Are the Nords in Bannerlord really as bad as the War Sails launch threads made them sound? If you scroll through Reddit, you will still find posts calling Nord troops “beyond awful” and the Kingdom of the Nordvyg a punching bag, and most of those posts are from the first week after the DLC came out.

The short version is that the Nords are a very strong infantry faction today. Their troops got several rounds of armour and helmet buffs since launch, every single troop in their tree fights at sea without a penalty, and none of their upgrades costs you a horse. What they do not have is cavalry, and that changes how you are going to play them on land and on the campaign map.

This guide will go through what the Nord culture bonuses actually do, the full troop tree with armour numbers, the best Nord units, how to recruit their noble line and how to win without a single horseman. All numbers below were pulled from the troop, item and culture data of Bannerlord v1.4.8 with War Sails 1.2.8.

Are the Nords good?

Yes, as long as you play them as what they are. The launch complaints were real at the time. Several mid-tier Nord troops had no helmet at all, the Huscarls lost their gauntlets on upgrade, and players lost sea battles against Battanian and Aserai troops. TaleWorlds pushed a hotfix the day after release (War Sails 1.0.2) that raised the armour of the high-tier Nord troops and gave them their intended helmets and gloves. The bigger change came with War Sails 1.2.5 in May 2026, which added nine new Nord helmets, heavier mail for the Hearthguard, Warfang, Marauder, Marksman and Shield Biters, a reinforced Huscarl armour, and a reworked Berserkir that now fights with axes only.

In the current files, every Nord troop from tier 3 upwards wears a helmet in every one of its equipment sets. Only the tier 1 Youngling and most sets of the tier 2 Huntsman go bareheaded. The Nord Huscarl is one of only two tier 6 foot troops among the main cultures (the other one is the Battanian Fian Champion, an archer), and with an average of 197 armour it is the best-protected Nord unit by a wide margin.

The opinion of players who stuck with them changed accordingly. By the end of 2025, the threads had moved from “awful” to “monster shield wall”, and in a popular thread from August 2026 the top answer to “how screwed are we against Vlandia and the Khuzaits?” was simply that Nords beat the Khuzaits with their elite troops as long as you play accordingly. That last part is the important one. The Nords have no cavalry at all, so you are going to win with formations, terrain and ships, not with a cavalry charge.

Nord culture bonuses

When you pick the Nords on the character creation screen, your character gets three culture effects. All three follow the culture of the party leader, which means they apply to your own party if your character is a Nord, no matter which kingdom you serve and which troops you lead. A Nord lord in Vlandian service still gets them, and a Vlandian character leading a full army of Huscarls does not.

More loot from caravans and villagers

The tooltip says “+30% more loot from villages, villagers and caravans.” In the game code, this bonus is applied in exactly one place: when your party wins a fight against a caravan or a villager party, its share of the item loot gets a +30% factor. It is not used when you raid a village, so the goods you get from burning a village are the same as for any other culture. If you plan to live off raiding, the bonus is mostly going to show up when you catch the villagers and caravans on the road.

Faster ships on rivers and coasts

The tooltip promises “20% ship movement speed in rivers and coastal seas.” The value stored for this effect is 0.1 though, so the game actually adds 10% to your fleet’s speed while you sail on a river, in coastal waters or under a bridge. It does nothing on the open sea and nothing for your party on land. It is still useful, since rivers and coastal waters are where you will sail most of the time, but it is half of what the tooltip says.

Army cohesion on land

The downside reads “Armies that are commanded by a Nord commander lose 30% more cohesion on land.” It only kicks in while the army leader is on land. As soon as your army is at sea, the effect is skipped. It also only cares about the culture of the army leader, so a Nord army led by a lord of another culture is not affected at all. You can see the exact effect on your army in the cohesion tooltip, where it shows up as a separate “Culture” line.

For comparison, the Sturgian bonuses are now completely different. Since patch 1.3, Sturgia gets 10% more grain in its villages and gathers armies for 50% less influence, so the old “Sturgians are the Viking faction” idea no longer holds. The Nords are the Viking culture in War Sails, and Sturgia is closer to the Rus.

Nord troop tree

The Nords have two upgrade lines, a regular one that starts with the Nord Youngling and a noble one that starts with the Nord Scion. All of them are infantry or archers. The chart below shows every troop with its average armour, and the table under it gives the split per body part.

A couple of things in this tree are worth knowing before you start upgrading.

• No Nord upgrade needs a horse or a war horse. Every other main culture has between two and four upgrades that ask for one, so you never have to buy horses to upgrade a Nord army.
• Every troop in both lines is a mariner. That includes the tier 1 Youngling, which matters a lot at sea (more on that below).
• Even the Youngling and the Warrior always carry a shield. Seven troops never do: the Marauder, the Warfang, the Skjaldbrestir and the Ulfhedinn on the melee side, plus the Huntsman, Freeman Archer and Marksman archers.
• The Huscarl carries braceable spears since War Sails 1.1.1, so you can brace them against cavalry. They are not couchable any more.

