Sweyn Forkbeard

Sweyn is the Danish king who conquered nearly all of England and Wales while retaining firm control over his more northern kingdoms. In Vinland Saga he is an aging but razor-sharp ruler whose wit, ferocity, ruthlessness, and battlefield cunning keep a sprawling realm under water-tight control. Askeladd scornfully dubs him the "Hideous Warthog."

Physically, Sweyn is an old man with marred skin, deep-set wrinkles, and droopy features. He has lost several teeth, yet keeps a full head of unruly black hair and a beard smoothed into two opposing spikes. His defining trait is an insatiable hunger for power and domination — over land, over people, and above all over the crown itself. He will eliminate any threat and abandon any principle to hold onto that power.

Sweyn reserves his deepest resentment for his son Canute, whom he regards as a burden standing in the way of his elder son Harald. Canute knows his father never loved him and wishes him dead. The king believes the crown possesses a will of its own, one that drives its bearer to seize ever more power — a cycle that consumed his father and now consumes him.

The character is based on the historical king Sweyn Forkbeard. He is voiced in Japanese by Takayuki Sugō, and in English by Luis Galindo and Jamieson K. Price.