hiccup is left-handed. by all means, this is a famous observation within the fandom! still, something i haven’t seen people discuss much is how significant it is for hiccup to be a vinstri (ᚢᛁᚾᛋᛏᚱᛁ, “left-handed man”) within his broader cultural and historical context. and what a good job the animated movies do in seamlessly telling that tale!
it’s established within the movies and even the series that hiccup is a lefty: he uses his left hand to write, sketch, and reach for objects. it’s a very subtle yet noticeable detail in the trilogies, and it’s one that’s carried over into the short films and series as well; a constant reminder of his otherness, if nothing else.
so it’s no surprise that when hiccup first meets toothless in the woods, he’s holding a dagger in his left hand. he’s stunned and amazed because he managed to get a night fury, and his first instinct is to point the blade right at him without much thought. this is his natural state.
but as he approaches toothless, he starts to hold the blade with both of his hands, using his dominant left to steady his trembling right. he’s trying to be what he thinks a viking should be. that’s how we start his monologue.
there are a couple of interesting points here that we can connect to history.
first, old norse warrior traditions were deeply rooted in duties of honour, law and vengeance. this latter pillar was seen more as a duty and even had a special name, hefnd (ᚼᛁᚠᚾᛏ, “right of vengeance”). rather than a personal vendetta guided by one’s own morals, it was a solemn and binding obligation, one that was tied to one’s kin and tribe, and the memory of the slain. the sagas, our primary source of knowledge on such matters, are filled with accounts of men who made vows to avenge a father, brother, spouse or friend. in the HTTYD universe, we can even consider that it’s one of the reasons why the berkians are so keen on exterminating the dragons: it is their right, for many of them have fallen to those beasts, as stoick himself puts it. therefore, it’s a continuous cycle of death and revenge justified by customary, borderline religious rites.
can we really say that hiccup thought he was executing hefnd here? yes! other than his speech format resembling a heitstrenging (ᚼᛁᛁᛏᛋᛏᚱᛁᚾᚴᛁᚾᚴ, “a vow of strength”), which was a promise made while a man stood before a beast and swore to perform great deeds, generally including the slaying of a specific foe, there’s another detail in hiccup’s speech. (p.s breaking a vow of strength would, by custom, bring immense shame upon the man and his entire family.)
hiccup says, “then i’ll cut out your heart and take it to my father.” this isn’t just a tough-sounding line; it’s a direct reference to old norse heroic literature. the act of taking an enemy’s heart for revenge is a motif found within the epics of the north, though it is a rare and extreme example of vengeance, not a customary practice.
the most famous and oft-cited instance of this comes not from the icelandic sagas, which tend to be more grounded in historical reality, but from the legendary material, specifically the tale of hervor in the hervarar saga ok heiðreks. in a particularly gruesome part of the saga, a character named hjálmar defeats the champion angantýr and the other berserkers, but is himself mortally wounded. the saga describes hjálmar asking his companion, a character named oddr, to cut out angantýr’s heart and to take it with them. another and perhaps even more famous instance is found in the myths surrounding the hero sigurd the dragon slayer of the völsunga saga: in some versions, he takes reginn’s heart rather than his head.
hiccup is taking inspiration from these tales, even if they were not common traditions by the legal and social norms of medieval scandinavia. taking a heart was a symbolic act of complete annihilation, and a mark of a legend, not a typical man.
he is trying to perform, to live by the great names. so much so that he changed the position of his blade: on this scene, when he’s seconds away from slaying toothless, he supports his trembling right hand with his left. hiccup, who is already seen by his own people as “not viking enough”, is consciously acting with his dagger, trying to prove to himself he can fit in, wanting to be a vinstri no longer. he wanted to be víss (ᚢᛁᛋᛋ, “a man”/“a right man”).
here, it’s important to note: the daily world of the norseman was constructed for the right-handed. most tools, from axes for splitting wood to tools for carving bone or wood, would have been crafted with a right-handed grip in mind. a vinstri would have had to adapt, either by using his non-dominant hand or by using tools in a way they were not intended. oftentimes, a vinstri would even be denied participation in battles or in some daily tasks, being ostracised and outcasted if they could not change. why, you ask?
tactical techniques, battle arrays and, most importantly, the participation in skjaldborg (ᛋᚴᛁᛅᛚᛏᛒᚢᚱᚴ, “shield wall/rampart of shields”). this was the greatest challenge for left-handed warriors, because shield walls relied on a warrior holding his shield in his left hand, protecting his left side and the right side of the man next to him, while his right hand, holding a spear or sword, would then be free to strike. this discipline was what made it possible to create the o so famous unbreakeable barrier we see referenced in movies, comics, etc. left-handed warriors were either placed on the flanks of the formation, so that their unique stance would be less of a liability, and therefore trained to become one of the starting, warcrying berseker soldiers, or they were placed in the skirmishes with bows and arrows instead. if they were not physically apt enough, they were simply denied on the battlefield or in more demanding activities. and, as it’s shown in the first movie, hiccup was completely rejected from any participation in action; his lack of technique and his scrawniness are brought up again and again.
so, i repeat: he is performing. he wants to be a regular viking so, so bad. he knows this is his one true chance. but he’s not like them. his left hand literally stops him.
it’s not that he couldn’t kill a dragon; he clearly could. he never stuttered while declaring his heitstrenging, and he seemed to perfectly understand his right of vengeance with his tribe as well. it’s just that hiccup didn’t see an enemy in the night fury in front of him.
if so; what honour was there to kill him? was there really any honour at all? is this really the way to become a víss? did he really want to be a legend at that cost? throughout the story, he had been debating over the status he would gain if he were to kill this or that dragon; yet, in that single moment, with toothless scared and thinking that would be his end, hiccup finds that he does not want to become that kind of legend.
it is a choice. it is goodness. it is shame.
“i did this.”
he is not a regular warrior/viking. not like those sung by epic tales, at least.
he cuts toothless’ ropes down with his left hand. can you guess which hand he used to try and calm down hookfang, too?
in more than one way, he’s making history with his own hands. he is choosing to be more than an ordinary viking. he’s choosing to write his saga in his own terms in that single moment. rather than performance, rather than following tradition blindly, he’s risking everything not because he can’t follow the moulds of his forefathers, but because he sees something more to it. he will not follow unquestioningly; he will not do something if it does not make sense to him. he embraces change and life, and the different, the other. he’s inviting every challenge that comes from that decision: the world was not made for people like him, but he’ll forge as he thinks it’s right. even if that means that’s with his left. it is a delicious, wonderful narrative tool for his journey as a character!
AND, while some might say that this makes him not a viking hero, i think this paradoxically cements him as being one. not the traditional or the greatest, but gods, is he the one that his world needed.
