Reign

Reign is the male lead of VARGA, the Nordic duo behind Neo Viking Rock Trap. In the world of the songs he is scarred, watchful, dangerous and devoted in the same breath — as willing to hold a coast alone through a winter as to take a ship out knowing the sea may not give him back.

He wears a vegvísir — the Norse compass that shows the way home through weather you cannot see through — on the side of his neck, and Thor’s hammer at his chest. Dark undercut, fur at the collar, a bearded axe at the belt, old scars through the brow and the cheek.

He swears the oath second in Iron Oath and goes aboard alongside her in Sail for Valhalla. In Distant Thunder he is the one who stays: four months on a headland holding a coast, which the saga treats as the harder of the two jobs and the one nobody writes songs about. A man built for going out, standing still, is its own kind of shieldwall.

He is not the hero of the saga. Neither is she. That is rather the point.