The official VS guidebook was recently published in French and I've been asked if I'll be reposting my translations. The answer is no. Since I started posting on AO3 4 years ago people have been badmouthing me, threatening me, and openly talking about stalking me in private groupchats. Despite this, I put in a lot of work translating stuff from the guidebook so that other people could learn more about the series, which included pushing through a lot of physical pain. My one request to be polite and credit me was ignored on several occasions and I will not be translating anything else.
Do not screencap any portion of my work and repost it without credit. I've had so many problems with plagiarism in this fandom that I have to ask this now. Don't engage with my posts at all if you have any kind of involvement with the unrepentant plagiarist and harasser Enoch (usernames Vobomon/olmar_ormr/wyrmhere).
Fanon: Bjorn is the group's healer/cook, and/or he did these things for Thorfinn/taught him how to do these things.
Canon: This is not stated or implied, outside of the Animalland Saga comics joking about Bjorn being a mushroom chef and the anime adding a scene where he's gathering mushrooms. He is not seen gathering generic mushrooms in the manga; all we see is him eating the berserker mushroom on two occasions. His name is obviously a reference to the folk etymology for "berserk", but we don't actually know how often he uses the mushrooms in battle, since the two uses are separated by about 11 years and his fellow warriors react with shock both times. He's a pretty clear liability when he uses it around his comrades. There are no scenes, ever, in any version, where he's gathering random herbs or acting as a medic.
The fanon doesn't really matter except when people are erasing how neglected Thorfinn was, but it is purely fanon. Personally I think he's the least likely of the crew to have those jobs, because he's the only one we see with a full time job as Askeladd's adjutant. We see him checking in with the crew to find out what that one fight is about, for example—he would have to be on top of that stuff, and communicating everything important back and forth between Askeladd and the other men.
We also see (during the most important scene ever) that Torgrim, Atli and a few other men are all huddled around the cooking pot, and Torgrim and Atli are both manning the pot itself. So there is no singular cook for the band, and while the anime adds a post-battle scene with men crying out for medical care, they don't show us anyone who's performing a dedicated medic role. Bjorn is told by Askeladd to pop Thorfinn's shoulder back in once, because he's the second in command and he's there watching the duel. That doesn't make him a doctor or mean he did it regularly. (In the manga, this moment serves to highlight him as a character and establish him as Askeladd's adjutant, after we saw a completely different character following Askeladd around in the first chapter. I honestly think that was a different guy, and Yukimura just wanted to use a different design after deciding this adjutant would be a regular character.)
Fanon: Thorfinn is smelly.
Canon: Never stated one way or the other, outside of him having fleas in a single scene. This wouldn't really correlate with "never takes a bath" in a time before flea treatments. We actually see him getting chased by dogs shortly before this, so it could've been a temporary condition.
For the record, people in medieval times were not as smelly as you might imagine. They did have noses, and the clothing they wore next to their skin wasn't made of cotton, so it didn't trap sweat and odor the way our underwear does today. The ancient Norse are recorded as bathing weekly, but in practice, people would wipe down the "problem areas" daily even if they weren't going through the whole production of taking a full bath.
And, lest we forget, Torgrim in the anime is excited to get rained on because it means the whole crew can wash off their fleas and ticks. None of them would be able to take full baths while they were on the boats. Thorfinn is never singled out in canon as having especially poor hygiene. In fact, we see him washing his face regularly during the Slave arc, where he's even more depressed than in the War arc. He could be smelly, but it's not really stated.
Fanon: Thorfinn calls Canute "Princess" all the time.
Canon: He says this once and he's making fun of him. I honestly don't think all the jokes about men calling Canute girly are supposed to be a subversion of anything. This was written in, what, 2006? I think we're just supposed to be laughing along. The reality is, they're just insulting him by calling him the worst thing they can think of: a woman. This was a pretty severe indictment in their culture, and I think Askeladd's disgusted face says it all.
While we're on the subject, the guidebook has an interview with Yukimura where he says that Canute did think of Thorfinn as a friend during this time, because he was the first person he ever spent time with who was in his own age range. However, Einar is canonically called Thorfinn's "first friend", and Thorfinn really doesn't show any signs of liking or respecting Canute during the prologue. He says maybe one civil sentence to him, and otherwise just insults him, complains about having to spend time with him, and tries to abandon him three whole times during Torgrim's #Rebellion (catch the fever!) So there's not much opportunity for him to be calling Canute anything.
Fanon: Snake is Turkish/Arab/Middle Eastern.
Canon: This is not stated one way or the other, but I'm inclined to think no. He has a Norse name, Roald, and his father Grimm does as well. His mother could be from somewhere else, but Snake himself:
Was on the battlefield in his mid-teens, and his mentor there was Iron Fist Ketil, a Norseman only spoken of by other Norsemen
Was in legal trouble according to Norse laws, or he wouldn't need to use a pseudonym while living in Denmark
Rather than leaving the area, he instead tried to track down Iron Fist Ketil, which implies he thinks of Denmark as home and doesn't want to leave, or else that he has no connections in other places
So I think he's probably born and bred Norse. The anime tells us that he was in the Varangian Guard, but that's probably somewhere he traveled as an adult, not the place of his birth. In fact, if you look them up, you'll see that the Varangian Guard were primarily Norsemen, with some also being Anglo-Saxons from England.
His skin tone in the anime is darker than some other characters, true, but the Norse characters who were given tan/darker skin in the anime were never drawn that way by Yukimura. Thorgil, for example, appears on one volume cover and clearly has the same light skin as Ketil. So the anime color schemes have no correlation with Yukimura's intended origins for the character.
In fact, when you look at which characters were given darker skin, you can see that it actually follows colorist standards reflected in many anime: the rougher, more violent and instinctual characters are much more likely to be depicted with dark skin when a work is translated from manga to anime. You can see this with Bjorn vs. his coworkers, Thorgil vs. Olmar, and even Torgrim vs. Atli, though the difference is very slight in the last pair: almost universally, light skin is correlated with the smaller, more intelligent, more compassionate character, and the larger, more intimidating and often animalistic character is given darker skin. Of course there's nothing wrong with depicting the characters as they're colored in the anime, but the anime's decision definitely reflects a lot of unconscious biases.
In fact, when Yukimura drew Torgrim and Atli in color on my beloved Red Torgrim Cake, it turns out that he meant for Torgrim to be a very fair-skinned redhead, and Atli actually has the darker skin by comparison. But the anime staff chose to give Torgrim a more tan coloring than they gave Atli, along with adding a bunch of scenes where he's shown to have a bad temper that he doesn't display in the manga. Atli is the one with a bad temper in the manga.
(There were also a number of shots added, and even extra drawings of the cast on Twitter, where he's depicted as being obsessed with food. Again, this is the staff's assumption based on the fact that he's fat and fat people are required to carry food around all the time, while Atli is shown in those same shots drinking instead of eating.)
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I would like to address another argument made in support of a certain thing Askeladd and his men do. According to this argument, they're morally justified in slaughtering that village because it will ultimately serve "the greater good" by allowing Canute to survive. Askeladd—says this argument—is even required to do this, because he believes that Canute will eliminate all pillaging and slaughter in the future.
So first of all: box of Adolf Hitlers WE AGREE!!! meme.
Apparently this is what people mistake for ethical debate around here. Not only is it morally bad, the entire premise is logically flawed to begin with. Askeladd isn't really convinced that Canute's going to accomplish anything when they kill that village. He didn't grab Canute because he looked at the two candidates, Canute and Harald, and decided Canute was the better choice. This is some random kid he kidnapped because the opportunity came up. He's openly disappointed in what he gets. Now he has to make this option work because it's all he has. He still thinks Canute is an incompetent child being smothered by Ragnar. He only comes to see Canute as a potential Artorius stand-in later, after he confesses to killing Ragnar and Canute decides to spare him. So how can that belief justify something he did before he ever believed it? All he has when they kill the villagers is the hope that this pans out somehow.
Believing this argument requires you to accept that all of Askeladd's actions are 100% inevitable, and thus justified purely by the fact that he does them. But why are they even in that village to start with? This isn't an organic thing that just randomly happened, and killing the villagers isn't a decision they made after weighing all the moral pros and cons. They're not castaways on a desert island here. He and his men created the whole situation out of their own greed. They went into that village for the sole purpose of killing those people. They didn't look for any other options. They just decided to find and kill the closest people, because that's their go-to solution for everything. The entire premise people use to defend this act is fundamentally wrongheaded, because the murderers themselves are the ones who set up a dilemma that didn't need to exist. I can't believe I'm saying this, but please go play Dangan Ronpa, because the very first case addresses this exact moral question.
