Who plays Eyvind in Vikings?
Eyvind is played by Kris Holden-Ried in the original Vikings series.
Explore family, allies and rivals or follow the story sections below.
Cast references: Kris Holden-Ried.
Explore Eyvind’s story
The skeptic inside the expedition
He challenges Floki’s account of the land and questions whether the promised cooperative settlement conceals an ambition to rule. Scarcity gives those arguments practical urgency.
A feud consumes the household
Deaths divide Eyvind’s family from Kjetill’s. After Thorunn’s murder, his household is exiled; the later rescue effort becomes a massacre in which Kjetill’s side kills him and his relatives.
Criticism is not the whole explanation
Eyvind’s objections should be assessed separately from the retaliatory violence surrounding them. A person can notice genuine weaknesses in a project while participating in choices that make it fail. Follow both the resources the settlers lack and the habits they bring with them; either one alone produces an incomplete account of the colony.
Relationships & loyalties
Memorable scenes
Questioning the promised society
Season 5, episode 7
Eyvind challenges Floki’s intentions as the settlers confront a land less welcoming than they expected. The dispute connects practical scarcity with distrust about who will govern the new community.
Why this moment matters
The promise of a new society becomes testable when people need food, shelter and a workable distribution of authority. Eyvind’s objections expose the distance between Floki’s language and the conditions on the ground. Yet criticism can also become a way to deepen factional allegiance, making the practical question of survival harder to separate from a contest over who should lead.
An appeal answered with a massacre
Season 5, episode 17
His family’s isolation and illness prompt Helgi to seek help. Kjetill’s party instead kills the household, making the promised rescue another stage in the revenge cycle.
Why this moment matters
Illness should create an opportunity for common survival to take precedence over the feud. Instead, the family’s need for help makes it vulnerable to people who arrive carrying another intention. Eyvind’s death therefore demonstrates more than the failure of one antagonist: a community has lost the ability to make an offer of aid trustworthy.
Why fans keep talking
The irritation Eyvind provokes is closely tied to the settlement’s exhausted hope. Repeated obstruction can make every scene feel like another reason the project cannot progress. At the same time, the land’s difficulties mean not every objection is imaginary or irrational. The more useful tension is between recognizing a real problem and using that problem constructively. His inability to produce the latter does not make the subsequent massacre just, nor does Floki’s idealism make the practical complaints disappear.
What divides viewers
Relentless hostility frustrates viewers who feel the settlers tolerate too much. The failure of Floki’s leadership is another part of that frustration.
Who plays Eyvind?
Kris Holden-Ried portrays Eyvind.
Kris Holden-Ried’s work beyond Vikings includes William Compton in The Tudors (2007); Dyson in Lost Girl (2010); Quint Lane in Underworld: Awakening (2012); Coop in The Expanse (2019); Axel in The Umbrella Academy (2020).