Vinland Saga Episode 8 Discussion

BourBon-7so said:

that's the vibe i've been getting since the first dual , however re-watching the scene , it really doesn't look like it , and it might be Askeladd just wanting to get it over with .

Daniel_Naumov said:

Seems like he is a slave to his personal pride associated with his Roman ancestry. He is wearing Lorica musculata and has at least once sworn on his ancestor with a roman name, rather by Odin. He did so when promising Thors to let his company go unharmed.


Askeladd does not want to hurt Thorfinn any more than he already did, but he also got a face to keep for his brigade of degenerates, else he might lose his dominating leadership there. It is how it always goes in groups like his. So found a way to quickly neutralize Thorfinn instead of making it a prolonged fight until one of them gets really hurt.

That's a legit complaint and a good observation on the side of the viewer. It can be easily explained that - it just does not matter - the author did not care to elaborate with diligence on the customs of vikings. Same thing happened with his previous series - Planetes. He deliberately avoided learning about space tech because it would "impair his artistic writing spirit". Creativity, in other words. As you can see here, in Vinland Saga, he again prioritizes artisticism to proper, thorough world-building when the series is deeply rooted into a historic narrative. It seems his series will never reach "masterpiece" tier until he responsibly approaches every aspekt of his storytelling, rather than using only the parts he believes will be the best.

magictuch said:


I was talking about this series in general, for example, how Askeladd is reacting to the request to reveal Thors final moments to Floki's agents back in episode 5, to which we just see him taking back a bit, lowering his head and just replying that Tnhors' death was nothing special. You can clearly see it was not what he believed himself, but why did he say that? Was it not to give Floki something to relish on? Or was Askeladd trying to downplay his death because that's what he wants to believe? We don't know, but that's for the better since it certainly establishes that something is not that easy about the way Askeladd thought of Thors and sets up his character and his relation to Thors even more.

But in this episode:

- Conversation between Gorm and Askeladd, mostly Askeladd's reaction to his uncle's obsession with money - we already see how Askeladd despises Gorm and later on when he outright laughs at him and calls out the irony we already know were this is coming from and why. He doesn't comment on his feeling about the subject at first, but everything from the context of the situation, the tone of his voice when he asks the question about money and the following silent reaction in contrast to Gorm's monologue is enough to let us know how he feels about the whole issue and Gorm in particular.

- Duel, where we obviously had some explaining from Bjorn to let viewers understand that what we see is more complicated than it seems, but Askeladd's train of thought during entire thing was brilliantly put upfront despite us not going into his head: first we see him being playfull and trying to make Thorfinn relax, but Thorfinn attacks and later on we can see Askeladd annoyed and understanding that he needs to go hardcore on Thorfinn to put him off balance - the way he looks at Thorfinn, how we see him fully concentrated, even during his taunt there were moments where you can see he is stopping in the middle of his taunt act just for a moment to evaluate what effect it has on Thorfinn.

- Thorfinn with Horda interaction was probably my favorite of this episode. I swear I could almost hear Thorfinn's "sorry" being stuck in his throat and then (once his moment of vulnerability passes) we see him shelling back into his pride. His next lines are arrogant as he is pissed that for a second he showed a moment of weakness in front of a slave, her words about how she thought she could relate to him causes him to be even more of a dick and you can visibly see in him how his act progresses downward more and more until finally she opens up to him about how she can't do anything in this world and it resonates with his childhood memories, so it breaks through to him and finally not denying how similar they are he tells her comforting words that he wanted to hear himself. We don't go into Thorfinn's head, he doesn't say that he finally sees them alike and he tells her something he wants to believe himself. We just know it. "Does that land truly exist?" - Thorfinn doesn't give an answer, just looks up into the sky. We know he doesn't believe, but wants to. He doesn't need to say it to the viewer.

Overall, moments like this not only help episode flow better, but presents sort of ambiguity about characters and mystery, we are there to interpret their reactions behind their words and thus can project more and think of a characters in the way we want more.