Short answers, pulled from the story.
Makoto Yukimura is best known for two manga series: Planetes, a hard science fiction story serialized from 1999 to 2004, and Vinland Saga, a Viking epic serialized from 2005 to July 2025 that had over 5.5 million copies in circulation as of July 2021.
Vinland Saga won the 2009 Japan Media Arts Festival Grand Prize in the manga category. Yukimura also appeared as a guest at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2010.
Yukimura traced his fascination with Vikings to watching the anime series Vicky the Viking as a child. He also drew on his understanding of the Cold War and the September 11 attacks to shape Thorfinn's character and the story's theme of building a peaceful place for people of different races.
Vinland Saga launched in Weekly Shonen Magazine in April 2005, then moved to Monthly Afternoon in December 2005 due to pacing issues with the original release schedule, where it ran until July 2025.
Wit Studio animated the first season of the Vinland Saga anime, which premiered in 2019. MAPPA animated the second season, which began in January 2023. Yukimura praised the anime for fixing the manga's pacing issues and adding new content.
Yukimura cites manga artist Katsuhiro Otomo as the influence behind his attention to drawing hands, which he considers more expressive than faces and revealing of a character's personality. He began drawing Vinland Saga chapters digitally during the COVID-19 pandemic.