Behind the Beard
Not every voice is born in comfort. Some are forged slowly, through hardship, laughter, loss, and the stubborn refusal to be broken. This is the tale behind the Bearded Viking.
In the early days of my life, before the beard, before the microphone, before anyone thought to call me “Viking,” there was a boy who learned the language of fear far sooner than the language of joy. I was raised beneath a roof where the one meant to shield me instead became the storm: a father whose hands and words both carried more weight than any child should ever be made to bear. The bruises were not always visible, for some are painted on the heart and not the skin, but they were real enough. In those dim hours, I learned two things: that silence can be a prison, and that a voice, once awakened, can be a weapon for survival. Long before I ever stepped into a booth, I was already learning how to endure, how to listen, and how not to surrender.
When I reached the age of seventeen, the world did not pause to ask whether I was ready for it. The marriage that had bound my parents together came apart, and in the shattering, my mother and brother were left with more need than means. There was no gentle transition into adulthood; instead, I stepped from youth straight into the forge. I took on two, sometimes three jobs at once, not because it was glorious, but because the cupboards had to be filled and the lights kept burning. While other boys my age were choosing colleges or adventures, I was choosing which shift to take and how to stretch a paycheck across three lives. In those long nights and early mornings, something within me hardened—not into bitterness, but into resolve. The world had tried to crush me once; I would not give it a second chance.
Yet even in the midst of that struggle, the threads of a different story were being woven. Before that year had breathed its last, I met the woman who would become my wife. We were young, perhaps too young by the standards of wiser folk, but the heart seldom consults a calendar. We began to walk the road together, and at eighteen I took her hand in marriage. By nineteen, we welcomed our first child into this restless world. In the years that followed, the Gods—whether of myth or mercy you may decide—bestowed upon us four children in all: three radiant daughters and one son whose presence anchored me in ways I never expected. For sixteen years we shared a home and a name, raising our small tribe against the backdrop of financial strain, personal battles, and the ordinary triumphs and wounds of married life.
During those years, the flame of voice acting flickered in my chest like a stubborn candle in a draft. More than once I stretched my hand toward it, seeking to step into that world of microphones and scripts, of characters and narration. But life, as it often does, held its own plans. There were always bills to pay, crises to calm, schedules to juggle. Time was a rare resource, and money rarer still. Each attempt to move toward the craft I loved seemed to slip away beneath the weight of obligation, and so the dream waited—never quite dead, but never fully alive either. Eventually, the strain that had worn thin the edges of our marriage could no longer be ignored, and the path my wife and I had walked together came to an end. The marriage broke, and with it, the version of myself I had been up to that moment.
But from endings, new men are sometimes born. In the wake of the divorce, I did not emerge as a saint, nor as a polished hero from some polished tale. I came forth as something more honest: a man who had been angry for far too long, now learning to temper that anger into dark humor, sharp wit, and a strange, playful courage. I began to explore my own nerdy side without apology—the stories, games, characters, and worlds that had always called to me in secret. My voice, once used mostly to survive, found new shapes and colors. I discovered that I could bend it, stretch it, rumble low or soar high, that the very instrument life had tried to silence could become my art.
Through it all, there were my children—my four small constellations. As they grew, the nightly rituals grew
with them. When the shadows lengthened and it was time for bed, it was my name they called for stories. I could
spin tales from nothing, pluck adventures right out of the air, or breathe life into the pages of any book
placed in my hands. I gave dragons their growls, wizards their whispers, villains their sneers, and heroes
their steady courage. My children chose my storytelling over their mother’s, not from disrespect, but because
they knew that when I spoke, the world inside the words came alive. What began as a father’s simple wish to
make his children smile became a revelation: this was not merely a trick of voices, but a calling.
In the quiet, after little eyes had closed and little hands had gone slack in sleep, I would sit with the realization that these moments meant more than just goodnight. My children’s laughter and awe had awakened a deeper hunger in me: to put this voice to work in a way that could outlive my body and my days. I began to dream not only of reading stories at bedside, but of speaking into the great engines of film and game and broadcast—so that, wherever they might go in life, my children could hear their father’s voice rising from the speakers of the world, a familiar echo in unfamiliar places.
From that longing, another fire was lit. I turned my attention to a mountain few men have ever climbed: the vocal records set by Tim Storms, whose range and depth have long been considered legendary. It was not envy that stirred me, but challenge. The same stubbornness that had carried me through abuse, through poverty, through heartbreak, now fixed itself upon a new horizon. I set my sights on two great feats: to claim, on April 16th, 2026, the titles of Greatest Vocal Range by a Male and Lowest Vocal Note by a Male. It is not a casual ambition; it is the natural extension of a life spent wrestling with sound—whether in the shout of pain, the roar of anger, or the gentle cadence of a bedtime story.
Should the Gods of fate and frequency permit me to seize even one of those records, the title will not be a mere ornament for a website. It will be a banner hung high above everything that brought me here: the boy who survived, the young man who worked himself raw for family, the husband who tried and failed, the father whose children chose his voice, the man who finally allowed himself to chase the dream he had carried in silence for years. With such a record carved into the world’s memory, I aim to step into the halls of film, animation, and game—into Hollywood and beyond—so that my voice may roar and whisper and rumble across stories yet unwritten. And somewhere out there, in a theater or a living room or a quiet bedroom late at night, my children will hear that familiar sound and know: their father did not simply endure. He rose, he forged himself anew, and he turned all that darkness into something powerful enough to be heard across the world.