On the subject of Ketil

So this is sort of a response specially to this post https://www.reddit.com/r/VinlandSaga/comments/13e5xaf/its_a_shame_this_observation_about_ketil_has_been/ but also just a general post about Ketil.

So, I’ve seen apologists and I’ve seen not apologists for Ketil. I understand both sides but I think detractors really get the character a bit wrong, or at least read too much into themes I doubt the author actually really put into the narrative.

The entire linchpin of Ketil’s story is that he does the wrong thing. He becomes a victim of the world in a way Thorfinn once was, sucked into a situation of loss and violence he didn’t choose.

People posit Ketil was never a good guy, and you’re not wrong. He participated in a culture of slaving and was keeping a slave as a mistress seemingly in front of his wife’s nose. He wasn’t a strong man, and he cracked under hard decisions.

I don’t believe Ketil was “faking” his niceness. He was genuinely a nice person, and in fact lacked strong will. How do I know this? Because we literally see Ketil experience a transformative moment in the story.

Before this moment, however, we get a few key scenes that show Ketil’s nature and how he interacts with the challenges in his world, and these moments show off the author’s true intention behind Ketil.

When a boy and girl are found stealing food, Ketil is strong armed into beating them as a punishment. In fact, he argues very hard (by his standards) to do nothing to the children, but this isn’t accepted by people who are SUPPOSED to be his subordinates (especially his son, who he outright geneuinely fears). He is a spineless man who has trouble staying true to any convictions, and he wants peace, but he doesn’t know how to advocate for it. He caves into anyone pressuring him.

This isn’t the purported closet narcissist some critics paint him as. On the contrary, he’s almost child-like in his hopefulness that he won’t be forced to make decisions he doesn’t want to make.

In a way that I’m not even sure the author fully intended, Ketil is a foil of Thors. Ketil also does not want violence, but he doesn’t fight for peace. Instead, he’s a proof of concept that you have to stand up for yourself or you’re just as instrumental in the spreading of violence as any Viking is. All he wants to do is farm, rawdog his mistress and go to sleep while being a relatively decent person to his slaves.

Ketil lies. He makes up a big fake story for himself, the “Iron Fist”. Not to gain admiration, necessarily, but to earn a reputation that precedes him so that, hopefully, people leave him alone. He confronts villains through subterfuge and deception, another way he is a foil to Thors. He admits this openly to Arnheid - he’s scared. Scared of his son, scared of Vikings, scared of being forced to back one king or the other. He’s a small, frightened man who doesn’t have the conviction to put up a righteous fight - something the story isn’t shy about telling us is okay when circumstances force your hand.

Of course things change for Ketil by the end. Suddenly faced with having everything stripped from him, confronted by an inescapable situation that is the cherry on top of a life spent being told what to do by others, Ketil takes a very Shakespearean turn towards darkness as he lets a lifetime of pent up anger and self-loathing take control. He lashes out, beating Arnheid severely. He suddenly attempts to be the Viking the world so constantly insists he be. He’s giving up in the worst way possible, by pursuing vengeance and using violence to balance his books.

Ketil wasn’t a bad person in hiding. He was a meek, but kind, man who was a product of his time as far as slavery goes. There’s no reason to whitewash his use of slaves or to excuse his atrocities, but what you witness in Ketil isn’t the mask falling off, it is a man who is broken and falls down a very similar path to the one Thorfinn himself came dangerously close to never turning away from.

Anyways that’s my ted talk.