The History of Vinland Saga

A Viking manga that outgrew its magazine, then outlasted twenty years.

Vinland Saga is Makoto Yukimura’s historical epic about Thorfinn Karlsefni, the Icelandic explorer of the old sagas, reimagined as a boy who grows up inside the Viking invasions of England and slowly turns his back on revenge. It ran in Kodansha magazines from April 13, 2005 to July 25, 2025, and is collected in 29 tankōbon volumes.

The honours came early and kept coming: the Grand Prize at the 13th Japan Media Arts Festival in 2009 and the 36th Kodansha Manga Award for Best General Manga in 2012. By August 2022 the series had passed 7 million copies in circulation. Two anime seasons, by Wit Studio and then MAPPA, carried it worldwide in 2019 and 2023.

This page is the hub of the shelf: the covers are in the gallery, the magazine move is here, and the ending is here.

Vinland Saga Japanese volume 27 cover — **THE LONG RUN**Japanese volume 27, from the final arc of a twenty-year run.

THE RECORD

Vinland Saga at a glance

Serialization

Weekly Shōnen Magazine, April to October 2005, then Monthly Afternoon from December 2005 to July 2025. One series, two magazines, two audiences.

Volumes

29 tankōbon under Kodansha’s Afternoon KC imprint. Volumes 1 and 2 exist in an earlier Shōnen Magazine Comics printing as well.

Chapters

220 numbered chapters plus bonus stories and side pieces, arranged by Yukimura into four arcs.

Awards

Japan Media Arts Festival Grand Prize (2009); Kodansha Manga Award, Best General Manga (2012).

In English

Kodansha USA: a fifteen-book two-in-one hardcover line (2013 to 2026) and a three-in-one Deluxe Edition from 2024.

On screen

Two 24-episode anime seasons: Wit Studio (2019) and MAPPA (2023), with the same director across both.

The History of Vinland Saga

THE RECORD

THE FIRST WORD