CBR18 Bingo – Versus: it’s literally about Vikings.
My tolerance for real violence is much lower than my tolerance for fictional violence. So when I read fictionalized versions of real war, I bounce between “cool battle!” and “I hate that this happened.”
Makoto Yukimura’s Vinland Saga heavily leans toward the “I hate that this happened” reaction because the battles aren’t cool. They’re just violent and sad.
Thorfinn is a Viking boy in Iceland. He has a happy life that’s full of sheep and stories from Leif Erikson. Through a series of Viking events, Thorfinn is ripped out of this idyllic setup early in the story. His father dies and he’s lost to his mother, sister, and Leif Erikson.
He goes far from his father’s belief that no one has enemies. It’s a hard thing to understand.
Thorfinn joins a mercenary group run by his supposed enemy, Askeladd. They attack the English countryside and kill a lot of people. Yukimura does not soften the pillaging and raping that the Vikings are known for, or pretend Thorfinn isn’t complicit just because he doesn’t do those specific things.
Thorfinn doesn’t care about anything but killing Askeladd, which eventually has him end up as a slave on a Danish farm. There he realizes Askeladd was never his enemy. Askeladd was just a person, like Thorfinn, like King Canute, and everyone they killed and protected and ignored.
Thorfinn becomes a pacifist dreaming about a utopian colony in Vinland with no slavery or war. He renounced violence. He couldn’t continue to exist otherwise.
This is the first half of the story and none of it actually happened to the real Thorfinn. The second half of the story is spoiled by looking up these people on Wikipedia. Which I did.
