership since the threat of war would be a way to make Ivar take charge. He tells Ivar with that war looming, the people will look to the strongest. Even Ivar seems surprised and uncomfortable with it. |
| 1320 | [[/folder]] |
| 1321 | |
| 1322 | !!Vinland Natives (Lnu or Mi'kmaq) |
| 1323 | [[folder:Miskwekepu'j]] |
| 1324 | !!Miskwekepu'j |
| 1325 | [[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/508392.jpg]] |
| 1326 | The shaman of the native Lnu. He very much distrusts the Norse settlers and believes they're going to bring destruction to his homeland. |
| 1327 | ---- |
| 1328 | * AnArmAndALeg: Gets his hand sliced off by Ivar after he tries to kill Thorfinn.[[spoiler: This is revealed to be part of his plan, as it meant that the Norse struck first.]] |
| 1329 | * AntiHero: After he receives a vision of white people destroying his homeland, he ''assumes'' it's the Nordic folk and starts a personal campaign to drive them out and isn't above using dirty tactics to drive a wedge between the two groups, such as goading Ivar into chopping off his hand. |
| 1330 | * DiseaseBleach: After experiencing the traumatic vision of seeing his homeland destroyed and his people killed, his normally black hair turns white. |
| 1331 | * HiddenDepths: Finds Hild alone while she's hunting, and [[spoiler:''speaks her native language'' to try and figure out the settler's intentions. He likely picked up the language after his experiences with Leif's colony.]] |
| 1332 | * NotEvilJustMisunderstood: He has a vision of white people destroying his beloved homeland and the treatment of his people, coupled with violence and death. He believes it's the newly-arrived Norse whom he's ''already'' distrustful of due to his past experiences with Leif's colony. However, what he doesn't realize is that [[spoiler:his vision was of ''later'' European colonization some five-hundred years later. A.K.A, ''not'' the people he's so concerned about right now.]] He just wants to protect what he loves. |
| 1333 | * PerpetualFrowner: Was either displeased or deadpan prior to his visions, but after seeing the future [[spoiler:of how his people are treated and his home destroyed]], he adopts this. |
| 1334 | * SuddenlyBilingual: Turns out he's ''very'' fluent in the Norse language, as he [[spoiler:talks directly to Hild in her nordic tongue, much to her surprise.]] |
| 1335 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: Wants to protect his home and people, but has unconventional methods of doing it. Unfortunately for him, the white people he saw in his visions destroying Vinland ''aren't'' the Norse. Turns out, [[spoiler:he was around when Leif Erikson tried colonizing Vinland some twenty years prior, and has held a negative opinion on outsiders since.]] |
| 1336 | [[/folder]] |
| 1337 | |
| 1338 | [[folder:Plmk]] |
| 1339 | !!Plmk |
| 1340 | [[quoteright:225:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/477759.png]] |
| 1341 | One of the Lnu. He's the first one to make friendly relations with the Norse settlers. |
| 1342 | ---- |
| 1343 | * GoingNative: An inversion. He's adopting Norse clothes, gets drunk on Norse mead, and wants the Lnu to have their own wheat fields. Miskwekepu'j doesn't like that. |
| 1344 | * MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Once diseases accidentally spread to the Lnu from the Norse, Plmk blames himself for the death of his loved ones and his friendliness to the settlers. |
| 1345 | * NiceGuy: He's cautious of the Norsemen but remains amicable nonetheless. |
| 1346 | [[/folder]] |
| 1347 | |
| 1348 | [[folder:Niskawaji'j]] |
| 1349 | !!Niskawaji'j |
| 1350 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nisqauji_27j_27.png]] |
| 1351 | Miskwekepu'j's apprentice. A curious girl who's one of the more friendly natives, much to her mentor's ire. |
| 1352 | ---- |
| 1353 | * ConstantlyCurious: Niskawaji'j has a fascination for the Norsemen and their culture, which brings her into conflict with her more cynical mentor. |
| 1354 | * HowDoYouSay: She and Bug-Eyes have a conversation about basic but fundamental words in their languages so they can try and communicate easier. |
| 1355 | * OddFriendship: With Thorfinn Bug-Eyes, the settler's translator. |
| 1356 | * TranslatorBuddy: Serves as this for the Norse and Lnu, helping Bug-Eyes understand the native's language for easier communication. |
| 1357 | [[/folder]] |
| 1358 | [[folder:Chief Gitpi]] |
| 1359 | !!Gitpi |
| 1360 | |
| 1361 | The Chief of the Lnu. |
| 1362 | ---- |
| 1363 | * ReasonableAuthorityFigure: During peace talks, Gitpi affirms their desire for peace and trade with the Lnu, not war. |
| 1364 | [[/folder]] |
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