Vinland Sagais a historical fiction anime set during the time of the Vikings. It is one of thehottest anime this season, featuring a tale of violence, war, and loss. The main character of the series, Thorfinn, gradually changes over the course of the series.
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From a small and innocent child to an angry revenge hungry teen, into a despondent man, and then finally into a resolute and empathetic leader, Thorfinn’s journey is full of trials and tribulations.
10Incredible Speed And Agility
Thorfinn is noted as having great speed and agility. He is seen scaling walls, weaving between attacks, and winning fights using his speed alone. Even when he’s just a young child, he kills a fully grown man because of his skills, and they only increase over time.
At 17, he faces off against Thorkell, a massive hulk with ridiculous strength. Although he loses that altercation, the fight is abeautifully choreographed art piece. Thorkell admits to being impressed by his ability and says that he looks forward to their next fight.
9Age At Different Points
Thorfinn went through a lot at a young age. He saw his father getting brutally murdered in front of him by Askeladd when he was 6 years old. Then he joined Askeladd’s group in hopes of growing strong enough to defeat him in a duel and avenge his father honorably. He stayed with him for eleven years.
At the age of 17-18, he saw Askeladd die at the hands of Canute and ended up becoming a slave for four more years. Leif Erikson found him when he was about 25 years of age.
Although Thorfinn is a fighter, he has never gotten a visible scar throughout the series. All of them are easily hidden underneath his clothes. However, during his slave arc, he undergoes a tangible transformation.
He gains two major scars on his face, one on his ear and the other going from his temple to his jaw. This symbolically represents Thorfinn accepting his past self’s actions as atrocious and not stuffing them in the back of his mind as a way to cope with the trauma of killing hundreds of people.
7He Lost Mock Battles as a Child
Although he is an accomplished fighter at the current time, this wasn’t always the case. When he was a young boy in Iceland, Thorfinn was notorious in his village for losing every fight he got into. As he grows up and goes through the intense hardships in his life, Thorfinn overcomes his shortcomings and advances greatly as a fighter.
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There is an incredibly visceral scene where he kills his first man, and the horror on his face is quite apparent. However, after that incident, Thorfinn truly starts to grow as a fighter. To the point where even Thorkell,one of the best fighterson the opposing side, admits his potential.
Since the birthday of Thorfinn Karlsefni, the person Thorfinn the character is based on, isn’t known, the author refused to give his character a birthday for a while.
However, after some time, he gave into peer pressure, took some artistic liberties, and announced February 3rd as Thorfinn’s birthday.
5Motivation In Life
Thorfinn is an incredibly complex and nuanced character. He witnessed his father’s death at the hands of Askeladd and vowed to take revenge. Yet he became a student of that very killer. His motivation for living for a very long time was to take revenge for his father.
Eventually, Askeladd died. But not at his hands. After losing his one motivation, Thorfinn became lost and drifted with the current of the times. Without care for a thing in the world, he remained a slave for four to five years but eventually found purpose in searching for a peaceful land to settle.
As a child, Thorfinn went through an intense amount of trauma. First, he saw his father die, then he became the apprentice of the very man who committed the murder, and then he became a killing machine for the sake of getting strong enough to take revenge.
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As a slave, he didn’t have the adrenaline of battle to take his mind off the horrible things he had done during his time under Askeladd and regularly saw nightmares of all the people he had murdered in cold blood. All the repressed trauma came back to haunt him and gave him so much guilt that he vowed never to do harm again, becoming a pacifist.
3His Mother Recognizes Him After Almost Two Decades
Leif Erikson set out to find his friend’s presumably dead child and found out that he was now a slave. After years of searching, he finally found Thorfinn and brought him back to Iceland, where his mother and sister were living.
Thorfinn’s sister, Ylva, doesn’t recognize him because the last time she saw him was when he was six years old. His mother, Helga, immediately realizes it’s her child and even comments that he has his father’s eyes.
2He Withstood A 100 Strikes
Canute, the then-King, came to claim the land on which Thorfinn was kept a slave. This was not out of pity for Thorfinn. He didn’t even know Thorfinn was residing there. Seeing that conflict was brewing that would end in a devastating loss for his master and friends, Thorfinn took matters into his own hands.
He went to gain an audience with the King but was denied. However, he bet that he could withstand a hundred blows from the King’s guard, Drott. And he succeeded, although with a lot of difficulties. He was granted the audience afterward and convinced his old friend to leave his farm alone.
1Based On A Real Person
The character of Thorfinn is largely based on the real-life Icelandic explorer by the same name, Thorfinn Karlsefni. He is recorded in several notable works such as “The Saga of Greenlanders” and “Saga of Eirik The Red.”
He is said to have traveled to Vinland (Current time America) and tried to settle there with his wife. The exact accounts differ to a large degree about the details of the voyage, but everyone agrees that he tried and failed to settle in Vinland.