Askeladd's men are only there because their boss is a lunatic who lied to them about his plans, and promised them a bunch of money if they carried out this escort mission. Why doesn't Askeladd serve "the greater good" by letting a bunch of them die instead of the villagers? Because this is an English village, and he thinks they deserve to die more than his murdering rapist men, who can still be of use to him personally. If he were really thinking about the objective greater good, then he'd be equally willing to sacrifice a Welsh village for this incredible paradise he's supposedly imagining. But instead he changes course to lead his men out of Wales. Because, again, he's not concerned about anyone but his own people, and he categorically thinks that innocent English villagers deserve to die for being Anglo-Saxon. Somehow when it comes to the Welsh, there were other options that magically disappeared once they arrive in England.
Meanwhile, by the logic outlined in this argument, anyone is justified in doing literally anything as long as they have a pretty good feeling more people will be happy about it in the long run. So Sweyn would be completely justified in invading Wales for the ultimate betterment of his own people. And in fact, even Olaf would be justified in all the raiding and raping he did, just as long as the murder victims are slightly outnumbered by the Danes who have their lives improved by new slaves and resources. The trolley problem requires two things: the trolley is already moving on its own, and the people are already strapped down to the tracks. It's not a "trolley problem" if the guy pulling the switch is the same one who started the trolley and put the innocent people on the tracks.
Finally, I don't even think Askeladd does believe that Canute can eliminate all war and plundering from the world. He'd have to be kind of an idiot who thinks Canute is magic? They knew there were tons of countries out there besides Denmark and England. Are we assuming that he thought Canute would literally conquer the entire world, and exert magical mind control powers over everyone forever? Because in reality, Canute's empire fell apart instantly after his early death, so Askeladd was kinda wasting his time killing all those villagers. IMHO. But I don't think he even cared about that. He was primarily concerned with that non-aggression treaty Canute signed for Wales, and nothing else. He didn't give a shit what happened to the Danes or the people of England.
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Misconception: Thors/the story in general is badly written because he never really atoned for his evil deeds.
Reality: That is the point of the character. He exists in the story to be the character who didn't do that. Why would any competent writer make an "inspirational dead guy" character who already fully delivered on the premise of the series before it ever starts? This is like getting angry at Star Wars because Obi Wan didn't wipe out the Empire before Luke had to deal with them. It simply isn't how storytelling works.
Vinland Saga acknowledges that Thors never truly dealt with his evil actions by having Floki show up and drag him back: his past has literally caught up with him because he never metaphorically cut those ties. It shows us over and over that he's bad at communicating, and regrets not successfully conveying his beliefs to his children. In Thorfinn's case, it practically beats us over the head with it, considering one of Thorfinn's dreams of him outright says, "It's my fault." It's an actual plot point that he can't put his feelings into words and explain to Ylva why he doesn't want to buy a slave, or tell Thorfinn where people go if they need to escape from Iceland. His ideas and his conviction are inspirational to a number of characters, but it's quite explicitly clear that he was an imperfect guidepost, and Thorfinn is the one trying to refine his philosophy by putting it into practice.
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(Originally written November 2025)
Misconception: Ketil is uniquely evil and dangerous because he sees himself as good, whereas the other killers/rapists in the series understand that they're evil. (And/or, Ketil deliberately disguises himself as "good" in order to trick people by then acting evil.)
Reality: It's repeated over and over through the entire story, by nearly every violent or warlike character, that they see themselves within the good to normal range. I don't even know how to cite this. I would have to post every page of the manga.
Their culture does not see killing as inherently bad in all circumstances. That's a comparatively modern belief, and not a universal one even now. Killing a random fellow Norseman was bad. Killing someone who wronged you was good in most circumstances—not just good, but your duty (without getting into the wergild fine system, which we don't really see coming in play in Vinland Saga). Killing your enemies in war, looting and pillaging, distinguishing yourself as a mighty warrior—all of this was absolutely exalted behavior by a great many ancient cultures.
The definitions of "good" and "evil" that people are using in these discussions are heavily skewed not just by 1000 additional years of Christianization, but by modern philosophy and pop culture things like the D&D morality matrix. Our 2025-Internet-fandom ideas of "good" and "evil" didn't really exist to most ancient cultures. Back then, it was more a question of "right" and "wrong". And not even moral rightness, but "are you adhering to our particular group's rules?" Very often those rules look absolutely horrific to us today, because they weren't about minimizing suffering, but rather about maintaining one's personal/family honor and the supremacy and traditions of [insert culture here].
Askeladd's men would be dumbfounded if you told them they were "bad" people. When they arrive in Gorm's village, they're treated as amazing celebrity heroes. They're befuddled when Thorfinn acts like he doesn't like them for being rapists. Atli doesn't understand why Willibald thinks it's good to protect total strangers from harm. Doing that is not a "good" action in his mind. Thorkell is a popular, celebrated figure throughout all Scandinavia. He's basically a folk superhero. We see characters like Gunnar and Vagn acting baffled when people object to pillaging and raping. These people absolutely don't see themselves as wrong for killing and pillaging.
So "good" and "evil" are not in play here, except for Christian characters like Willibald and Leif, who explain their moral code as something taught to them by their religion, which is heavily based around a god with an extensive list of punishable offenses. The Norse gods, meanwhile, were not that interested in the everyday details of what their adherents did, as long as they kept getting tributes—we see this addressed directly in the story when Ear and Thorfinn wonder what Canute, Ragnar and Willibald even get out of worshipping this annoying control freak God.
But even that type of moral code has notable differences from the secular focus on suffering that people often cite in these moralityscaling debates. The Christians in Vinland Saga are usually depicted as being sincere and empathetic, but they also literally believe that if they don't follow the teachings of Christ, God will send them to burn in hell forever when they die. Their "good" is not a straight line from "reducing suffering". It makes a lengthy stopover in "doing what God says".
I very much doubt that Ketil thinks in terms of good or evil either, but he certainly doesn't see himself as a normative member of Norse society. He sees himself as a coward forced to play a part in self-defense: he acts morally "right" by his culture's standards, but only thanks to a lot of hard work. He didn't invent the idea of letting slaves buy their freedom; it actually wasn't uncommon at the time. So he's really not unique, or trying to quote-unquote virtue-signal at all. He explicitly does not see his empathy as a good thing or something to brag about. He sees it as his hidden shame.
And the thing is, he genuinely does treat most people well. People who see him as evil like to think that we would see through Ketil if he were real. We'd be smart. We wouldn't see him as a good person. But if we're actually adapting him to the real world, Ketil must be able to trick us. That's the whole point of his character. He doesn't treat "women" badly. He treats one enslaved woman badly because her class and social status mean he can get away with it. Most people don't see through abusers. We don't know their personal lives well enough to find out who their exception is. Can anyone in this fandom genuinely say that every single time an abusive celebrity gets exposed, they already knew what was going on behind closed doors? Ketil's purpose in the story is to do things that most people in his world see as normal.
Besides, I've been here 6 years and I know for a fact that most people in this fandom are A-OK with abuse and bullying. Ketil provides a valuable service for his community, remember? He keeps them employed. Let's re-cast him as a popular and talented fanartist, whose chosen harassment target is someone most of the fandom finds annoying. Now, which of his good friends is going to rock the boat by standing up and saying they don't think it's okay to do that, even to someone they hate? From what I've seen, the answer is zero.
(To say nothing of poor little Vincestsaga and their many ordeals!)
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Misconception: The writing is bad because Thorfinn reversed Canute's entire worldview at the end of season 2, with a few minutes of Talk no Jutsu.
Reality: Canute doesn't change his mind. At least, not in the way people seem to think. I don't know if the anime just wasn't translated as well as the manga, or what.
When this plot thread was first set up, Canute was in a dark place, and he decided to deal with his money problems by taking land from his own people under false pretenses, through a process that would involve framing and killing Danes and invading their land. This is the opposite of what he first resolved to do: give his soldiers and subjects a meaningful death by using them to create a better world. At the end of the Slave Arc, that's the one and only thing he decides to go back on. He's still fully committed to everything else.
This whole conversation is him promising to keep waging war and killing people, with the end goal of expanding an empire that he can personally control. This is how he plans to create his paradise: using whatever violence is necessary to impose peace. The Canute you see in the 3rd and 4th arcs has exactly the same goal he's had since Willibald opened his eyes. The one and only thing Thorfinn got him to do was to stop attacking his own people, which he was doing because he believed he was the only person who had this vision of a better world.
Knowing that Thorfinn and Einar share this ideal got him out of that dark place, and allowed him to trust the people of England enough to pull out his standing army just as the brilliant political mind Gunnar told him to do from the beginning smh...
But that's it. He only walked back one small detail. Everything else is still the same. As Thorfinn says, "Your power saves many and torments a few. That's what it does." That never changes, and it was never intended to. There was no "Talk no Jutsu" moment that made him turn nice again. His plan is still to maintain a dictator-like control over everyone he possibly can. So when he plots to have the Jomsvikings wiped out through internal strife and visits that ailing village to see what
Also, despite the baffling number of people who expected him to show up in Vinland, if you read this conversation again, you can clearly see Thorfinn tell him, "I can't tell you where." He does not want Canute showing up in Vinland to conquer it, and Canute in turn promises not to interfere with this small goal Thorfinn has. It wasn't gonna happen.
