Sigurðr Eiríksson

Sigurd Eiriksson is the uncle whose chance recognition changes the history of the North — the man who ransomed the boy Olaf Tryggvason out of slavery. Astrid's brother, he had gone east years before and risen high in the service of King Valdemar of the Rus, in Garðaríki. Travelling into Estonia on the king's business, collecting taxes as a man of consequence, his eye fell in a slave-market on a remarkably handsome foreign boy — and questioning him, found he was his own nephew Olaf, sold into bondage when his mother's ship was taken. Sigurd bought the boy's freedom and brought him home to the eastern court to be raised. It is one of the saga's quiet hinges of fate: the whole future of Norway's conversion turned on a tax-collector recognising a face in a foreign crowd. Sigurd is the instrument of providence — the uncle who, by chance and kinship, gave a future king back to himself.