Who Is Hild in Vinland Saga and Is She Based on a Real Person?
The diversity of modern-day manga and anime is something that is a well-known fact, but some titles manage to stand out even among such harsh competition. Vinland Saga is one such title, as it stands out among the lot for its accurate depiction of historical events, the authenticity of the content, as well as the fact that it is focused on European, rather than Asian (Japanese or Chinese) history. This has also been transferred to the characters of Vinland Saga, most of which are great and also based on actual historical people. In this article, we are going to talk about Hild from Vinland Saga and reveal whether she is based on an actual historical person on not.
Hild is a female hunter from Norway. She was originally a carpenter and an amateur inventor, but when Askeladd’s band attacked her village and slaughtered her family, her life changed drastically. Years later, when she met Thorfinn, she tried to kill him out of revenge. But, after she hears his desire to create a peaceful society, she decides to spare him and join him but promises that she would kill him if he ever gave up on the idea of peace.
The rest of this article is going to focus, as you’ve probably deduced for yourselves, on Hild and her role in the Vinland Saga manga. Hild is a relatively new character introduced in the manga, so not as many fans know about her as they do about the characters that have appeared more in the anime, which is why this article is ideal for true Vinland Saga fans. Spoilers from the manga are going to be present, so be careful how you approach the article.
Who is Hild in Vinland Saga?
Hild is a female hunter from Norway. She was originally a carpenter and an amateur inventor, but when Askeladd’s band attacked her village and slaughtered her family, her life changed drastically. Years later, when she met Thorfinn, a member of the band at the time, she tried to kill him out of revenge.
But, after she hears about his desire to create a wholly peaceful society, she decides to spare him, as the idea intrigued her. She then joins him but promises that she would kill him if he ever gave up on the idea of peace. She would later completely forgive him for what Askeladd’s band had done. She uses a custom crossbow that is designed for quick-fire reloading. This is Hild’s story in short, as we are about to give you more information on her as we know it from the manga.
Hild actually debuted in Chapter 114 of the manga, which was titled “Chapter 114: “The Hunter and the Hunted (1)”. The chapter came out on March 25, 2015, in Japan and is part of Volume 16 of the manga. As far as the anime is concerned, she had a brief debut in Episode 24 of the anime, titled “End of the Prologue”. The episode premiered on December 29, 2019. Hild has yet to make an impact in the anime, but she has had a solidly important role in the manga. So, who is Hild?
Hild has a very dark and depressive story behind her and that is something that is visible in her physical appearance. She seems to have been a beautiful, blonde-haired woman in her youth, but her experiences from her youth left a lot of scars on her. When she was young, while she was escaping the Viking raid we are going to talk about later, she fell down a cliff and injured herself gravely, which left a bloodshot scar on her right eye that is still very visible. Since she is a huntress, she has a very strong body and is physically imposing, which is a detail that Yukimura personally revealed. As for her clothing, she usually dons a big dark green cloak, keeping her trademark crossbow at her side.
When we first see Hild, she also has a green bandana that heeps her hair behind her ears. This is due to the fact that she was a huntress and that she had to be constantly on guard, which is the result of the trauma she went through during the Viking raid. She had to keep her ears attuned to the sounds of her environment in order to survive, i.e., both to defend herself from danger and to attack the prey she would later use for food. After joining Thorfinn’s group, she begins to let her hair down more often, which is a sign that she is a bit more relaxed and that she does not have to be on her toes all the time as she did when she was alone. Now let us talk about her personality a bit.
Hild is introduced to us as an extremely introverted person and someone who likes to keep to herself. She is part of the group, but is not overly social and likes to stay away from others and contact. This actually makes sense, because she experienced severe trauma when she was young and she is used to keeping to herself as she cannot simply trust others. On the other hand, she likes to give sarcastic and smart-ass comments during conversations and mock comments on characters such as Bug-Eyes or Einar.
On the other hand, she does seem to have a fondness for children, which makes sense because of her age and the fact that she acts as a motherly mentor figure to them. She is especially close to Karli, but later takes the role of a teacher – of sorts – to the other children in the group as well. This is a result of the fact that she is quite intelligent and skilled in many disciplines, which makes her a great character to learn from. She also seems to have a very kind and gentle side to her cold and distant personality, which is best observed when she interacts with the children.
An interesting thing about her personality is that she does not like to kill and hesitates to kill even the worst enemies. This is intriguing because she, as a huntress and as someone who saw her family being slaughtered, should actually be able to do it with ease, but that is not the case with her. She is a complete pacifist and that is, as we have said, one of the reasons why Hild joined Thorfinn, because he said he was a pacifist. She did threaten to kill him, though, but that is probably not going to happen, so we can still safely assume that Hild is against killing as we have said earlier.
On the other hand, she can get angry and when she is in such a state, it is better to avoid her. A good example of this is when she saw the Jomsvikings kidnapping and raping women, which made her absolutely furious. This is a very noble side to her personality and yet another piece of evidence that Hild is a very specific and intriguing character.
On top of all that, Hild is a great inventor and a skilled craftsman in general. She was able to analyze the mechanics of a crossbow by just observing it and she was also responsible for the creation of several different inventions that proved to be quite useful and practical. The thing with Hild is that she is a very versatile character in most aspects. She seems like your typical moody outcast, but she has a much deeper and more meaningful story behind that facade and a layered personality that is absolutely amazing.
Is Hild based on a real person?
As fans of the series will know, a lot of Vinland Saga characters are actually based on real, historical people. Some of them are direct adaptations, while others are more loosely based, but most characters contain a degree of historicity in them, despite Yukimura giving each of them their own treatment in the context of the original manga. This doesn’t, of course, mean that there are no original characters in the series, which is why we are asking ourselves this about Hild. So, is Hild an original person or is she based on a real person?
As far as we know now, Hild is an original character. As we have said, she was introduced into the world of Vinland Saga relatively recently so there is a lot to learn about her in the upcoming chapters, but as far as we know now, there is absolutely nothing to indicate that she is based on any real person, which would make her an original character. She might have been inspired by someone, but she is not actually a real person, as far as we know now. Now, Yukimura might surprise us later on in the story as more information is revealed about Hild, but that is something we cannot know now and we’ll simply have to see how her character is developed in the future.