Most importantly, Canute is never, ever going to change his mind about this belief, because it's factually true. Humans can't feel the type of universal love he's talking about. It cannot exist between two living individuals, period end. It's not the same thing as kindness. It's not a question of depth or purity, of loving someone a lot or wanting the best for them. In fact, loving someone very deeply and wanting the "best" for them is the ultimate form of discrimination, the polar opposite of this universal love Canute and Willibald see as so important.
To feel the love/"ai" that Willibald speaks of, you must apply it equally to everything and anything, which humans can't do. You can't value your loved ones or even yourself above a single other thing in the world. Canute's entire thing now is rejecting the Christian God for demanding that Christians do that, because it's impossible. He rightly sees this universal love as the only way humans could ever eliminate war and violence, and he wants to create a world where God, who made that perfect world impossible, is no longer needed.
This is all laid out in what Willibald says: that Ragnar, who loved Canute deeply, also discriminated deeply, and didn't display the other kind of love that Willibald is talking about. It doesn't even matter that he valued Canute over himself. It matters that he also valued Canute over the lives of others. Some factors people commonly suggest as workarounds are kindness to strangers, loving someone a whole lot, loving something a whole lot, wanting someone else to be happy--but no, none of that qualifies. Kindness to strangers comes the closest (one of Willibald's examples is asking Atli if he would defend him in battle), but it still doesn't work unless you're equally kind to all strangers. And in Willibald's suggestion, where Atli defends him in battle, note that it's not just a neutral equation for Atli; he would be actively endangering himself by defending someone with no combat skills. It would be to his detriment to waste his time and energy on someone who can't return the favor. That's the closest one could get to universal love.
Some things that have been suggested as this "pure love":
Thorkell loving war: No, absolutely not. Mass murdering strangers for your own enjoyment is not part of the universal love that Christ preached and Willibald is struggling with. Loving war causes Thorkell to discriminate as much as you possibly could! He values himself and his own enjoyment over other people's lives. It doesn't matter that he's equally willing to kill both sides. He still "loves" himself more than his victims. (And remember, he's not as pure as people pretend. He thinks fighting for the winning side for too long is boring, but he also says he hates losing.)
The English woman saving Thorfinn: this is much closer, and it seems like less-depressed Willibald would accept this one, because it fits three things he puts forward as examples. He asks Atli if he would defend him in battle, he's visibly awed by the story of Thors attacking Askeladd's men without killing them, and as a direct result of that he steps forward to try and save the villagers from being slaughtered. However, after failing and getting beaten up, he falls even further into depression and openly rejects the idea that humans can display this "love" at all.
And that seems to be the version of his philosophy that Canute ultimately sticks with: that this universal love doesn't exist in the mortal world. That's what he means by "the love we have lost" in the Slave arc. The images we see during his awakening, of Adam and Eve taking the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, represent humanity's original loss of this ability. Ever since we (allegedly) rejected that close relationship we once had with God the Father, we've been wandering in the wilderness, condemned to struggle eternally in a fruitless endeavor to regain that universal love in a world that forces us to kill and discriminate in order to survive.
Willibald himself appears to accept Canute's embrace the attacking Bjorn as an example, as he calls it a miracle and is later shown looking much more functional, presumably because he now believes the biblical love can exist in our world: Canute endangered himself for a violent stranger who was in the middle of attacking him, one who is "furthest from love". That's basically what Thors did, and it's exactly what impressed Willibald so much when he hears of it.
But Canute's take is more a form of the modern philosophical belief that no action can ever be truly selfless, because even if you help someone out and they don't reward you, you still acted because you expected to feel some kind of happiness or satisfaction. (Yukimura's implementation of this idea is definitely heavily influenced by Buddhist beliefs like the idea that existence is suffering.) So Canute will never be satisfied with less exalted forms of affection. That's why we don't see his historical wives, even though Yukimura has mentioned on Twitter that they're around. This just isn't a character who's interested in anything more commonplace than his plans to save humanity from the cruelty of God. As a member of royalty, he's certainly never expected to fall in love. He's always been committed to this ever since his first awakening, and he always will be.
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Misconception: Askeladd doesn't like killing and doesn't want it to happen in general. He picks Canute because he wants a peaceful king, and he'd be disappointed by the path Canute follows in the second arc.
Reality: This assertion often goes hand in hand with the idea that he was forced to do all his killing and pillaging to protect Wales. It stems from a... kind of correct reading of his motivations, so it's not quite as bad as other misreadings of the text, but I don't believe this really holds water. If he really hated killing that much, he wouldn't have spent his life doing it. I think a lot of people miss some important things about what he says during his big trauma dump speech about his backstory: namely, that his idea of this figure he wants to follow, the substitute for Artorius, is someone who will cleanse the world of everything he personally finds ugly, and that includes killing people whenever necessary. He tells Thorfinn that he's a fool for not quickly assassinating him like he killed his own father. He finds the Viking/Norse approach to violence ugly, but he's not opposed to violence itself in the slightest.
We first see this in the way he chooses to approach Thors. It's true that it's what Thors says, "A true warrior needs no sword," that catches Askeladd's eye. But what is the sincere request he makes? He asks Thors to lead them, to direct his violence towards some productive end. Thors' words tell Askeladd that he's unlike Vikings, those stupid Norsemen who can only think in terms of maximum violence all the time. He sees in Thors the type of savior he's been looking to follow—but, crucially, he doesn't even know yet that there have been no casualties among his men. Later, he's confused to learn of it. When he asks Thors to lead his band of pirates, he doesn't seem to understand that Thors would never want to do that. So to me, this indicates that he did expect Thors to be the type of leader who kills a lot of people.
Much later, we see over and over that he shows no emotional reaction to his crew slaughtering innocent people. When he tortures that guy in Mercia, it's clear that he's experiencing positive emotions. This just isn't how people react if they dislike killing people. Over and over, he accomplishes his goals by killing the right person, and he's always visibly satisfied with himself. When Canute asks if they're going to kill Gunnar, Askeladd is proud of him for catching on. He doesn't see these strategic killings as ugly, horrible necessities, but simply as the right way to do things. Ragnar, Olaf, the two unnamed slave women, his plans for Gunnar and Sweyn—he shows no regret or mixed feelings at any point.
There's no doubt in my mind that he'd be proud of Canute poisoning his brother in order to consolidate control, because it fits perfectly with his whole speech to him and Thorfinn about killing smarter, not harder. (And I don't think Canute regrets it, either.)
He says it himself: he basically wants the entire Viking "race" wiped out.
In fact, the two events he claims to want, Ragnarok or the Final Judgment, involve everyone on earth dying one way or another. Canute's ultimate goal is to create a nonviolent paradise, but Askeladd himself doesn't seem to value the materialized version of that vision very much. He wants a powerful king who will protect Wales, and Canute coming up with that idea is proof that he's a leader worthy of following. The idea of a world without war or killing is more of a side effect in Askeladd's eyes, not something he personally longs to experience himself; a beautiful end goal but not a necessity in his own life.
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Misconception: Thorkell's detached attitude towards Thorfinn/potentially killing Thorfinn was normal for the time period. Nobody back then tracked extended family bonds or cared about anyone but their own immediate family.
Reality: Ancient cultures were actually hugely concerned with these extended family bonds! That's why the Tanakh and other religious texts have sooo many endless pages of who begat whom. This was almost universal no matter where you went, because in practical terms, the more connections you can claim, the safer you are. I think this take is a little US- or modern Scandinavia-centric, because even today, many cultures have a very wide-ranging definition of family/who counts as a cousin, an aunt, an uncle, and so forth.
The ancient Norse, too, valued family bonds a lot, and even went out of their way to expand on what mere biology could give them. A common practice was to have one or more sons raised in another household by a foster father. From then on, the two families would be considered connected, and would have an obligation to help each other in times of need, just as much as when two families were connected by a marriage—which was also an extremely political arrangement that served to create strategic alliances between households. There was also the same type of sworn brotherhood that was practiced in China. It was another way of creating the same obligations you would owe to a blood member of your clan. Until relatively recently, many cultures thought these created bonds were so important that they often included them in incest prohibitions, like forbidding a widow to remarry her late husband's brother.
In Vinland Saga, a lot of families are depicted as pretty small and isolated because it makes telling the story easier, but we do see glimpses of what it would be like in reality. Instead of the solo arrangements we see in canon, with Thors and Helga raising their children alone in one smaller house, most people back then would actually have lived in big longhouses, either with large extended families or just with completely different family units. And the fostering tradition is the entire reason Ragnar is the one who raised Canute. He's a minor noble who was considered important and trustworthy enough to raise someone from the royal family.
