Jasper Pääkkönen as Halfdan the Black

Halfdan the Black Played by Jasper Pääkkönen

King Harald’s violent, devoutly loyal younger brother.

 

Jasper Pääkkönen

Jasper recently completed filming on Charles Belleville’s Jet Trash opposite Robert Sheehan. In 2013, he won a Jussi award in his native Finland for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his appearance as Harri in Leijonasydän (Heart of a Lion).

He also appeared as the character Kapu in Finland’s highest box office grossing film Lapland Odyssey in 2010, directed by Dome Karukoski. Lapland Odyssey won awards at the Jussi Awards and the Alpe d’Huez ICFF.

Jasper comes from a family of actors and began acting in the Finnish National Theatre and the Helsinki City Theatre when he was a child. At the age of 20, following his studies at The Kallio Secondary School of Performing Arts, he became part of the original cast of a daily soap, which became a huge success.

At the age of 20, he was selected to play the main role in Bad Boys, directed by the talented Aleksi Mäkelä, which became the biggest box-office hit ever in Finland. For his performance in this film, Jasper received the prize for “Best Actor” at the Brussels Film Festival in 2003. Roles in Vares and Addiction – When Nothing is Enough quickly followed. The film, Frozen Land, won many international awards including the Jury Prize in Moscow, the Nordic Award at the Gothenburg Festival and the Golden Owl at the Leeds Festival. Jasper’s creative collaboration with director Aleksi Mäkelä has proved fruitful–in 2005, he starred in Matti – Hell is for Heroes, and was cast in V2.