Vildis "Tisolde" Hallasdottir

=• History •= Born and raised by a single mother in Iceland, Vildis spent a great deal of time at her grandparent’s farm while her mother completed her nursing training. Upon getting her nursing license, the mother moved the family around a great deal, as she shifted from one job to another, finally setting in the Reykjavik area.

Lacking any strong male presence in her family aside from her grandfather, Vildis dove into the old Norse sagas and used them as examples of what men were supposed to be: Strong, courageous, uncompromising, and headstrong.

As a small, thin child, even for a girl, she clashed frequently with her larger though younger half-brother, who often bullied her. She retreated to her books and fought back when needed, earning at least grudging respect from her sibling for being unwilling to back down, despite most often getting the worst of their confrontations. As she got older she often started the conflict, fully knowing she was bound to lose, as a personal showing of her courage and to demonstrate that she was not an easy mark.

As she and her brother reached her teenage years they eventually called a truce to their physical confrontations, though Vildis took a variety of self-defense classes as their relationship remained antipathetic.

Graduating school and passing her exams for further study at age sixteen, she moved on to college where she converted her amateurish study of ancient Norse writings into a more scholarly one. There she took advantage of the Icelandic language being so close to Old Norse to allow an easier and deeper understanding of the texts she was working with. She graduated with honors with a degree in Nordic Literature, and was able to apply and be accepted for further study on mainland Europe.

Further study at Lund University in Sweden allowed her to further broaden her areas of study, and experience the less insular cultures of the other Nordic countries and the rest of Europe. As she got older she became less belligerent, finding the aggressiveness that did her so much good in Iceland was no longer very needed.

Continuing to devote herself mostly to the study of old Norse texts, she eventually graduated with a master’s degree in European literature. She drifted around Europe for a year, before finally finding a position doing translations of documents for the British Museum.

=• Languages •= Icelandic (Excellent), Old Norse (Excellent), Danish Language Group (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish: Good), English (Good), German (Fair), French (Poor)

=• Skills •= Excellent knowledge of European literature, with particular focus on Norse sagas and eddas. Good knowledge of the European rail system.

Vildis has recently be gaining a lot of practice with pistols, and has attained a proficiency with them more based around the volume of shots she can fire than in the accuracy of any particular shot. Even the armorers at Templar headquarters have commented on the amount of ammunition she has gone through in such a short period of time.

She has some training with wrist blades, but the majority of her talents in this area come from her fierce aggression when attacking, and good reflexes allowing her to avoid her enemy’s attacks.

=• Strengths •= Vildis has large reserves of mental endurance, to the point of being able to endure more mentally than her physical body allows. She has more than once worked herself to exhaustion on both physical and scholarly ventures. She can be cautious, but seldom allows fear to overwhelm her, not due to courage on her part, but just refusal to allow herself to act on her fear. She will deny this makes her brave.

=• Weaknesses •= Vildis is impulsive in her pursuit of her goals; often driving forward when a bit of consideration would be better called for. In physical contests she tends to respond to challenge with aggression, even when she feels that she is unlikely to overcome her opponent.

Vildis is also not physically very imposing, and even when performing physically-intensive tasks builds up very little muscle. She has considerable endurance from hard work during her childhood, but not a great deal of strength.

=• Trivia •= As is not uncommon on Iceland, she was illegitimate. Her mother has never made clear who her father might be, though Vildis has narrowed it down to three possibilities based on the men her mother allowed her to spend time with while she was young. She guesses that her mother may not know herself who her real father is, and either told them that each of them might be, or told each of them that the certainly were. In the end, illegitimacy is so common on Iceland that the circumstances of her birth don’t really matter anyway.

She alternates writing her notes in Icelandic using the normal alphabet and various runic variations. She does this as much to keep in practice as to make sure that her journals are nearly unreadable.

Not religious in any conventional sense, she tends to hang runic prayers in an illuminated style to Norse deities and the Christian God wherever she happens to be living. They remain behind when she departs.