Episode 3: Troll

Askeladd, recognizing his target as the famed Troll of Jom, presses Floki on why the Jomsvikings want a hero of their people dead after a fifteen-year-old desertion order. Floki cuts off the questions and warns him to stop prying, and Askeladd relents, demanding a hundred extra coins in advance. Outside, Bjorn hurls a spear that lands between the two men; when Floki later pulls back the sheet on the wall, he finds it has impaled a hidden Jomsviking, and concedes that Askeladd is more than talk.

In the village at dawn, the young man Ari promises Ylva a necklace from England and fumbles an attempt to propose before his mother interrupts. At the docks the youths bid farewell to their families. Leif quietly comforts a worried young woman with a secret: Thors never means to take the boys to war. The plan is to leave them in Norway, where Thors will hire a royal crew for Jomsborg, while Leif ferries the youths home to Iceland. Thors, meanwhile, searches the village for his missing son.

The two ships set out, Thors rowing a giant oar alone on his side. Well into the voyage, a familiar voice reveals that Thorfinn has stowed away in a barrel; furious at first, Thors softens when the boy is captivated by the open sea. That night Thors tells Ari about Ylva's birth fifteen years earlier, when he was still a Jomsviking, and admits her arrival awakened his fear of battle and drove him to flee, leaving his old comrades to curse his name. Askeladd, sailing from Streymoy in the Faroe Islands, muses to Bjorn that the contract reeks of Floki's lies and a personal grudge, yet he is eager to see whether Thors is worth the trouble.

Approaching the Faroes to rest and resupply, Leif senses something wrong, noting fewer houses along the coast than before. Thors urges a retreat, but men atop the cliffs shove wood and debris down to dam the inlet and trap the ships. Two vessels then row in to attack, Askeladd's staged ambush closing exactly as Thors predicted, with archers taking aim. Thors arms himself, hands Thorfinn a dagger for last-resort defense, and warns Ari not to speak of killing so lightly. On the enemy ship, Bjorn swallows a mushroom and asks to face the Troll of Jom alone; before he can, Thors leaps aboard and downs the attackers barehanded, leaving Bjorn stunned and Askeladd impressed.

Askeladd negotiates a higher price to assassinate Thors and demonstrates Bjorn's lethal skill to Floki. Thors departs with five village youths and Leif's crew, secretly intending to keep the boys out of battle, while Thorfinn stows away aboard the ship. Thors confides that his daughter Ylva's birth first made him fear war. Askeladd's Faroe Islands ambush traps the ships in an inlet, and the episode ends as Thors leaps into battle and overwhelms Bjorn's men barehanded.

Troll first aired on July 7, 2019, adapting chapters 8 through 11. Yosuke Yamamoto directed from a storyboard by Takashi Sano. The episode opens with Askeladd expressing his wish to size up the Troll of Jom. Mukanjyo serves as the opening theme and Torches as the ending.