Garm

A lanky young man of about average height, Garm has thin eyebrows and hair teased into upward spikes. Partway through the Eastern Expedition Arc, a headband becomes part of his look. His custom-forged spear is a constant fixture at his side.

Over the years he has collected a heap of cruel nicknames, from Garm the Hellhound to Man-eater and Little Demon, and his own father dismisses him as a worthless brat.

In essence Garm is a psychopath who regards killing as a joyful pastime and cannot fathom why Thorfinn would give it up. His craving for a genuine challenge makes him a near-mirror of Thorkell, and he insists that nothing surpasses a duel to the death, half-wishing some worthy foe might finally finish him. Loud, cocky, and hungry for the spotlight, he revels in spectacle and even in playing the villain, as when he snatches Leif, Einar, and Gudrid to lure Thorfinn into a fight.

His recklessness knows few limits: he beheads the commander Vagn though ordered only to kill Thorfinn, then shrugs off every warning of the fallout. His sense of friendship is so twisted that he simply announces Thorfinn is his friend, worth measured purely by skill in combat. For all the swagger, he is genuinely shrewd, a capable tracker and hunter who sniffs out assassins, judges a person's strength from their bearing, and slips behind enemy lines with ease.

Garm's early years are defined by rejection. Branded Garm the Hellhound and cast off even by his father, he is stoned and barred from the other children's games, most likely because his violence surfaces young; he once bites off a playmate's ear, blind to where a game ought to stop. When some children fetch three armed young men to teach him a lesson, he slays all three and celebrates the win, then cuts down the Vikings and farmers who come to punish him, laughing all the while.

He enters the main story by dispatching an assassin sent after Floki's grandson Baldr, then prods Floki for thanks and a real fight. Floki instead sends him to kill Thorfinn, seen as a danger to Baldr's claim to leadership. Disguised among Vagn's ranks, Garm beheads the commander and trails Thorfinn into a forest, dangling the severed head as bait, but Thorfinn only flees. Though Garm overtakes him with humiliating ease, wounds him, and runs him through the belly with a spear that splits into two short blades, Thorfinn refuses to strike back and escapes again.

Exasperated, Garm abducts Leif, Einar, and Gudrid and leaves Bug-Eyes to summon Thorfinn to the looming battle at Jomsborg. Carrying Vagn's head home earns him not gratitude but Floki's rage, since the deed has cost Floki his pact with Thorkell, and Floki jails him as an apology to hand over. Delivered to Thorkell, Garm baits the giant into a personal duel that ends in a draw, and the impressed warriors set him loose. He resurfaces amid the Baltic war, scaling Jomsborg's walls to recover his seized spear and at last cornering Thorfinn for a rematch. This time Thorfinn goads him into blind fury and drops him with a headbutt, the same trick Askeladd once worked on Thorfinn himself. Garm comes to laughing, fussing more over his lost spear than his ruined face, and leaves by cheerfully naming a baffled Thorfinn his friend.