Mr. Ugge

Pale hair sits above a face defined by a small mustache and a large, pore-marked nose. Mr. Ugge bundles himself in a trapper's hat and gloves, and he wears an almost permanent look of unease, his brow slick with sweat as though forever bracing for the next disaster.

Fear runs the man. He spooks at the slightest thing and leaps straight to the darkest reading of any situation, certain that ruin is on its way. During the crossing he is convinced the ships will be devoured by Jormungand, wailing so loudly that Thorfinn's crew can hear him from a separate vessel. Ashore he shrinks from the stone likeness of Arnheid, and once he learns of Markland he grows warier still. He insists the Lnu only feign kindness to catch the Nords off guard, and he waves away even Kitpui's offer of friendship as a trick, blaming a botched translation from Bug-Eyes.

Mr. Ugge boards Einar's ship for the colony's first voyage west. A commotion aboard draws Thorfinn's vessel closer, and Einar explains it away as the nervous passenger startled by whales he took for the world serpent. Even Leif's safe return from Vinland fails to settle him, since he dismisses the explorer as a rare stroke of luck. Only the sight of land finally moves him to weep with relief.

Settled at the village, he reads the carved Arnheid statue as a real woman frozen by sorcery and finds it ghastly. Word that Markland was raided, though by a tribe other than Kitpui's people, hardens his conviction that the Lnu are natural aggressors, and he even hints they made off with his missing axe for its iron. As Ivar and others raise fortifications, Mr. Ugge is quick to brand the natives enemies. When Styrk asks the settlers to line up behind either Thorfinn, who wants no swords, or Ivar, who wants them, he throws in with Ivar, clinging to his belief that the Lnu are merely waiting for the moment to strike.