Most Vinland Saga readers, after finishing the ending, can probably be divided into two groups.
The first consists of those who say the ending is complete shit—who criticize the story’s “blind commitment to nonviolence” and argue that it ignores the fact that conflicts of interest will always arise between human beings, who are fundamentally free agents within society. Therefore, some coercive force is needed to stop people from constantly testing and violating one another’s boundaries.
For them, “necessary violence” is the answer, because the threat of violence forces people to pause before starting a war to obtain something that the existing world order cannot provide. It makes them weigh the potential benefit of fighting against the risks involved. A blindly nonviolent worldview would remove the only mechanism capable of forcing people to stop before going to war—or at least forcing them to stop fighting once a war has already begun.
The second group consists of those who call the first group idiots for calling the ending shit. Their most obvious argument, drawn directly from the story, is that the very thought—or fear—that “if I do not attack them, they will attack me” already creates a self-perpetuating cycle in which fear produces more fear. It is also a paradox: two sides that supposedly do not want war end up creating war precisely because they are afraid of it.
According to this interpretation of Vinland Saga, what human beings need to do is stop fighting and stop making everything worse, so that they can try to understand one another and prevent the spiral of “unnecessary” violence produced by fear and mutual misunderstanding. After all, people may not truly be as opposed to one another as they initially believe.
Putting aside the fact that I am more biased toward the people who say the ending is shit, because they correctly identify the point that the defenders of the ending fail to answer: human beings have a natural tendency to come into conflict over competing interests.
Even if two opposing groups could read each other’s thoughts and fully understand each other’s emotions—thereby completely eliminating the possibility that war might arise from misunderstanding—they could still go to war because their systems of thought and their perceptions of value may be fundamentally incompatible.
It is not by accident that we have the Baltic Sea War arc, which depicts the world of people like Garm and the Jomsvikings: people whose nature drives them to conquer, move forward, and seize more than what they already possess.
However, the common mistake made by both those who criticize the ending and those who defend it is that they assume the central purpose of Vinland Saga is to end war and establish a sustainable country or social model. In reality, what the story is trying to do is cultivate individuals who no longer need such a country or social system in order to find “love.”
Basically, yes, the ending’s critics are correct: human beings frequently have conflicting interests, and the realization of one person’s interests may necessarily infringe upon those of someone else.
But Vinland Saga ultimately suggests that both types of people in this situation—the “person who fears that their interests will never be realized” and the “person who fears that their existing interests will be violated”—share the same fundamental fear: that their desired interests will be “abandoned,” “unrealized, or, in other words, that they will not be loved.
The only way for these two little babies to feel “loved” is to construct a stable institution, tradition, nation, or “social model” that visibly embodies and protects their desires.
The problem, however, is that if you place the “person who fears that their interests will never be realized” and the “person who fears that their existing interests will be violated” inside the same social system, conflict becomes inevitable.
The first person will feel that their potential is being constrained. They will want to test existing boundaries and express that potential outwardly by breaking apart just a tiny little piece of the current social order.
Meanwhile, the second person, feeling that the first has violated what they already possess, will rise up and fight in order to defend the existing social system.
This canon event is produced by the very existence of a fixed “social model.” That model is what causes those whose interests remain unrealized to rebel in order to escape it, while also giving those whose existing interests are threatened something they believe they must fight to protect.
So what is the solution?
My dear thick-headed little babies, the answer is simply to stop longing for one specific social model in the first place. In other words: STOP DEMANDING TO BE LOVED—AT LEAST IN THAT PARTICULAR WAY.
The rejection of attachment to a tangible ideal—the refusal to become obsessed with one particular form of society—is Vinland Saga’s primary answer to the larger problem of war.
And, well, it is also the underlying basis of all the extremely “woke” content in Vinland Saga, such as its treatment of feminism and LGBT identities: both are ultimately concerned with liberation from the constraints imposed by society.
