Vinland Saga has introduced Thorkell in this week’s episode who is tall, strong but a crazy traitor. Although he is an overpower Viking and brave warrior, but still seems off his rocker.
A Danish and Viking ships which is led by King Sweyn, attempt to take London Bridge and capture London in October 1013. Army of Denmark hires army of Askeladd’s who wrongly believed they could win it easily. However, the overpowered Viking, Thorkell’s betrayal made this attempt impossible and impenetrable for them. This is when Askeladd offers Thorfinn to reward him with duel in case he brings him Thorkell’s head and Thorfinn accepts the offer.
Askeladd speech about the idea that everyone is a slave to something seems to apply on every character in the series, especially Thorkell. Looks like he has become slave of his own thirst for war and blood and this makes him a horrible being. He doesn’t seems to have logical reason to betray the Vikings. His insanity can be judged with his quote “Go and ask King Sweyn if he is bored of fighting battles that he always wins.”
In episode 9 we get to see an exceptional face-to-face battle. The entire fighting scene was brilliantly directed in which we saw Thorkell using his strength and Thorfinn relying on his speed. The battle scene was visually intense that we could not move our eyes away throughout the battle scene except when he bid farewell to Thorfinn by waving his hand which was smeared with blood.
Thorfinn’s gaze is getting more terrifying in every episode especially when he looked at Thorkell while he fights and when he said “I will carve out your heart and offer it to my father’s spirit” while looking at Askeladd. However, this episode reveals his thoughts about battle when he concludes what Thorkell really enjoys about battle. The part where he claim about Thorkell being a mad man and the episode climax proves that Thorfinn’s only motive is to avenge his father
It seems like Vikings likes to fight because they enjoys killing as Bjorn first mentioned that he does not fight for money but because he like to kill and then we get to see Thorkell who is more thrilled to fight and betray his own people just because he enjoys it. Either Vikings are all insane or they are just addicted to killing.
Vinland Saga has shown a true picture of Thames River which does not seems to be a beautiful river even in that era as we can see ships debris and corpses in river in the series.
After watching how powerful Thorkell is, we can’t even imagine how intense would be the fight between Thorkell and Thors.
