Jomsvikings

Famous the length of the North Sea, this war band makes its home at Jomsborg and carries itself with a discipline no ordinary Viking crew shows, from tight organization to uniform garb and shared armor. For a signature arm they carry a dark, single-edged axe bearing an eye carved into the head. Leif Ericson reckons them powerful enough that Wendland's king could never squeeze a single tax out of them, and they regard themselves as the strongest army anywhere on the North Sea. Both Thorfinn and Ylva connect to the band's leadership by way of their mother Helga, herself a daughter of the chief Sigvaldi and a niece of Thorkell.

The order stretches back four generations, to the 980s at the least, and throws itself into one fight after another down the years. Its earliest recorded engagement is Hjörungavágr in 987, followed by King Sweyn's conquest of England, Canute's later reconquest, the clash at Ketil's farm in 1018, and finally Jomsborg itself in 1019. Every recruit has to have reached eighteen and is expected to step down at fifty, and each dreams of dying sword in hand to win a seat in Valhalla for the last battle. Their most distinguished dead earn a burial at sea: the corpse drifts out aboard a ship and is set ablaze a short way from shore while members pipe a ritual hymn on flutes, an honor paid to both Thors and Vagn. In the field they wrap themselves in a trademark white cloak and take up whatever suits, spears, axes, swords or bows, at times behind a red and yellow shield, and for protection they layer gambeson jackets, chain mail, gloves and skull helmets.

Floki counts among the band's active warriors of note, while its most storied former members run from the chief Sigvaldi and the mighty Thorkell to Vagn and, above all, Thors, hailed as the finest of the lot before he broke away; Thorfinn too carries the name, if only briefly. Comparable exploits fill several Scandinavian sagas set in the tenth and eleventh centuries, though for want of solid proof scholars keep arguing over whether any such company ever really existed. The group debuts in Chapter 5 of the manga and in Episode 2 of the adaptation.