Spriggan +

[Steely_Gunz]

I’m about to start episode 6 of “Vineland Saga” (Netflix).

It takes place during Viking times/places and is another “knife centric” anime.

Protagonist learns no-spin knife throwing to hunt rabbits as a child while starving in the woods.

So far, obviously, it’s holding up.

It's a solid anime. Like a lot of "historical" media, a lot of liberties are taken in terms of accuracy.

However one of the cool little bits that most will miss is that Thorfinn's dagger that you mentioned has two rune markings on the blade that look like upward arrows. This is a cool little detail as that is rune representing the Norse god of war and justice, Tyr (also the god that Tuesday is named after ). It is said that if you want to be victorious in battle it is a good idea to invoke and call upon Tyr twice. Therefore marking your blade twice with his rune was kind of like a blanket invite to call upon him.

It's a neat detail that stood out to me. Also, I recommend reading up on the legend/history of the Jomsvikings. The anime doesn't do them justice. They were a group both feared and sought after for hire. They lived in a compound, trained, could take no wives, were weeded out at 50 years of age, and had a set of laws that governed them within the fort. They really were a very fine-tuned and well-oiled group of mercenaries that could easy punch above their weight class in terms of battle effectiveness vs numbers.

 

[NG VI]

I have to say, in the anime I felt like Thorfinn isn't actually the protagonist of the first season/story arc. And that's in a good way, I think a self-contained revenge epic could have been awesome but the characters and story were given far more potential than that. All of them.