Baldr

Baldr is a fair-haired boy, roughly ten years old when he first appears in the story.

Though Floki grooms him for command, Baldr has no appetite for leadership and bristles at the constant restrictions placed on him in the name of his safety. He is far more attuned to the intrigue around him than his grandfather assumes, and beneath his gentle love of fishing he holds a stark wish: for the Jomsvikings and their endless wars to be gone for good.

Baldr's mother and father were both killed in the power struggles that grip the Jomsvikings, leaving his grandfather Floki determined to shield him and to make him the group's next leader. Sharper about the surrounding schemes than Floki credits, Baldr works with sympathetic servants to free Gudrid and her companions after they are imprisoned in Floki's fortress, and he admits he had never once thought of leaving with them until the chance was offered.

When Thorfinn's fury at Floki, the man behind his father's murder, boils over, Baldr shields his grandfather by placing his own life in the way, declaring himself to blame for failing to rein Floki in and revealing that he had never doubted the old man was capable of arranging the death of Thors. After Thorfinn dissolves the Jomsvikings, Baldr is free to sail away from Jomsborg with a few loyal servants and his now-powerless grandfather, and he is last seen comforting Floki and coaxing him to fish for their supper.