Additionally, the troop names in the game are different from the ones TaleWorlds used in their dev blog before release. Some guides and videos still call the noble line Aettlingr, Thegn, Jarlsmenn and Hirdmenn. In the game it is Scion, War-Proven, Hearthguard, Shield-Companion and Huscarl.

Best Nord units

The Nords end in six top troops, one tier 6 and five tier 5. Here is how they compare.

Nord Huscarl

The Huscarl is the backbone of any Nord army. It has 200 in One Handed and Polearm, 190 in Throwing, a large Nordic shield in every set, a braceable spear, a sword or battle axe and a stack of balanced throwing axes. With 197 armour on average, it is not the most armoured foot soldier of the main cultures (the Sturgian Heroic Line Breaker sits at 212), but it is close to the top and it is a tier above every infantry it usually fights.

Use them as your wall. In shield wall they soak up arrows from foot archers, and in a square or circle they hold against cavalry. Their throwing axes carry the bonus against shields, so a volley right before the lines meet will break a good number of enemy shields.

Nord Shield-Companion

This is the tier 5 step before the Huscarl, and you will have a lot of them because the noble line takes time to fill. They have the same kit idea at a lower level (140 in the main weapon skills, 173 armour). If you want to compare Nords with the Empire at the same tier, the Shield-Companion is the right match for the Imperial Legionary, not the Huscarl. The Legionary has a bit more armour (194), the Shield-Companion has better weapon skills, throwing axes and the mariner trait.

Nord Skjaldbrestir

The Skjaldbrestir is the two-handed shock troop of the regular line. It has 140 Two Handed, 140 Throwing and 150 Athletics, carries a Ravens Wing Axe, a second battle axe and throwing axes, and it has no shield. Quite a few Nord players consider it the best shock infantry in the game right now. It hits hard and moves fast, but without a shield it is going to suffer against archers, so keep it behind your Huscarls until the lines are engaged and then send it into the flanks.

Nord Berserkir

The Berserkir came out of the 1.2.5 rework with its sword removed. It now carries a Berserkr Axe that can be used with one or two hands, throwing axes and a steel shield. That makes it the only Nord shock troop with a shield, which is a big deal against archers. Its 62 body armour is the highest of all Nord tier 5 troops, while its Polearm skill (40) is very low, so do not expect it to hold a line against cavalry the way Huscarls do.

Nord Ulfhedinn

The Ulfhedinn is the end of the spear line. It fights with a sword and an Ulfhednar Atgeir, has a few throwing knives and no shield. It has 140 in One Handed and Polearm and 150 Athletics, so it is fast and versatile. Its armour (156) is the lowest of the Nord tier 5 infantry, so it works best in small numbers next to the Skjaldbrestir rather than as a main unit.

Nord Sky-Gods Chosen

The Nord archer line ends in the Sky-Gods Chosen, which has 140 Bow and a Woodland Longbow or Yew Bow with bodkin arrows. What makes it special is that it also carries a shield and a battle axe. You can put them behind a shield wall, let them shoot, and when they run out of arrows (which tends to happen in long battles) they can join the line as decent infantry. The Freeman Archer and Marksman before them do not get a shield, so they are a bit more fragile.

A good mix

There is no single right army, but a common pattern among Nord players is a large block of Huscarls and Shield-Companions as the shield wall, one group of shock troops (mostly Skjaldbrestir, with some Ulfhedinn or Berserkir) and Sky-Gods Chosen behind the wall. One player who asked about Huscarls got the advice to run about four Huscarls for every Skjaldbrestir, and others go closer to half and half. I would say start with more shields than shock troops while your noble line is still small and shift the ratio once you have enough Huscarls to hold a wide line.

If you want to buff all of these troops, the perks that matter are mostly in One Handed, Polearm, Athletics and Throwing, plus Leadership and Tactics for your own role as the commander. You can find the ones worth taking in my Bannerlord best perks guide.

Recruiting Nord noble troops

Noble Nord troops do not come from towns. The game gives the culture’s noble recruit (the Nord Scion) only from notables in villages that belong to a castle. Every other Nord notable offers the basic Nord Youngling, or a Youngling line troop that was upgraded while waiting.

The Nords start with nine castles, and each of them has two villages, so there are 18 villages in Nord lands where you can find Scions.

Most of these villages lie far inland in the snow, which makes it slow to refill your Huscarls after a big battle. It helps to plan a fixed loop through a few of them and to raise your relation with the notables there, since the better recruit slots open up with higher relation.

If you are not a Nord yourself, the same rule applies. Any character can recruit Scions in these villages, so Nord troops also work as the infantry core for a character of another culture.

How to play without cavalry

The lack of cavalry hurts the Nords in two places: field battles against mounted armies and speed on the campaign map.

Field battles

Most of the advice from Nord players comes down to the same few formations.

• Against foot archers, use shield wall. Your Huscarls and Shield-Companions will block most of the arrows, and even your Younglings have shields.
• Against cavalry and horse archers, switch to a square or a circle. Cavalry that charges into a tight square gets stuck in it instead of hitting and riding away. Put your archers inside the circle, and horse archers will run out of arrows long before they kill many of your men.
• Switch from shield wall to square right before enemy infantry makes contact, so their flanks get exposed when they wrap around you.
• Tell your infantry to hold fire while cavalry circles around you. Otherwise they will waste their throwing axes on horsemen and have nothing left when the enemy infantry arrives.
• Use your shock troops on a flank. A banner that raises movement speed helps them get there in time.

