Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of disability and depictions of ableism and sizeism. In addition, the source text uses offensive ableist and sizeist slurs, which are only replicated in quotes in this guide.

The book starts by introducing the protagonist, Odd, a boy living in Viking-era Norway. The unnamed, third-person omniscient narrator states that Odd’s name was not unusual or insulting for the time; rather, “Odd meant the tip of a blade, and it was a lucky name” (11). Despite this, Odd is still considered “odd” due to his personality and his bad luck in life. Odd’s mother is from Scotland; his father captured her on a raid in Scotland when they were young. Although she has acclimated to Norway, she still sings in Gaelic and longs to speak it with her people again.

Odd’s father was a Viking and a woodcutter and woodcarver. (Viking is a side job or a hobby, not a full-time position.) On a Viking raid when Odd was 10, he was put in charge of the ponies after Olaf the Tall died at the hands of a Scotsman. Odd’s father, inexperienced but dutiful, jumped into the freezing ocean to save a pony that had fallen overboard during a storm off the coast of Scotland.