In real life, Thorkell the Tall actually served as foster father to one of Cnut the Great's sons. Over an extended period of time, this was a great way to make sure the nobility as a group never got too disconnected or jealous of the current royal family. The fictional Thorkell's attitude towards his brother, great-nephew, etc., is not intended to represent anyone but this one extreme weirdo, who also loses interest in his own wife and daughter when they can't provide him with the only thing he cares about. The fact that we keep seeing him acting so detached isn't a sign that everyone in the story thinks like this; it's just supposed to highlight his weirdness.
There are, famously and for some reason, two separate English-language dubs of Vinland Saga. One was done by Netflix, and one by Sentai Filmworks. The problem is that multiple dub actors have been accused of domestic abuse and sexual assault.
Thorfinn's actor in both seasons of the Sentai dub, Mike Haimoto, was accused of abuse and sexual assault by his colleague Avery Smithhart, and has left the business as of 2023.
Olmar's actor for part of the Sentai dub, Anthony DiMascio, has been accused of abuse by Kalyn McCabe and others. He was replaced after episode 34 and is also currently inactive as an actor.
Askeladd's actor in the Sentai dub, David Wald, has not himself been accused of anything, but another actor he's directed, Daman Mills, has been accused of the grooming and sexual abuse of a teenage boy when he was around 20, as well as racial abuse within the friend group. After Mills threatened legal action, the accuser withdrew his accusations and stated that he made them all up, but I don't view the retraction as credible. The original accusations were backed up by another member of the friend group, and they provided extensive documentation to Lynzee Loveridge, a reporter for ANN whom I believe to be careful, sincere, and trustworthy in her reporting on abuse allegations. Additionally, Mills' own public statement on the matter was that he did have sexual contact with the minor (their ages being 20 and 15), but it was consensual. In my opinion, the "retraction" was a transparent act of intimidation by someone who doesn't even realize how bad his defense sounds.
What does that have to do with Askeladd's actor? Well, David Wald's response to the accusations was extremely flippant. Both men are gay, and Wald's immediate statement was that this was a homophobic smear campaign against Mills, and everyone would see the truth soon. His tone wasn't appropriate for any kind of sexual abuse allegations, even false ones. How would he know what happened privately between these two people? It was clear that he didn't see this as something to take seriously, and after the accuser retracted his statement, Wald once again took a very flip and offensive attitude about Mills supposedly being cleared. He acted like anyone who'd ever taken it seriously was an idiot and a buffoon, even though these were credible allegations vetted by a trusted reporter, and Mills himself admitted he'd had sexual contact with a 15 year old at age 20.
Lynzee Loveridge has also all but named Wald as the party who tried to threaten ANN with Mills' suicide unless they took down the article.
So, this is all to say that the abuse allegations are all within the Crunchyroll/Sentai dub, and the Netflix one is better anyway.
Do not screencap any portion of my work and repost it without credit. I've had so many problems with plagiarism in this fandom that I have to ask this now. Don't engage with my posts at all if you have any kind of involvement with the unrepentant plagiarist and harasser Enoch (usernames Vobomon/olmar_ormr/wyrmhere).
(Originally written December 2025)
I think people have filled in a lot of blank spaces for prologue Thorfinn with scenes that seem reasonable to them, but—in my opinion, of course—are not actually consistent with what we see in canon. Whether this is because fanworks have replaced canon in their mind, or because they're used to seeing certain tropes in other art, I don't know. (I think this is how 3Trihard on Reddit put it.) But Thorfinn in the prologue is completely, deliberately closed off to forming any new emotional connections, outside of his unwilling trauma bond with Askeladd. He only wavers when it comes to a couple of victims/would-be victims of Askeladd's band (all women, as it happens) and even then he's incredibly callous with Hild.
He's not interested in Bjorn, Canute, or anyone else, outside of a brief civil dinner with Ragnar and Canute, during which he's clearly thinking of his father more than anything. But immediately afterwards, he lapses back into casual cruelty.
After Ragnar's death, he displays absolutely zero empathy for Canute. He's instantly complaining and whining again about having to spend any time with him at all. He starts back up with this while Canute is literally still looking at Ragnar's corpse--and Ragnar was quite nice to him. I think this is something he has to do to convince himself that he's not weak like Canute is, and he had an acceptable and totally not embarrassing reaction to his own father's death. I don't find it plausible at all that they had friendly conversations behind the scenes that weren't shown to us, as people often assume they "must have"—and IMO the same "but I saw this in fanart" thought process does a lot of heavy lifting for the idea that Askeladd was incredibly helpful and active in "raising" Thorfinn.
It really is a key part of Thorfinn's characterization that he was closed-off and mean during this period. It's what he had to do to himself to justify his own actions. He doesn't show any empathy or interest in Canute, or Bjorn, or anyone at all who falls on Askeladd's "side" instead of being an innocent villager.
He's truly, genuinely disgusted by Askeladd's men, including Bjorn. When he's with them and Willibald on the sled, he's not thinking about helping or defending them. He jumps off to go after Askeladd. And he doesn't think, "Oh, Bjorn will go Super Saiyan and handle this, I'm sure they'll all be fine." He doesn't think about them, period. He just doesn't care whether they live or die.
If his actions there weren't enough, he goes on to tell Askeladd, twice, that they should run off together while Thorkell's distracted. He doesn't care about Canute or Bjorn or Willibald, or even the real centerpiece of the arc, an adorable young lad named Torgrim! It's not until his conversation with Canute at the end of the Slave arc that he starts to reevaluate those old memories, and recognize that Canute actually had some valuable things to say.
Thorfinn's emotional growth through the story is really highlighted by his encounters with new people and the level of compassion he's able to show them. This is why I agree with people who criticized the anime altering his scenes with Hordaland and Leif. I genuinely think it's an indispensable part of his character and the overall story that he is cruel to Hordaland instead of trying to cheer her up, and that he does shut Leif out completely and refuse to even consider going back with him. Thorfinn isn't there yet. He can't show mercy to himself or anyone else until his blinders are forcibly removed by Askeladd's death. And even then, it takes some time before he's fully confronted with the weight of what he's done.
This is all perfectly crafted by Yukimura's pacing in the manga. It just plain doesn't make sense for Thorfinn to be nice to Hordaland. The point of that scene in the manga is not to show him being nice so we can feel good about following him as a main character, or remind the audience that hey!! Vinland!! Remember that thematic link?! It's to show him being cruel, because he needs to maintain this dichotomy in his head of Strong Monsters / (Me) / Weak Victims.
Thorfinn victim-blames Hordaland precisely because he can't do anything else at this point in the story. If he does, he'd have to accept that he's not existing in his own little bubble as the only righteous person in the world. He's not too smart and strong to be victimized, or forced into a position he hates. He needs to believe that he can tell when someone else is pulling the strings. He needs to believe that the people he helps to hurt actually deserve whatever they get for being weak. As we see later with Hild's flashback, he's very resentful when he feels someone tugging on his heartstrings and making him feel guilty.
So it just doesn't make sense to end this scene with him telling Hordaland about Vinland—the scene in the manga isn't even really about Hordaland at all. Sure, we're supposed to sympathize with her (in fact, she's the one who's dreaming about having a place to run away to), but for the story to suddenly give her this hopeful buildup throws off the whole setup here. The audience now expects this to lead somewhere more positive for her. But we never see her again, because that's just not what the character was introduced for. Which feels off for a lot of viewers, because of how the anime presented her! Where did she go? Why did we have that moment with her? Well, the whole original scene was about Thorfinn, and what she reveals about him, so there's no raw material left for the anime to work with.
The next person to enter the story is Canute, and as I said above, Thorfinn is genuinely very contemptuous, mocking and cruel to him. Yukimura has stated in an interview that Canute did consider Thorfinn a friend because he was the only same-age peer he'd ever had, but that's a very forgiving attitude for Canute to take—probably foreshadowing his later ability to work with Askeladd, Gunnar, and Thorkell. Thorfinn is a complete toad in all their interactions at this age, because, again, he needs to establish a mental separation between himself and weak people.
The cart scene wasn't written as flirting in the year 2006 or whatever. He's genuinely mocking and bullying Canute, because he's driven himself into a corner of toxic masculinity. He can't let shyness and non-violence be an option for men, because that would mean he himself had the choice to be that way, and that would make him a fool for being who he is at this moment. Thorfinn has grown up with a bunch of pigs who embody the absolute worst of manhood, and he has a very strict divide in his head about what is and isn't acceptable for men and women. He sometimes pities women, but he resents them for making him feel like that. And as much as he looks down on Askeladd's men, he does have this psychological need for them to be the only acceptable standard of masculinity. Otherwise, why is he here with them at all? (He has Thors, of course, but he has to keep rejecting the moral rules Thors actually tried to give him.)
With Einar's introduction, we see a more positive masculine influence. Einar is still prone to losing his temper, and tries to be violent on a few occasions, but he's nowhere near the level of male company Thorfinn was dealing with for most of his childhood. Initially the relationship is forced on him by proximity, but over the course of the arc, Thorfinn does manage to heal a lot, eventually to the point that he's finally able to acknowledge the guilty dreams he's been suppressing.
