In the TV series 'True Blood' he is tall with long blonde hair. When Sookie sees him naked for the first time in Dead to the World, she thinks, “if there were an international butt competition, Eric would win, hands down – or cheeks up.” Kind of like the guys on the cover of romance books'. In the first novel, Dead Until Dark, Sookie Stackhouse thinks Eric Northman is a 'hunk.' Sookie describes him as “handsome, in fact, radiant blond and blue-eyed, tall and broad shouldered.

The name 'Norseman' means 'man from the north', hence Eric's last name being Northman. The name 'Norseman' was the name given to people who could speak the Old Norse Language, spoken in the Scandinavian countries, namely Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The name 'Eric' or 'Erik' comes from Old Norse and means 'One ruler' or 'eternal ruler'. In the television show, it is also shown that Eric was a Viking prince, in the novels Eric says that his father was a chief. In the television series, he was made a vampire by Godric. In the books, he was ambushed one night by a Roman vampire named Appius Livius Ocella and subsequently turned. It is revealed in the television series that the vampire king of Mississippi murdered his entire family before stealing his father's Viking crown. Aude and their sixth child died of a fever shortly after the birth when Eric was in his early twenties. The couple had six children, but only three were living at the time of his turning, two boys and a girl. At sixteen he married Aude, his brother's widow. He was deemed a man at the age of twelve. In the ninth book, Dead and Gone Eric revealed details about his human life as a Viking. In the early books, little was revealed about his past. A list of True Blood characters has a detailed description of Eric's character from the TV show.

HBO's television series True Blood is based on this book series and the character of Eric Northman is portrayed somewhat differently. Since the book series is told from the first person perspective of Sookie Stackhouse, what readers perceive of his character is influenced by what Sookie comprehends. He is a vampire, slightly over one thousand years old, and is first introduced in the first novel, Dead Until Dark and appears in all subsequent novels. Eric Northman is a fictional character in The Southern Vampire Mysteries, a series of thirteen books written by New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris.

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