Terrain does a lot of the work as well. Hills, forests and castle walls take away most of the advantage of cavalry, and many Nord players rate them highly in sieges, both attacking and defending. In the open steppe against a big Khuzait army, you are probably going to want a numbers advantage or a different battlefield.

Campaign map speed

An infantry party is slow, and you will notice it when you try to catch looters or a fleeing lord. The game gives you two ways to fix part of that without hiring a single foreign horseman.

• Carry spare horses. Every footman who can sit on a spare horse in your inventory counts toward the “Footmen on horses” bonus. It is half as strong as real cavalry (up to +15% speed if every footman has a horse, against up to +30% for a full cavalry party), but it works for any troop.
• Make sure not to overdo it. Horses that nobody can ride, pack animals and livestock all count as a herd, and once that herd is bigger than your party, the herding penalty starts to slow you down again.

No Nord village breeds horses, so you will mostly have to buy them in other cultures’ towns. My guide on war mounts lists where horses are sold if you also want a better mount for yourself.

The other way is simply to sail. Your fleet does not care that your troops have no horses, and the Nord bonus to ship speed on rivers and coasts helps on exactly the routes you will use the most.

Nords at sea

This is where the Nords really stand out. In naval battles, regular troops that are not mariners fight with a penalty: they deal 20% less damage, move 20% slower and aim worse. Troops with the mariner trait ignore all of that completely.

Every troop in both Nord lines is a mariner, all 19 of them, from the tier 1 Youngling up to the Huscarl. The other main cultures only have two or three mariner troops each (for example the Sturgian Crewman, Veteran Shipman and Reaver), and the Khuzaits have none. So while another culture has to build a dedicated naval army, any Nord army is a naval army. Mariners also count for 20% more strength when a battle in coastal waters or a naval raid is auto-resolved.

Your heroes are a different story. For you and your companions, the penalty shrinks with the Mariner skill and is only gone completely at 200 Mariner.

The Nord ships are built for boarding. You can buy the Knarr, Light Longship, Longship, Battle Knarr and the Drakkar in Nord ports, and none of them has a ram slot. The Drakkar is the Nord heavy ship with 106 crew and 30,000 hit points, and the Battle Knarr (added in War Sails 1.2.5) is the only Nord ship with a ballista mount. The usual way to fight at sea with the Nords is to bring your ships alongside the enemy and win the melee on the decks, which is exactly what a full deck of Huscarls and Skjaldbrestir is good at.

War Sails 1.2.5 also added three Nord wanderer types (the Easterling, the Boatswain and the Sea-Raider). You can find more about the naval companions in my Bannerlord companions guide.

Nords vs Sturgians

Since the two cultures used to share a lot of their look, this is one of the most common questions about the Nords. Today they play very differently.

Sturgia has more land, real cavalry with the Druzhinnik line and the best-armoured tier 5 infantry of the main cultures. The Nords have fewer settlements and no cavalry at all, but they get a tier 6 infantry troop, mariners everywhere and upgrades that never need a horse. If you want to fight on land with a mixed army, Sturgia is the easier choice. If you want an infantry army that is just as good on a ship as on a field, the Nords are the better pick.

Kingdom of the Nordvyg

On the War Sails map, the Nord kingdom sits in the far north, from the Jumne river in the east across the Nordvyg peninsula to the island of Beinland in the west. It is ruled by King Halthdar of the Throsniring clan, which holds the old gathering place of the Nord clans, Thronderlag.

The kingdom starts with 4 towns, 9 castles and 34 villages. All four towns have a port.

• Thronderlag (Throsniring)
• Gretysfjord (Kjolding)
• Hvalvik (Orthling), on the island of Beinland
• Hargard (Skylfing), on the Jumne river

Next to the ruling clan, there are eight Nord noble clans: Kjolding, Orthling, Skylfing, Huldring, Gauting, Rungniring, Visduring and Dvarroving. The Skolderbroda (the Shield Brothers) are a Nord mercenary clan that fights with spear and axe. If you are looking for a Nord spouse, there are several brides and grooms among these clans, and my best wife guide lists which ones are worth it.

The 34 Nord villages are a mix of whalers, walrus hunters, fishermen, lumberjacks, trappers and wheat farms (four of each, three trappers), plus three cattle farms, five mines and a single sheep farm, swine farm and flax farm. After launch, several players reported that the AI Nord kingdom lost Hvalvik to Vlandia early, since the island town is far from the rest of the realm and close to Vlandia. If you play as a Nord vassal, it is often the first town worth taking back.

Conclusion

The Nords were in a rough state at launch, but most of what made them weak has been fixed. Today they have well-armoured elite infantry, a full tree of mariners and no horse costs at all. If you build your army around a Huscarl shield wall, give it a few shock troops and archers with shields, and use formations against cavalry, they are going to hold their own against any faction in Calradia. And whenever a fight goes badly on land, you can always take it to the sea.