Karli

Blue-eyed and topped with wavy red hair, Karli has faint eyebrows and a flush of rosy cheeks. In infancy his face is round and plump, softening as he grows. The blue tunic he wears as a baby gives way to a green one in his boyhood.

As an infant Karli is fretful and given to crying, yet he bonds quickly with Thorfinn and Gudrid. He also proves strikingly bright for his years. When Hild lays out her idea that the Earth is round, the boy grasps it immediately, puzzling over how someone going around and around never falls off and concluding the middle must point downward. Hild reflects that at just four he is sharper than most grown men.

Karli is born to a friend of Arngrim, who was in turn a companion of Leif. Vikings siding with Gisli, during his quarrel with Arngrim, kill the boy's parents. Thorfinn and his men come upon the child in the ruins of his home, watched over by his dying mother, and bring him along on their way to Miklagard. Thorfinn and Gudrid go on to adopt him, presenting him as their own once they arrive back in Iceland, and in time he sails with them to Vinland.