hello i am here to smash any happy headcanons you have to pieces
Sigrun and Mikkel bicker like an old married couple, sure, but I have a reason I keep on writing her as emotionally stunted as she is in all my fanfics. She's been a hunter for a long time, yeah? Maybe she joined up 16-18 years old-ish. Not a captain forever.
She probably learned not to get attached to people in that time. And if she does, it takes a good long time.
In the flashback to when Trond recruited her, her whole team is banged up to hell. She's a little banged up. And completely unconcerned about anyone around her.
Example 1. She smashed her elbow into another member of the team. I'm pretty sure Minna could have fit a "sorry" in there. (Its what like anyone else could have done)
Example 2. When she grabs Emil's face. He's clearly exhausted, and just had a near death experience + is probably adrenaline crashing- which is all things Sigrun should be familiar with
But she doesn't acknowledge Emil's situation. And its not the first time. The whole time when she smashes Emil and Lalli together was supposed to be fine, even it was a mistake. She doesn't seem to have any good interactions with Lalli to know he's a little to the fey.
But she does know Emil's pretty green. Since she probably read the files (how else would she know about him going to a fancy school? small talk? Actually maybe, it she probably read the files.)
Big talk, the overexuberance is probably a way of coping.
So,Sigrun in summary -aware but not really, probably way different when she joined the hunters,copes with overexcitement
I'm guessing that the Norwegian army is pretty hardcore and trial by fire-ish. I'd doubt that the other nations are really really concerned with the others, as long as they are still trading and not dying of the rash, everything is A-OK.
And about the team being a big happy family-
They haven't known each other for long enough for them to be a family+plus the added bonus of the fact that their never going to have that chance, because this expedition is going to last the winter then its over.
*looks at wall of text above*
"So this is why I can't write happy fanfics."
*Aggressively optimistic party-crash*
Really I think it would work the other way around. You fight alongside people, you need to be able to have a good connection with them. There's a reason that soldiers' camaraderie is a byword--you need to be prepared to die for your teammates, and vice versa. And if there's a high turnover rate, you need to be able to make attachments quickly.
Notice how physical Sigrun gets with everyone. She's been shown touching all of the team members (except for Reynir) at least once and really gets up in people's faces when she's talking to them. Both of these are extremely important connection techniques. Ever watch a mom with her baby? Lots of touching, lots of getting up in the baby's face. Humans respond to these actions by forming attachments, the sort of attachment you're going to need if you're going to be asking people to fight and die for you. Personally, I think that Sigrun has very strong maternal instincts which she's incorporated into her job to make her a good captain.
Let's look at when she first meets her team. First she's waving to them vigorously as they get off the platform, immediately identifying herself to them in a friendly manner. Then when Tuuri exclaims about her height she responds, not only with pleasure, but by immediately turning it back to Tuuri: "I like you already!" Then she meets Lalli: she gives him a cheerful, friendly smack on the back, to which Lalli reacts negatively, and doesn't answer the question she asked him. Whereupon Sigrun lays a hand on his shoulder, gets up in his face, and instead of repeating the question or taking offense, respects his decision (she thinks) not to answer. "Don't feel like talking about it? That's cool, maybe later?" So far so good. I think that she probably skimmed over the personnel reports, which would explain the gaps in her information. Then when Emil breaks off the cattank mirror (I think that might come back to bite them even more: ever try driving with only one side-view mirror?) she immediately covers for him.
Later on, in the troll house, we see Sigrun at her finest (and prettiest). She doesn't take any uncalculated risks, checking ahead before bringing in her team, deciding to kill the troll based on its size, setting a rendezvous and pulling out immediately once she realizes the extent of the infestation. She loses her temper with Emil exactly once, and comforts him immediately afterwards. She knows that she's dealing with a scared noob, and she reacts accordingly: reassuring him, coaxing him, not tearing him down. She smacks his face when he begins to get hysterical, snapping him out of it: then places her hands on his shoulders and talks him down. When Emil says that he wasn't freaking out/crying, instead of correcting him she just accepts it and moves on.
When she smashes Emil and Lalli together it's not so much that she's ignoring Lalli's sensitivity as that she has literally no other way to communicate quickly to somebody who doesn't understand what she's saying, "You, here, with him." You may notice that after the initial meeting when Lalli makes it abundantly clear that he doesn't like being touched, this is the only time that she touches him. So she
does notice, and she
does respect that.
Now later on she completely forgets about Lalli: but it's actually quite understandable, and not much of a reflection on her abilities. First of all, they hadn't been talking to each other at all: you may have noticed how easy it is to forget the "quiet friend" or to be forgotten if you are the quiet friend. That's just how people work: they remember people who they talk to. Secondly, Lalli wasn't
where he was supposed to be. Sigrun headed back to the rendezvous point at the appropriate time, as did Emil. They met up, had some rather urgent and very distracting business to take care of, and then were running for their lives. The quiet one who isn't where he's supposed to be when he's supposed to be there is easy for anyone to forget. Thank goodness for Mikkel. (Incidentally, looking at the distance between the two when Lalli threw himself out of the window, Mikkel probably ran up to catch him, and that makes me happy.)
Now to address the two examples you gave:
1. Face-smash. The people she was sitting with weren't her teammates: they were her co-captains, in charge of their own teams. (Which probably means that Sigrun hurt her neck, one-eye hurt (or lost) his eye, and no-arms broke both her arms on
completely separate missions, and I find that kind of funny. What must the life of a Norwegian medic be like?) So it's certainly not Sigrun's fault that they're beat up, and probably just an everyday sort of occurrence. Nothing to be concerned about. I agree that a simple apology (e.g. Tuuri's apology to Lalli when she accidentally pulled his hair) would have been easy to fit in, but I don't think a lack of an apology is a sign of anything serious. It strikes me as a pretty rough-and-tumble environment: she probably grew up with those guys, and they might not expect apologies if you wind up accidentally hurt while somebody's trying to volunteer for a suicide mission.
2. Emil-overwhelming. Sigrun and Emil have just had their first real combat experience as a team. Emotions and adrenaline are running high, and Sigrun moves in immediately to take full advantage of that. Physical contact, getting up in his face, motivational speech, "ARE YOU WITH ME???" It backfires, hilariously so, but Sigrun's actions were A+ military leadership techniques. With a more aggressive personality it probably would have been exactly what was needed. And when Emil throws up, she backs off. Mikkel pulls her aside, and she doesn't resist, either allowing herself to be put in or putting herself in the corner. (I'm not sure which is better.)
TL;DR: People would totally die for Sigrun, and for good reason.
