Ketil

Now in his mid-forties, Ketil is a heavyset figure whose thick frame carries both real muscle and a good deal of padding. He stands 175 centimeters and weighs roughly ninety kilograms. A mane of long blond hair falls past a full, shaggy beard of the same color, and the lines of middle age have settled into his face.

In ordinary times Ketil comes across as warm, self-assured, and easy in his own skin. He labors in the fields beside his workers rather than lording over them, and he lets most of his slaves earn their way toward freedom, Arnheid being the pointed exception. Beneath that agreeable surface, though, sits a man reluctant to do the hard right thing. His father Sverkel judges him grasping and shortsighted, since Ketil grew the inherited farm far past what he could defend, then leaned on tributes to King Sweyn and a crew of hired Guests to keep thieves at bay.

Much of his reputation rests on a lie. For years he passed himself off as the dreaded fighter called Iron Fist Ketil, wearing another warrior's name and victories as his own. That fraud clashes with how he actually behaves: he grieves over the plight of Sture and Thora and shrinks from punishing them, and he is openly horrified by the cruel penalties his son Thorgil proposes, yet stays silent instead of stopping them. When pressure mounts or his pride is stung, the pleasant mask slips fast. He read Arnheid's attempt to flee with her husband as a personal betrayal and beat her so savagely that Snake had to pull him off before he killed her. Enraged, he also gambles everything on a doomed stand against Canute's trained soldiers with nothing but a handful of untrained farmhands.

Ketil took over a sprawling estate from his father Sverkel and expanded it aggressively, eventually owing tribute to King Sweyn to secure protection for all that land. He lived there with his wife and sons Thorgil and Olmar, having already married off the daughter born between them. His respected name traded on the fame of a legendary warrior, and he cultivated the image of a fair-minded master who let his slaves buy their liberty, though never Arnheid.

In October 1018 an invitation to meet King Canute delighted him, but the king only wanted an excuse to seize the estate and refill his treasury. The pretext came when Olmar humiliated himself before them both, then killed Canute's messenger, while Thorgil cut down several more of the king's men. Mortified, Ketil was smuggled home inside a barrel by Leif Ericson, refusing to leave it even at sea. Back at the farm he learned that Arnheid, whom he kept as a concubine, had tried to run off with her husband Gardar. He beat her in a blind fury, ignoring her true claim that she carried his child, and Snake had to stop him before the blows killed her. She miscarried and soon died of her wounds.

When Canute's army arrived, Ketil rallied his people and charged. During the fighting Snake told the Guests the truth, that their employer had stolen the real Iron Fist's name and deeds. The attack collapsed and Ketil was clubbed unconscious. He survived, but news of Arnheid's death hollowed him out, and he ended a broken man. Olmar inherited the farm afterward and worked to undo his father's harm, paying reparations to families dragged into the pointless war with the king.