Who plays Kjetill Flatnose in Vikings?
Kjetill Flatnose is played by Adam Copeland in the original Vikings series.
Explore family, allies and rivals or follow the story sections below.
Cast references: Adam Copeland.
Explore Kjetill Flatnose’s story
The family inside the new society
He is married to Ingvild and is father to Aud and Thorunn. Thorunn’s marriage to Helgi connects his household to Eyvind’s, even as the families become enemies.
Revenge outlives the peace proposal
After deaths divide the settlement, Kjetill and Frodi kill Eyvind’s family despite Floki’s opposition. Aud’s response exposes a profound break within his own household.
A new shore repeats the question
Kjetill later travels with Ubbe toward another settlement and claims the stranded whale in Greenland for his family. the conflict over food makes ownership concrete. A promise to begin again cannot prevent old habits from governing who eats, who is excluded and who gets to call himself a ruler.
Relationships & loyalties
Memorable scenes & lines
The rescue becomes revenge
Season 5, episode 17
The expedition to help Eyvind’s exiled household becomes a massacre. Kjetill refuses Floki’s plea for mercy, destroying the hope that an appeal to shared survival can bring the feud to an end.
Why this moment matters
The rescue requires the exiles to trust people with whom they have a history of violence. Kjetill exploits that dependence rather than treating their vulnerability as a reason to stop. His refusal of Floki’s plea makes revenge a deliberate priority over the survival of the settlement, exposing the limits of every earlier promise to begin again.
A kingdom on a whale
Season 6, episode 15
Kjetill refuses to share the stranded whale, and the conflict drives Ubbe’s group away. His declaration of kingship over Greenland is set against the isolation and destruction his claim has produced.
Why this moment matters
The whale gives the conflict a resource so concrete that the cost of ownership can be seen immediately. Kjetill can insist on his claim and call himself a king, but the result is isolation rather than a functioning community. The image is comic and terrifying at once because the title survives after most of the reasons to want it have disappeared.
“My only ambition is revenge!”
Why fans keep talking
The whale scene invites laughter without making Kjetill’s ambition harmless. Its absurdity distills a pursuit that has already destroyed households: possessing something becomes more important than sustaining the people who might share it. That is why enjoyment of the performance and rejection of the ending’s excess can coexist. The arc asks how much transformation a character can undergo before a concentrated image of obsession begins to feel like a shortcut rather than a culmination.
What resonates
The image of a self-declared ruler alone on a whale gives some viewers a memorable combination of ambition, absurdity and collapse.
What divides viewers
Others find the ending exaggerated or see the refusal to share food as the destructive result of his ambition rather than a triumph.
Who plays Kjetill Flatnose?
Adam Copeland portrays Kjetill Flatnose.
Adam Copeland’s work beyond Vikings includes Dwight Hendrickson in Haven (2011); Nick Blades in Bending the Rules (2012); Al Rothstein / Atom Smasher in The Flash (2015); Lucas Nolan in Interrogation (2016); Ares in Percy Jackson and the Olympians (2024).