Styrk

Lean and fair-haired, Styrk keeps a helmet on his head at all hours and lets a thin, ragged beard grow along his jaw. Blue ink marks both cheeks, a ring drawn on one side and a cross on the other.

Styrk supplies the strategy for Ivar's group, steering his brother's choices and acting as the level head who reins in his temper before it boils over. It was Styrk who talked Ivar into joining the western expedition, framing it as the perfect chance to wrest the settlement away from Thorfinn once it inevitably failed. That cold, opportunistic streak defines him, though he also serves as the voice of restraint whenever his brother edges toward violence.

Styrk, Ivar, and Ganglati once farmed their own land until Halfdan absorbed it and reduced them, like his other victims, to serfs bound to his estate. When Thorfinn announced his plan to settle in Vinland, Ivar showed no interest, but Styrk pressed him to sign on. Objecting to the ban on swords, the brothers tried and failed to change Thorfinn's mind, so Styrk urged Ivar to smuggle a blade across the sea, reasoning that a weapon would prove useful when the leadership crumbled and they could claim the colony for themselves.

The scheme unraveled after the Norse settlers clashed with the Lnu, a fight that cost both Ivar and Ganglati their lives. When Thorfinn and Hild returned alongside Lnu leaders to broker peace and Einar accepted the truce, Styrk seethed, privately branding the two as cowards. In a desperate bid to avenge his brother and reignite the war so their deaths would not be meaningless, he lunged at Gao'oqi. Einar seized him mid-attack, and Styrk drove a blade into Einar's neck before Gao'oqi beheaded him, using the very sword Styrk had once pushed Ivar to carry to Vinland.