The first time he admits that he was a warrior, he's still immature, and it's honestly kind of a guilt trip on Einar: "So? :/ Do you hate me? :/" After he punches the farmhand, he starts to accept the weight of the people he remembers killing. But I'd argue that he doesn't fully confront his guilt until he hears Arnheid's story, and we can see him understand that he also took part in harming people who are still alive. At this point, he's grown to a level where he can hear a story he wasn't even involved in, and apply a more nuanced of society to take responsibility simply because he participated in the general structure of war.
His friendship with Einar was based on Einar forgiving him because he wasn't one of the specific people who attacked Einar's village. But now Thorfinn is ready to start feeling like he is connected to people whose villages he never raided. Even though he's never had an especially close relationship with Arnheid, he and Einar step in to personally help her because it's the right thing to do, and Thorfinn officially begins working on the redemption he promised to fulfill.
I think it damages the story if Thorfinn is portrayed as some perfect being who was already capable of being kind to outsiders back when he was causing all that damage. In fact, it makes him look much worse as a person. Like, if he could be nice to Hordaland, why was he such a fucking monster to everyone else? Most of the little changes made to the anime have this exact effect: the story is made flatter, more generic, and less worth telling. Vinland Saga's entire strength is that it's willing to be a story about someone with this kind of realistic psychological damage. Thorfinn is hard to watch, and worth watching, because he really acts like someone would need to in order to hurt people like that. He acts like anyone does when they're trying to justify what can't be justified. Making him more engaging and more palatable is missing the point.
This is precisely what his conversation with Hordaland was meant to highlight: that he can't yet bring himself to sympathize with a slave. All of his psychological defenses revolve around thinking he's above such people. If the anime wants him to be likable in that moment, it's missing the whole point. We're supposed to sympathize with Hordaland, not him, and see her as one of the victims of Thorfinn's lifestyle—but we also see what's happening inside Thorfinn's dreams, so we know he's not a total lost cause, just somebody who's lying to himself. His dream of Thors has already done the work of showing Thorfinn's potential. It's important to the story that he can't yet deliver on that potential, that we're also seeing the enormity of what this omnipresent violence has taken from him.
In the anime, we lose the whole idea that being a child soldier is incredibly damaging, and I think that's too much of a loss to justify, considering how rare it is to see a story that's actually willing to make its main character a realistic depiction of a child soldier. If anime Thorfinn could already show kindness to a slave, then he hasn't really changed that much later on, and therefore the anime isn't bothering to argue that such a change is possible at all. Yukimura has emphasized in interviews how much Askeladd's death was necessary for Thorfinn to change. He had to have all that ripped away, or he wouldn't have changed. Thorfinn does have a kind heart deep down, but he's not the type of super-special protagonist who can just randomly break through the chains of his culture and everything he's ever been taught. He *needed* to be forcibly pulled away and stripped of every reward that lifestyle was giving him before he could reevaluate his past choices.
The whole point of the story is to show how powerful our cultural programming is, and how invested we all become in maintaining the status quo when change means admitting our own wrongdoings. The anime's change with Hordaland, and having Thorfinn briefly think of going with Leif, both destroy this entire theme. Anime Thorfinn is selectively capable of being normal and dropping his 24/7 emotional safeguards... it just doesn't lead to anything except reminding the audience that we're watching VINLAND Saga, so don't worry, the main character definitely remembers that Vinland place exists.
Of course, neither of those changes in the first season would be as much of a problem if the second season hadn't gone off the rails so completely. (See my previous essays on that!)
Anyway, the progression in how Thorfinn reacts upon meeting Hordaland > Canute > Einar > Arnheid (in her case it's long after they first meet, so maybe let's say his meeting with Gardar) > Gudrid > Hild is a timeline of his growth. With Hordaland he gives her nothing, and actively rejects the idea of empathizing with her. With Canute he continues to reject any kind of empathy or likeness between them, and spends all his time antagonizing Canute or ignoring him—notwithstanding this, he does commit a few of Canute's goals to memory. (I'm sorry to say this, but their *lack* of connection in the prologue, and Thorfinn's genuinely hateful/cruel behavior towards him, is an important part of the story that most people simply didn't notice, in favor of making up their own version of what was happening.)
Einar makes the most active attempt to change Thorfinn, and correspondingly Thorfinn makes a huge leap under his watch, from the blank void Einar first encounters, to his guilt-trippy admission that okay, fiiiine, he used to be a warrior, to finally taking ownership of his past actions after Gardar arrives.
Thorfinn doesn't seem to have much of a relationship with Arnheid, even though he met her before Einar, but his reaction to her story is what finally shows us that he's recovered the humanity he tried to smother for so many years.
He understands his connection to the monsters who destroyed her life, and crucially, he's able to keep functioning with those feelings. He doesn't retreat from the guilt, and he starts trying to articulate the desire to make up for his past actions. He never manages to admit who and what he really is to Arnheid, but Einar's active personality helps him to make some clumsy attempts at saving Arnheid and Gardar, which ultimately fail.
But here, unlike his past half-hearted attempts to save Hild and the Englishwoman and her daughter, Thorfinn doesn't relapse back into callousness or resent anyone for making him feel guilty. He uses his disappointment to keep moving forward, and as a result, he's able to show more developed empathy to Gudrid: when she asks why he's able to accept her presence on the ship, he actively volunteers himself as a comparison. If he got a second chance, no one else should be denied one either.
(And, frankly, when we see him flash back to Hordaland's words during the conversation with Einar I screencapped above, I think that's worth infinitely more than if he were remembering his own words from when he was one of the conquering beasts destroying people's lives. Hordaland, a slave, was the one who brought up "somewhere not here" in the manga. In the manga, Thorfinn is remembering the words and dreams of someone who needed that dream because she was suffering, not just referring back to himself like he's the most important person in the world. If he's thinking of himself telling her about that, we're just referring back to a male warrior showing kindness to a woman who probably lived and died as Gorm's slave, which is rhetorically bankrupt.)
When the party meets Hild, he takes another step upwards by taking charge of his actions in front of a victim, and begging for the right to atone, knowing that he doesn't automatically deserve this right just because he wants it. At this point he's finally come to a more evolved understanding of what he wants his life to be. He knows what societal forces shaped his younger self, but he's also accepted his own agency and sees through the coping mechanisms he used to use—a nice balance between wallowing in self-hatred, and blaming everyone but himself.
He doesn't just have character witnesses in the form of Einar and Gudrid; he's able to confront Hild and use his own words, which he's never been willing or able to do before. He never told Arnheid the truth, and he only hinted at it when he was talking to Gudrid. When he admitted his actions to Einar, it was because Einar interrogated him, and Thorfinn was only looking him in the face for half the conversation. Only at this point, with Hild, is he finally able to admit his guilt to an actual victim and beg for real forgiveness.
We, the readers, are not Thorfinn's victims. His atonement isn't measured by when we start to like him. It's crucial that he develops in this slow, realistic way, and that Einar and Gudrid, who see him at his best, are not held up as the standard of when he's been forgiven. Without Thorfinn's flaws and many failures, Vinland Saga wouldn't really be examining anything at all.
Misconception: Vinland Saga is very popular/financially successful
Reality: Vinland Saga is a fairly niche series in Japan and its active fandom is almost nonexistent. Wikipedia says that in 2022, it had 7 million copies in circulation. Two series to which it's occasionally compared are Vagabond and Golden Kamuy. In 2022, Wikipedia says that Golden Kamuy had 22 million copies in circulation. The most popular number for Vagabond is 82 million, which is a worldwide figure, but still, it's quite unlikely that Vinland Saga has made up the difference by selling an extra 75 million copies outside of Japan. A recent number for Berserk was 70 million worldwide.
We can also look at Skip & Loafer, which runs in Afternoon, the same magazine as Vinland Saga. Skip & Loafer had about 1 million copies in 2023, when it had been running for about five and a half years. Vinland Saga had about 1.2 million in 2008, when it had been running for three years. So Vinland is pretty successful for the magazine it runs in, but Afternoon isn't a huge seller, and the idea that Vinland, Berserk and Vagabond are "the Big Three" of seinen is not something that exists in Japan. Japanese fans dont see them as being in the same sphere, or even being all that thematically similar. This is purely a product of a) Vinland getting translated by a certain scanlator and becoming a male self-identifier on 4chan at the right time, and b), people in current English-speaking fandom thinking that "seinen" is a micro-genre consisting of 10 different hypergore sadman stories.
That said, the publishers and marketing team definitely know that Vinland is more popular outside of Japan, which is why there was a huge shift in how they marketed season 2 of the anime. They started tweeting in both English and Japanese, made sure promo videos were subbed, and made sure the official website had English translations up for all the character descriptions and episode summaries. All this is very unusual for such a small anime series, and it speaks to a major difference in sales numbers. Japanese distributors usually don't care about anything but the domestic audience.
