Synopsis
Halfdan is a wealthy and powerful landowner and moneylender, notorious for his ruthlessness. His mastery of the chain as a weapon — and his belief in "chaining" other people — earned him the nickname "Iron Chain" (Tessa). He wears the chain looped around his neck and coiled about his right arm, making it his trademark. Born around 968, he appears in Vinland Saga as an already hardened man.
Halfdan holds that chains, both literal and in the figurative form of the law, exist to make men better. He is a slave owner who punishes disobedience publicly as an example, and even his own men fear him. With age his cruelty grew more cunning: he lends money to poor and stricken farmers, forecloses on their land when they cannot repay, and reduces them to figurative slaves. His chief pleasure as a moneylender lies in buying men's pride and stripping it away as an exercise of power. He views women largely as instruments for bearing children and forging marriage alliances, though he tolerates the outspokenness of his wife Asrid.
He first appears in 1002, pursuing an escaped slave who fled to Thorfinn's village, disembarking from his longship despite the objections of Leif Erikson. He is voiced by Yoshimitsu Shimoyama in Japanese, and by John Gremillion and Kaiji Tang in English.
