Eira Leifsdóttir

General
• Name: Eira
• Last name: Leifsdóttir
• Title: -
• Age: 38 years
• Place of birth: Skagerrak
• Place of residence: Skagen
• Rank: Fisherwoman (Thegn)
• Parents: Leif Odinsson & Astrid Gunnarsdóttir
• Siblings: -

Appearance
• First impression: The first thing people will notice, is the color of her hair. Eira is a small woman, but the fact that her hair has a red color makes sure people can’t just look over her. That and the fact she has a pretty big mouth.
• Hair color: Red
• Eye color: Green
• Length: 5’4”
• Scars: She has several scars across her body.
• Face claim: Jessica Chastain

Personality
The first thing people should know is that Eira can be rude without really wanting it. She doesn’t really know how to show sympathy and every time she opens her mouth in an attempt to be nice to people, she always says the wrong words. Her father always joked that she was cursed and after a while, she started to believe that.

The lack of sympathy also can have something to do with the fact she can’t feel any pain. Nobody really knows why, but besides pain, she can’t feel heat, cold are any real nerve-related sensations. It happens a lot that she cuts herself or breaks something without even knowing it. She never felt any pain and she just can’t understand why people react the way they do when they hurt themselves. So Eira mostly thinks people are being weak when they’re in pain and it’s in those moments that she will just roll her eyes and tell them they should stop acting like a little girl.

Eira is a very impatient woman, especially when she has to explain things to someone. People once gave her an apprentice, but they quickly figured out that hadn’t been a good idea. First, Eira had been the one who always walked away frustrated and after a few days, it was the young boy who didn’t even want to be a fisher anymore. The woman just isn’t a people’s person. She will even go so far to say that she hates people. They always seem to disappoint her and she quickly learned not to expect much.

The only person she still can trust is her father. He’s the one that learned her to love the sea. He learned her to sail with the boats he made and he’s the only one who never betrayed her. She is the one who betrayed him by leaving Skaggerak and everytime someone dares to ask her something about her past, she ends up hitting them in the face.

She can be fierce and she doesn’t really like people, but that doesn’t mean she can’t have any friends. Eira just has her own way of showing people she loves them. She will always protect those she holds dear even when it sometimes seems she hates them as much as the others. The truth is that talks more to those she loves than the others and she doesn’t just walk away from them when they try to talk to her. She will still mock them and she will still roll her eyes when they are in pain.

History
Leif Odinsson was working on a ship when Astrid made him crush his own hand. Her walking by had been enough to distract him from his work and had made sure he let the hammer in his hand land on top of his hand instead of the wooden planks. Astrid hurried to the ship to help him and that was the start of their romance.

Somewhere along the way, they decided they wanted to have a child. Someone they could be proud of and someone who would take care of them the moment they wouldn’t be able to do that themselves. Unfortunately, luck wasn’t on their side. They lost two babies and they almost had given up hope when Astrid became pregnant again. This time, life gave them what they wanted and nine months later, they welcomed a little girl into their lives.

Eira always had been little for her age and where others began to grow at some point, she stayed small. That was not the only thing that made her odd. It was the fact that she couldn’t feel pain that made people whisper as soon as she walked by. She always had to check for wounds every morning before she could start her day and every night before she went to bed. There were more downsides on that little fact than you would think. One nasty cut would be enough to make her bleed out. She never knew when she was wounded and people always had to tell her when she was bleeding.

At age fifteen, she almost lost her life because people wanted to see if she really couldn’t feel any pain and would be able to walk around with an open wound for the whole day. It was her best friend who saved her life when they met that day. He was the one who caught her when she fainted and he was the one who brought her home so her parents could heal her. It was on that day that she told herself she could trust him even when she didn’t always show that she really cared about him.

Her father taught her how to build ships in an attempt to make sure she wouldn’t become a warrior. He rather kept his daughter close than to send her on raids where there was the possibility she could die. He was able to make her love to sea and everything that had something to do with it, but that didn’t stop her from going to training and going on raids as soon as she was old and skilled enough to go.

The woman had decided she wanted to climb the ranks to a shield maiden, but it was her father who stopped her. Mother had died only a few months ago and he wasn’t ready to lose his only daughter too. Eventually, she promised the man she wouldn’t go on raids as often as she used to anymore so she could take care of him. Leif Odinsson died at the age of fifty-three. Eira tried to get her life in order after her father’s death, but it was more difficult than expected. She was torn between taking over her father’s place as a shipbuilder or going on raids like she used to before her mother passed away. She decided to go for the first option, an attempt to make sure her father would still be proud of her. She went on raids so now and then, but not as often as before.

It was her best friend who tempted her to go on a raid to one of the other Viking villages. A challenge which was supposed to be fun. She agreed to come with him and three others. She trusted them, the biggest mistake she ever made and one she promised herself she would never make again. She thought it was only a game. How easy was it to enter Uddevalla and how quickly could they steal some things and run away before anyone would notice them. She was the one who helped to put a barn on fire so they could sneak into the kingdom. She was the one who stood guard when they others went inside the castle and she was the one who couldn’t even move when the others came out with the king's wife and took her with them to the forest. The man who she had called her best friend for so long, was the one who raped the woman first while the others just stood around them, watching.

Eira was the one who slid the woman’s throat after they almost had beaten her to death. She put her out of her misery before she turned around and started to walk away, tears running down her face. This wasn’t the person she wanted to be, this wasn’t the person her father would be proud of.

The woman fled to Skagen as soon as they got back to their own village and she has been there for two years now, still feeling guilty about what she has done. She went into hiding and she has promised herself she would never trust someone again.

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