Hordaland

Hordaland is a lovely young woman with pale blue eyes and long, light-blonde hair. Her clothing pairs cyan overalls worn over a white garment trimmed in gold, finished off with brown shoes.

Despite the harsh life forced on her, Hordaland stays remarkably kind. Even though Gorm regularly beats her, she recoils at the very idea of taking his life, unwilling to answer cruelty with cruelty.

Hordaland first appears at the side of the merchant Gorm as he bargains with Askeladd. When Gorm orders her to fetch costly wine to toast his guests, she stands frozen and staring at the floor until his irritated second command jolts her into moving. Her name catches Askeladd's ear as a district of Norway, and Gorm explains that she was born to a feudal lord there before his defeat in war tore the family apart and drove her into slavery. He grumbles that she was a pricey, sluggish purchase and that highborn girls are proud and useless, to which Askeladd counters that her poor value is Gorm's own failing rather than hers.

That evening, while serving food at the feast, she drops part of a dish, and Gorm lashes her with a whip, jeering at her clumsiness as she sits and endures the blows without resistance. Askeladd notes the irony of a man enslaved to money mocking another for being a slave. Gorm then sends her out to a longship carrying a basket for Thorfinn, who wakes at her touch and reflexively presses a blade to her throat before realizing she is only a girl. As he eats, she wonders aloud whether he too is a slave, since he sleeps outside, but he insists he is a warrior there by his own choice. When she says the two of them are alike, he coldly rejects the comparison and tells her that in her place he would kill Gorm and anyone who came after him. She answers that she could never kill, and he replies harshly that her mercy is exactly why she will remain a slave forever. Hordaland says flight would change nothing, since every place brims with war and suffering, and Thorfinn, echoing words Thors once spoke to a dying slave, describes a warm and fertile land beyond the sea called Vinland where no slavery or war exists and no one could ever find her. She asks whether such a place is truly real, but he only gazes up at the snowy sky and gives no reply.