Character · Vinland Saga
Thorfinn
A boy sails with the men who killed his father, works for them, and asks their captain for a duel every time he earns one.
In Otakana the clue reads: Boy raised among Vikings to avenge his father
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Vinland Saga
- Letters
- 8 · Normal
Thorfinn is six when he stows away on the ship carrying his father's body home, and eleven when the arrangement settles into its shape: he fights for Askeladd's band, takes the most dangerous jobs, and collects a duel as payment. He loses every duel. Then he waits for the next raid so he can earn another one, and the years go by while he learns nothing except knife work.
The knives are the tell. He fights with two short blades rather than a sword, low and fast, in a style that suits someone small and furious. What he does not have is any life outside the ledger of revenge, and Makoto Yukimura is careful to show what that costs. He barely speaks. He has no friends. He is a very good killer and about eleven years old.
Yukimura took the name from Thorfinn Karlsefni, an Icelandic trader recorded in the sagas as leading an attempted settlement in Vinland, which is the North American coast the Norse reached around the year 1000. The manga's title is a promise about where that boy eventually points himself.
Spelling THORFINN
THORFINN runs eight letters and ends in a double N, which is where most guesses stop one letter short. The TH cluster does not exist in Japanese, so the show says トルフィン, roughly Torufin, with no TH and a rolled R. Read it as Norse rather than as anything you heard: THOR at the front, FINN at the back, and nothing in between.