Einar

Tall and auburn-haired, Einar is introduced at twenty in 1015. The manga colors his eyes brown, while the anime makes them blue. Long years of grueling fieldwork build him into a muscular figure, and a small mole marks the left side of his nose's bridge.

Einar stands among Thorfinn's plainer-spoken friends, quick to let his feelings show. For all his bluntness, he reads the people around him keenly and grasps Thorfinn's inner turmoil better than most. Aware that he is no fighter, he pledges to aid Thorfinn in whatever way he can and proves a steady, welcoming presence. There is a bashful side to him too, and Arnheid's praise leaves him flustered and red-faced.

Einar hails from northern England, where the villagers descend from Norse settlers and so speak both Norse and English. In his boyhood, soldiers of England's king raid the village and kill his father. Years afterward a Danish force overruns the place, butchers his remaining kin, and sells Einar into bondage. Shipped off and auctioned, he lands on Ketil's farm, where he meets Thorfinn and the two are set to clearing woodland for new fields in exchange for their freedom. Friendship does not come at once, but as they labor side by side and Einar comes to understand Thorfinn's history and wounded mind, he takes him first as a friend and then as a brother. Arnheid's death binds them to a shared purpose: raising a nation in Vinland with neither slavery nor bloodshed.