Asgeir

Of ordinary build, Asgeir sports long hair, a mustache, and a plaited beard. He favors a sword and keeps a dagger tucked at his belt, though the manga rarely shows him in the thick of a fight. His true value lies in a sharp mind: he is far more often found counseling Thorkell or directing battle plans than trading blows.

In most company Asgeir reads as calm and controlled, but Thorkell undoes that at once. Around his captain he grows heated and short-tempered, prone to shouting at him and to open panic whenever the big man's life is on the line.

Asgeir first appears during the England campaign, turning up briefly at Thorkell's side before slipping into a run of minor background moments. His first real spotlight comes when he cuts into the clash between Thorkell and Thorfinn, threatening the young man's life. His bond with Thorkell runs unusually deep: he is one of the few people the captain treats as an equal, whose counsel he heeds and to whom he hands the planning from the Baltic campaign onward.

Asgeir returns that trust with respect, addressing his leader by rank rather than name in public and valuing the captain's life above the Viking creed of a warrior's pride. He shows no fear of Thorkell even when the huge man tries to throttle him. His view of Sigurd starts sour, and he needles the youth by deliberately using the wrong name through much of the Baltic Sea War, but Sigurd wins him over by finding the hidden way into the Jomsborg fortress, a test Asgeir had doubted he could pass. Impressed, he offers Sigurd a boat and a place among Thorkell's men, which Sigurd declines.