Do not screencap any portion of my work and repost it without credit. I've had so many problems with plagiarism in this fandom that I have to ask this now. Don't engage with my posts at all if you have any kind of involvement with the unrepentant plagiarist and harasser Enoch (usernames Vobomon/olmar_ormr/wyrmhere).
Misconception: Thorfinn is a prince/the unquestioned heir to the Jomsviking throne
Reality: The Jomsvikings are a small army with their own territory, not a kingdom. They don't have any throne or king. The chieftain is supposed to designate an heir, who may be his own son, but ideally is just the best man for the job. Thorkell suggests Thorfinn as a candidate because he's related to the previous chieftain, but also because he's a strong warrior. However, Baldr has an equally strong blood link to Sigvaldi; both he and Thorfinn are his grandsons. In this case, both are sort of ridiculous candidates, with one being about ten years old and the other being a total outsider who doesn't even want the job. With Sigvaldi gone, there's no one left who has the authority to make their candidate the default choice, so things have reached the point where Vagn and his men have withdrawn from Jomsborg proper to show their disapproval of Floki.
We're not told exactly why Sigvaldi died without an heir, but there are a couple of clues: Baldr's parents have been assassinated, though again we don't get any details. Yukimura did, however, post a family tree on Twitter. I've lost the link, but it shows how Thorfinn is related to Baldr and Cordelia, and tells us that Helga's older brother is the connection between Sigvaldi and Baldr. He was Sigvaldi's son, and his marriage to Floki's daughter produced Baldr, Thorfinn's first cousin. I think the logical conclusion is that Baldr's parents were assassinated very recently, and that his father (Sigvaldi's son) had either been named as heir, or was assumed to be Sigvaldi's first choice. With him gone, Sigvaldi didn't have any time to display a leaning one way or another before his own death.
Thorkell later points out to Wulf how many strange deaths have been happening among the Jomsvikings, so it seems like a safe bet that Canute had Sigvaldi poisoned. It's not clear whether he was also involved in the death of Baldr's parents. We know there are other factions in play, and it seems unlikely that Canute would've asked for Baldr's mother to be killed as well. He may have just seen a good opening after Sigvaldi's son was taken out by someone else.
Misconception: Valhalla as the Christian Heaven or Hell/Thorfinn visits Valhalla or Hell in canon/Hell is confirmed to exist in Vinland Saga canon
Reality: This is a very, very common one, and an easy trap to fall into, but one of the most crucial aspects of the story is that most of the characters are not operating under the Christian principles that have infiltrated our worldview even in secular cultures. The Valhalla they're talking about in the story is not a peaceful place, nor is it a reward for morally good behavior. It was an afterlife for warriors who died a warrior's death with a weapon in hand. Nobody else could get in. It was envisioned as a great feasting hall ruled over by Odin, where the slain warriors would party during the day and slaughter each other endlessly at night. This was suppose to continue until the end of the world and the death of the gods. Nobody who wants to go to Valhalla would expect to be resting when they get there, and nobody would expect to go there if they died peacefully.
(In fact, only half of those who died in battle were thought to go to Valhalla, as there was also a field-like realm of the afterlife called Fólkvangr that was ruled over by Freyja, but Valhalla is the more famous one. I'm not sure what the distinction was.)
When Thorfinn has his big dream, he does ask if he's in Valhalla, because all he sees is warriors killing each other over and over. But Askeladd immediately replies that it's not. It's the real world. That is, this is how Thorfinn's subconscious mind sees his life as a warrior: a massive abyss of monsters killing each other mindlessly. The dream Askeladd even calls himself "the one who dragged you down here": this is a metaphor for Thorfinn's past and present, and crucially, it's also the same dream he's been having every night for months. The first time we see it is also the first time he's able to remember it, now that he's finally ready to accept his guilt and begin crawling out, something that makes no sense if this is a vision of the "real" afterlife. He's leaving his past behind, not literally visiting another dimension. Nobody there is actually real. It's just his own memories returning in his dreams.
If anything, the only thing confirmed in Vinland Saga canon is that no afterlife exists at all, since we have that whole chapter of the guy slowly dying and realizing that no Valkyries are coming to escort him to Valhalla. I'm not an expert on Norse mythology, but I think most of the non-Christian characters would expect to wind up in Hel instead, which was simply a basic, none-too-fun afterlife where you ended up if you died of sickness or old age. You could hold onto any possessions or slaves that had been burned with your body, but it had none of the glory associated with a death in battle. Part of what helped Christianity spread so widely was the promise of heaven as a reward for good behavior in life, as this was much more appealing than most pagan conceptions of the afterlife.
(In fact, if you study ancient mythology, you can see people struggling mightily with the idea of cruel gods vs. a loving God; at a certain point, Greek mythology was actively altered to make itself more appealing to the masses. Originally they had believed that most people went to Hades' realm upon dying, and existed there forever as basic, unhappy shades, with the more pleasant Elysian Fields being reserved only for demigods or the very greatest of heroes. Over time, though, the idea arose that in fact, good behavior in life could get anyone into the Elysian Fields. So they originally used their religion just to explain life as something fundamentally unfair and controlled by the whimsical gods, but eventually they were swayed by the desire to believe they could all look forward to rewards in the afterlife.)
Do not screencap any portion of my work and repost it without credit. I've had so many problems with plagiarism in this fandom that I have to ask this now. Don't engage with my posts at all if you have any kind of involvement with the unrepentant plagiarist and harasser Enoch (usernames Vobomon/olmar_ormr/wyrmhere).
Take: Vinland Saga as either an explicitly Christian story, or a cucked and demonic tool of Satan
Reality: So, there are two types of religious people. The first type sees religion as a moral code that helps them do good and treat other people well, and helps them work through difficult emotions that could prevent this. The second type doesn't care about preventing suffering so much as performing submission to a sadistic and unknowable authority figure. The second group is much more prominent among modern social commentors who interpret media through a religious framework, especially as religion has become more and more specific to conservatism.
So to the second group of Christians, it doesn't matter that Vinland Saga's philosophy seems to align pretty closely with many of Christ's teachings. They do not believe that doing good to others is all that spiritually meaningful. They reject this as works-based salvation, something they consider heretical. To them, the only thing that genuinely matters to God is that you accept Christ as your lord and savior.
Vinland Saga is a work that questions why a loving God would let evil happen to good people—in fact, it suggests that God is asleep at the wheel, and that it's a fundamentally cruel decision for such a being to allow us free will at all. Canute believes that salvation is impossible for any human to achieve, and God is our enemy for setting us this insurmountable challenge as a joke. The mere fact that Canute articulates such an argument is enough for someone with an authoritarian mindset to declare Vinland Saga demonic propaganda. They don't believe it matters whether the work calls for peace on earth or kind behavior; any form of questioning God's authority is intolerable in their minds.
This God-as-abusive-father faction is threatened by any challenge to the imagined authority, because they've built their entire identity around the idea that they can earn its love by performing unquestioning submission to its whims. If their brother or sister demands respect, better treatment, or even an explanation for their suffering, the authoritarian faction sees this as a direct attack on them: not only are you calling them foolish for obeying such a figure, but an authority figure angered by defiance is a dangerous one. They need to believe that God allows or causes evil to happen because we all deserve it, but also that He's willing to grant them mercy if they just do what he commands, without questioning or even understanding why.
The idea that it's a Christian story holds a little more weight, as we see some of Christ's teachings being quoted approvingly, and the Christian characters are generally presented as the most sincere and kind people in the story, but we do see pretty conclusively that there's no afterlife at all within Vinland Saga. In my opinion, that excludes it from being a Christian story, since it doesn't endorse Christ's divinity but only makes the argument that he said a few helpful things in his life. Yukimura himself has commented that he finds religion very interesting, but doesn't really believe in any of it. To me, Vinland Saga ultimately endorses a secular worldview that would prefer we focus on getting things right in life.
Do not screencap any portion of my work and repost it without credit. I've had so many problems with plagiarism in this fandom that I have to ask this now. Don't engage with my posts at all if you have any kind of involvement with the unrepentant plagiarist and harasser Enoch (usernames Vobomon/olmar_ormr/wyrmhere).
Floki is about to turn 50 in the BSW arc. How old were Baldr's parents? Based on the guidebook ages, Floki is about the same age as Thors, and Helga is six years younger. However, the guidebook is not strictly accurate when it comes to those ages; it was compiled by a third party and makes 2 known mistakes: Olmar is said to be 16 even though his age is given twice in-story as 17, then as 20 after a three year time skip; and nearly a decade was added to Bug Eyes' age, which was not corrected until someone asked Yukimura about it on Twitter. (When I say in one of my posts, "Yukimura said in the guidebook," I mean that I'm quoting something from the actual interviews with him, not the character data that was typed up by that third party.)
Floki in particular has a known age discrepancy. His "age at first appearance" from the guidebook doesn't allow him to be 49 in the third arc. Let's take Yukimura's word in the series as the correct one and move on: Floki is in fact 49 there, and was younger earlier in the story.
