The Cursed Head

More than three years into their toil, Thorfinn and Einar bring down the last tree and cheer. Pater has told Einar their freedom can be purchased after the next harvest with coin to spare. Wondering about the future, Einar frets over leaving Arnheid behind, and Thorfinn muses that returning to Iceland is possible but uncertain. Thorfinn confides a hope of ridding the world of war and bondage, which Einar calls a dream. Ketil then arrives with Olmar, grants them an early release once the sowing is finished, and even asks whether they would stay on afterward as his retainers before departing for the palace at Jelling.

Roused by Gunnar, Canute reaches the Danish royal seat and learns from Wulf that his brother King Harald is failing fast and can no longer speak. Watching children at play, Canute recalls the gentle sibling who once shielded him from palace scheming over Sweyn's succession, and a stray ball resolves in his eyes into his father's head. Harald had inherited Denmark and Canute England, the elder backing the younger's conquest with a fleet before illness left him heirless. At the bedside Harald briefly wakes to bequeath Denmark to his brother, but Canute deflects, and the dying man's face becomes Sweyn's, accusing him of visiting the very brother he poisoned for ambition rather than peace. Later, alone with the crown, Canute waves off a servant's drink and again converses with Sweyn's phantom. He argues that uniting the realms is the only path to his utopia and that a second king would breed conflict, so Harald had to die. Sweyn observes that his son now thinks like a monarch, and Canute admits the dead king is the only one to whom he can speak honestly, two cursed men bound together.

Thorfinn and Einar complete the clearing after three years and Ketil formally promises their freedom once the seeds are sown, while floating an offer for them to remain as paid retainers. Thorfinn first articulates his ambition to abolish war and slavery. Canute arrives in Jelling to find Harald near death and effectively inherits Denmark, joining it to England. The episode confirms Canute personally poisoned his father Sweyn and now his brother, and it deepens the recurring hallucination of Sweyn's head that torments him as the double crown's curse tightens.

Broadcast March 14, 2023, this is the thirty-fourth episode overall and the tenth of the second season by MAPPA. It adapts chapters 72 and part of 73 plus original material. Takahiro Kaneko directed, with storyboards by Shuhei Yabuta and Keisuke Inoue. The title refers to the vision of Sweyn's decapitated head and the burden of rulership Canute has embraced.