How to Train Your Dragon characters

Appears from the start

The undersized and thoroughly unheroic son of Stoick the Vast and heir to the Hairy Hooligan tribe on the island of Berk. He is thoughtful, curious and hopeless at the shouting and brawling his tribe admires, which makes him an easy target for the other boys of his year. Unknown to almost everyone, he has taught himself to speak Dragonese by listening to dragons, a skill no Hooligan would consider worth having. The book is presented as his own memoir, written down long afterwards.

Appears from the start

Hiccup's only real friend, a scrawny and anxious boy with a squint and an allergy to reptiles, which is an unfortunate condition for a Viking about to be handed a dragon. He is as unpromising a candidate for the initiation programme as Hiccup, and the two of them are at the bottom of the class together.

Also known as Snotlout

Appears from the start

Hiccup's cousin: loud, strong, well built and openly contemptuous of him. He expects to be chief of the Hairy Hooligans himself one day and loses no chance to point out that Hiccup is unfit for it. He leads the other boys in mocking Hiccup and Fishlegs throughout the initiation.

Appears from the start

An enormous, slow-witted boy who follows Snotlout everywhere and supplies the muscle for his bullying.

Appears from the start

Chief of the Hairy Hooligan tribe and Hiccup's father, a vast, bellowing man whose name is announced with a warning that hearers should tremble. He badly wants his son to be an impressive heir and is embarrassed that he is not, though the fondness underneath is plain enough.

Appears from the start

The huge, roaring warrior who runs the Hairy Hooligan initiation programme and drills the ten boys of Hiccup's year. He believes in noise, obedience and doing things the way they have always been done, and holds Hiccup in very low regard.

First appears in chapter 4

The dragon Hiccup takes from the nursery inside Wild Dragon Cliff: a very small, entirely ordinary Common or Garden dragon, and toothless besides, which makes him the least impressive catch of the whole year. He is greedy, idle, vain and disobedient, tells transparent lies, and does nothing he does not feel like doing. Because Hiccup speaks Dragonese, the two of them argue and bargain in the dragon's own language rather than through the bellowing the tribe recommends.

First appears in chapter 6

Hiccup's grandfather and the tribe's elderly soothsayer, who reads the future in fish entrails and is one of the very few people on Berk willing to entertain the idea that there is more than one kind of hero. He listens to Hiccup and answers him in hints.

First appears in chapter 5

The dragon Snotlout comes away with, a Monstrous Nightmare and by a wide margin the most impressive catch of the group, a fact Snotlout never allows anyone to forget.

First appears in chapter 6

Fishlegs's dragon, a placid Basic Brown who turns out to be a vegetarian, which Fishlegs does his best to keep quiet during training.

First appears in chapter 16

A colossal sea dragon, a Seadragonus Giganticus Maximus, washed up on the shore at Berk. It is large enough to treat an entire Viking tribe as a meal, and no Hooligan weapon makes the slightest impression on it.

First appears in chapter 16

A second monstrous sea dragon stranded alongside the Green Death, and its natural rival. The two of them are considerably more interested in each other than in anything the Vikings on the beach can do.