So, Floki is 49. Baldr was born 10 years ago, when he was 39. A family tree that Yukimura posted on Twitter tells us that Floki married his daughter off to Helga's older brother. If Helga was at least somewhat younger than Thors when they married, then how old was Floki's daughter compared to her husband? Men in Vinland Saga seem to marry in their early 20s where possible. So if Floki had only one daughter, she was presumably born when he was 20-26. If so, she would be 13-19 when he was 39 and she had Baldr--13 is highly unlikely, so let's presume she was actually 16-19 when she married/gave birth, and Floki had her when he was 20-23.
This all fits exactly with the general age range we see for our known couples in Vinland Saga. (At this point we do have to assume the guidebook ages are accurate.) The men are generally early 20s, and Gudrid is our oldest known bride, being 19 when she met Thorfinn and marrying him 2.5 years later according to the wiki's timeline. However, she was also married off to Sigurd at 19, and was married/widowed even before that. (Her marriage to Thorvald is a big unknown, but I believe she must've been 15 or younger since Thorvald didn't bother to consummate the marriage.)
Back to Floki's daughter: my best guess is that she had Baldr around 16 or 17, since 1) this marriage was obviously a political one where they wanted an heir as soon as possible, and 2) young brides seem to be reliably fertile in Vinland Saga. Since Floki is her father and he successfully got her married into the chieftain's family, she may have been married off well before 16 just so Floki could rest easy, but as with Gudrid, she wouldn't be expected to bear children before it was (relatively) safer for her physically. We know Floki is a very loving and protective grandfather, so even though he obviously used her as a bargaining chip, he may have been protective of her as well--we don't really know, as he refuses to talk about Baldr's parents when Baldr brings up their murder. (At least he's protective physically, even if he doesn't really "get" emotional well-being.)
With all that settled, how old was Baldr's father when he had that kid? Whether or not the guidebook compiler was right in making Thors 23 to Helga's 17, it seems like a safe assumption he was at least a little bit older than her. Her older brother could be any age, though.
Ylva's age is given as 16 in the guidebook when we first see her, and it seems like a fair assumption. If so, she's 31 when Baldr is 10. When Baldr's father fathered Baldr, Ylva was 20-21, and Baldr's aunt Helga would be 38 if she really had Ylva at 17. If Helga's brother, Baldr's father, is the older sibling... then... that probably makes him older than Floki, his new father-in-law, and at least 40 when he fathers Baldr on his young wife.
Both Helga and Ylva's ages in that calculation are based on the guidebook, which has been proven inaccurate on three occasions, but the ages it gives for young brides do seem consistent with Yukimura pairing up Niska (16-17) and Bug Eyes (25-26) at the end. Its inaccuracies are: adding a decade to Bug Eyes' age, subtracting a year from Olmar's, and possibly assuming that Floki was Thors' age when he was actually a few years younger? I think Bug Eyes and Olmar can be put down to typos in a single digit, but I don't know how the compiler got these numbers to begin with. Did they ask Yukimura, or guess?
Anyway, my guess would be, with manga confirmed ages in bold (both guidebook ages and total speculation are left as plain text):
Floki/Thorkell/Thors gallivanting about being evil just before Ylva's birth: Floki 18-19; Baldr's father 18+; his younger sister Helga 17; Thorkell/Thors 23
Thors leaves the Jomsvikings: Floki 19-20; Baldr's father 19+; his younger sister Helga 18; Helga's daughter Ylva 1; Thorkell/Thors 24
Thors dies: Floki 34; Floki's daughter 11-12; Baldr's father 34+; his younger sister Helga 33; Baldr yet undreamed of; Helga's daughter Ylva 16; Thorfinn 6 going on 7; Thorkell 39; Thors 39 going on dead
(Baldr's parents possibly marry at a conventional age for young women in this manga: Floki's daughter is 16. If my guess for her age is accurate and the guidebook is right about Helga's age, then Helga's brother is at least 38 years old when he marries Floki's daughter.)
Battle of London Bridge: Floki 45; Floki's daughter 23-24; Baldr's father 45+; his younger sister Helga 44; Baldr ~6; Helga's daughter Ylva 27; Thorfinn 17; Thorkell 50
3rd arc begins and we meet Baldr: Floki 49 going on 50; daughter would be 26-27 if alive; Baldr's father would be 49 or older if alive!!!; his younger sister Helga 48; Baldr 10; Helga's daughter Ylva 31; Thorfinn 21; Thorkell 54
If all this is true, it's strange that a chieftain's only son would wait that long to marry and have children. Baldr's father wouldn't have been the automatic heir, but he would've been a very good candidate and the chieftain's most likely choice. However, in this case we know that Thors was Sigvaldi's favored heir while he was still around. It's odd that Yukimura would choose to make Floki's daughter the mother instead of just giving Sigvaldi two daughters and Floki a son, which would explain why Baldr was the potential candidate instead of his father. Maybe something was lacking in Baldr's father that made him less than appealing as an heir. Even with Floki being Floki, I do find it hard to believe that such a loving grandfather would marry his daughter to a man of poor character, so maybe Baldr's dad just wasn't very good at fighting, which Floki would see as immaterial to his purposes.
It's also strange that Sigvaldi died without naming an heir at all. Perhaps he did name his son as successor after Thors vanished, but then when his son was killed he was too disheartened to pick another one? I think that seems more likely.
In that case, the heir situation would be: Sigvaldi favors Thors until his disappearance, then favors his own son, then Sigvaldi fails to choose or name anyone after his son's death, then dies himself. The death of Baldr's father leaves a hitch in Floki's plans, because presumably his original idea was for his son-in-law, Sigvaldi's son, to inherit from Sigvaldi, then choose his own son Baldr as heir when Baldr is a suitable age. Now Floki is left with a 10-year-old Baldr who has to be pushed into the chieftain position at any cost, because his own father was the only one guaranteed to pick him as heir.
One other problem seems to confront us. How could the active leader of the Jomsvikings have a son who was already closing in on their mandatory retirement age? If the guidebook is right about Helga's age, her father Sigvaldi would have to be at least 65 when he died, in order to have a son who's older than her. But the guidebook also says that Thorkell is 50 at the battle of London Bridge, and 24 when he meets Thors for the last time (he's the same age as Thors). And according to the manga itself, Sigvaldi is his older brother. When Floki meets him at London Bridge, he refers to Sigvaldi as "anija no Sigvaldi", "your elder brother Sigvaldi".
It seems pretty much impossible that Thors wasn't in his early 20s when he left the Jomsvikings. So even if the guidebook is a couple of years off with Thorkell's age, we know he must have been around 50 at London Bridge, just by the number of years that canonically passed. If his older brother was serving as chieftain then, then it must simply be canon that they were both allowed to serve long past the usual age because they were physically exceptional.
Do not screencap any portion of my work and repost it without credit. I've had so many problems with plagiarism in this fandom that I have to ask this now. Don't engage with my posts at all if you have any kind of involvement with the unrepentant plagiarist and harasser Enoch (usernames Vobomon/olmar_ormr/wyrmhere). When I posted these threads on Twitter, she pretended to be friendly and appreciative in order to gain my trust, only to spend 5 months plagiarizing them and passing off numerous observations as her own original thoughts. She never retweeted a single post from me, or credited me for anything she had lifted or repeated.
gunnar: oooookaaaayyyy girl…… 🙄 i see you…
Ketil is now retired and blind in one eye--possibly a metaphor, though i don't really like disability as ironic punishment. he's trapped in the past, his ability to see in front of him is literally halved as he thinks of this false image he constructed, not even the real Arnheid
Olmar's story never really connects with the slave-rights part of the narrative that mostly revolved around Sverkel, but presumably he and Sverkel will have more of a relationship now, and in any case the farm is much smaller and can be worked by the family/paid labor
we finally see Olmar in suitable work clothes, and his hair is out of the tightly-controlled hairstyle that represented his attempts to keep forcing himself into this violent, belligerent persona that was never completely natural. god his nose used to be so fat, i miss that 😢
i think i was careless when i said Olmar "didn't grow up working the farm"; if he can use a plow then he's way ahead of Snake. it's more that his application is sloppy and he was able to run off when he felt like it--parallel to modern delinquents skipping school
Olmar is one of the rare characters in the narrative who demonstrate truly innovative thought processes: just about everyone is a normal person guided by the rules they were taught were correct, not a visionary who can invent new moral principles out of whole cloth.
people in vs need an example, a lecture, a memorable statement from someone inspiring before they can really shift their way of thinking into something new. this is how most people work.
Olmar is stuck in his ways for a long time and is taken for a fool by everyone around him, but his revelation is purely his own work. nobody gives him a good example or a motto that he can turn over in his head and decide to follow…
…but when he's faced with the consequences of his actions, really for the first time, he's able to process this on his own and arrive at a complete reversal of his previous way of thinking.
honor is bullshit. if he had taken actions that are supposed to be shameful, that would have been better, as long as it prevented this from happening. in fact, the definition of courage that everyone else uses must be wrong, if this is where it leads.
almost no one else in the story demonstrates this kind of unassisted change, which speaks to a genuine compassion, strength of spirit, and critical thinking ability that he was certainly never taught.
Ketil enjoys wealth for the material things it can give him, but it's also a crucial part of how he makes himself feel secure. no one can attack him if he's rich enough to buy protection from the king himself. this same wealth shielded Olmar from consequences until he was 20…
Up until then, we see him looking down on the workers around him, assuming his father's armed security forces are useless, drinking their liquor to excess, insulting them to their faces, threatening the life of an unarmed merchant b/c he felt like picking a fight to show off…
while his parents are abusive, and we don't see any hints that they even have calmer moments with him where everyone is acting normal, it's always Ketil's money that makes people treat him with kid gloves.
even destroying an unarmed merchant's wares and threatening his life in public is brushed off because Ketil can immediately defuse things by paying for the material damages, and also has the social skills to make conversation afterward.
so the war is the first time he's had to deal with more than being embarrassed. and in this critical situation, he's able to do what Ketil cannot: he can accept that he feels bad, he made a mistake, and he has to make up for it. Ketil cannot sit with negative emotions about…
himself. everything has to be transmuted into the outside world attacking him. for the entirety of the prologue, Thorfinn does the same thing. he represses his guilt and runs away from his inner feelings, & when this bubbles up into anger he takes it out on people he sees as weak
the farmer-warrior dichotomy in this series is the dichotomy between creator and destroyer, with slave as the third class, the ultimate embodiment of the exploited and oppressed. just as Thorfinn travels from destroyer/exploiter to exploited to creator…
Olmar discovers where real value lies: in the creator role he was born into, but spent his whole life trying to repress and destroy within himself. the cost of gaining that power over other people is a sacrifice his brother can make easily, and it's not right for that to be easy
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guy in the middle is the one who tries to rape Arnheid. he gets off scot free with no commentary, and his actions or possible predilections are never discussed again.
this too is part of what Thorfinn's philosophy demands--we can't kill people like this either, much less for something they didn't actually do. perhaps notable that he doesn't speak in the guests' last scene, and his face is obscured as if Ykmr didn't know how to manage this
the Japanese version of Thorgil's last page says "nobody knows what happened to him"--the guidebook reveals that Ykmr had one idea but decided including it wouldn't add anything to the story. i translated this but deleted my work b/c people here cannot act like adults. 🤷♂️
King Cnut the Great is remembered as one of history's greatest tyrants. A conclave of historians, speaking in unison, cite his relentless persecution of "cutest boy ever", attested to in some of the few remaining fragments of the Viking age.
He is remembered for his persistent teen virginity, in sharp contrast to Olmar having a cute gf who wanted to have his children.
Do not screencap any portion of my work and repost it without credit. I've had so many problems with plagiarism in this fandom that I have to ask this now. Don't engage with my posts at all if you have any kind of involvement with the unrepentant plagiarist and harasser Enoch (usernames Vobomon/olmar_ormr/wyrmhere). When I posted these threads on Twitter, she pretended to be friendly and appreciative in order to gain my trust, only to spend 5 months plagiarizing them and passing off numerous observations as her own original thoughts. She never retweeted a single post from me, or credited me for anything she had lifted or repeated.
#specialhorse !!!
the two paths of revelation have to merge here; Olmar is spreading the message about honor being bullshit, but he and Snake have yet to see what it looks like in action. Thorfinn is taking all this punishment not just randomly but to accomplish something he could easily brush off
this is a sort of jesus moment: a figure being punished for the sins of others in order to save a bunch of strangers. this is nothing new; earlier Thorfinn was listening to a bible passage that perfectly describes Willibald's idea of love/agape:
"And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?" back then, Snake rejected all this as boring, but now, having seen so many material consequences of people (including himself) putting honor over human life, he's ready to listen
Ykmr says the same thing in the guidebook: if we define "love" as something you feel for your friends and family, the people who are good to you (he says), then there's nothing all that impressive about it. it's something ordinary that anyone could do.
now, at this stage, something happens that i made a lengthy post about on tumblr. the anime makes several decisions that completely ruin the entire story preceding this and everything after it. season 3 is pre-ruined by what they warp Thorfinn and Einar into at this moment.
the anime removes Einar's line mentioning Arnheid, bringing her presence back into the story. and they completely alter Thorfinn's lines and turn him into Ketil's pr department. he tells Einar that he owes Ketil a lot for being nice to him and helping him get settled in.
in the manga, Thorfinn says to forget about Ketil, to remove him from the equation entirely. and in Japanese, he calls him just "danna", "the master". that's in the manga, mind. before Arnheid's death, he calls him "danna-sama" with a respectful honorific. that has changed.
in the manga, Thorfinn emphasizes what they owe to Pater and Sverkel, and their basic moral responsibility not to run away when there's a chance they could save 100s of lives. the anime changes this to make him express gratitude to Ketil, his owner who just murdered their friend
the anime also adds a montage of Thorfinn engaging in funny slave antics, like being bad at the chores his slave owners want him to do, because he's their property and they own him. this montage implies that Ketil and his wife were very giving and patient with their silly slave.
and the biggest tell of all, the anime deliberately and with malice aforethought alters Thorfinn's lines about Ketil so he's still calling him "danna-sama" as if he respects him! the real Thorfinn from the manga is just saying "danna" now.
and anime Einar, hearing that Thorfinn thinks he owes Ketil a lot for really sorting him out and being nice when he was learning the slave trade, just agrees with him like this is an undeniable, logical truth. what the fuck? they buried the woman Ketil murdered not 1 hour ago
so basically, from here on out, anime Thorfinn and Einar are canonically rape and slavery apologists who think men should get a break on murdering women, as long as they do the right thing by other men. there's no erasing what the anime decided they should say here.
anime Thorfinn literally does the "look man, he helped me through a really difficult time" meme. and the narrative upholds that as the truth, because as all the anime original scenes show, this narrative believes women are disposable murder fodder, whereas Ketil made Graduation
anyway, here's manga Thorfinn, who has human emotions to go with his philosophical positions. he's upset that Arnheid was killed and doesn't even try to argue that Ketil deserves something from them. he knows his goals are somewhat at war with natural instinctive emotions.
this whole scene is often boiled down to 🐱 vs 👑, a dangerous reduction of the message here. they are not the two poles of human opinion, standing on top of humanity in the abstract. Einar is an essential third part of the conversation. he is not their philosophical tool
he's entirely right in calling 👑 a robber. one of his first lines upon landing here is basically a mafia cliche. he sure hopes no one gets hurt trying to resist his violent tyranny. and 👑 knows this; the head represents his own thoughts of himself (per the guidebook)
rarely discussed is the fact that the head does indeed represent his thoughts and impulses, not an actual outside force. so this did almost happen.
fucking loser at movie all by himself
the amount of litter… my god…
again, Einar is a key part of this. ordinary people like him are not an erasable part of the conversation between the warrior-philosopher-ruler class.
economic exploitation is a key part of this arc; Ketil and 👑 are both part of the elite, the people who wield power not physically but through wealth and social influence. they profit from the labor of others and force them into battle where they please
believing themselves to be alone in a hostile world, both men become even more dangerous to the common person as the effects of isolation take their toll. this war and these deaths are a consequence not just of individual whims, but the fact that this level of power exists at all
a slight echo of the Iron Fist myth, but this time it's a feat of diplomacy designed to ease Olmar's transition into his new job. it also keeps Thorfinn and Einar from having to interact with Ketil again, because as the anime wants us to forget, they don't like him anymore
this tends more towards restorative justice than a lot of people like, but if you agree with restorative justice then this is the correct choice. in this time and place, there is no option where anyone "wins". the justice system doesn't recognize Ketil's actions as criminal.
if anyone did kill him, they'd have to kill his wife to keep her from taking it to the "courts", along with any local farmers who seem like they might snitch. the culprit would be on the run for the rest of their life, and if Olmar fails to seek revenge, he'll be ruined
so, Ketil is just removed from power, and the people who can't deal with seeing him don't have to see him anymore. what is justice for Arnheid? it doesn't exist. it went out the window when her young child was killed in front of her. justice is her alive and free with her family.
i was startled to discover that he's just speaking normally in the japanese manga. so that wasn't a change by the anime; they just made his face less goofy. i think in retrospect this is a rare bad call by the tl, as people are often bothered by the tone it creates.
(narrator several weeks later): they could have used that coin.
as i've mentioned before, sharing his real name is a deep expression of trust, because he and the other guests are all on the run from the law.
it occurs to me that he must've been back in Scandinavia for a while after being in the Varangian Guard, because that's a Norse custom and law, so obviously whatever crime he committed was on Norse land.
