Character Analysis
Our resident bad guy is one tough cookie. He's been through a bunch of stuff, which he makes a point of telling Sig. Check it out:
"I've nearly frozen to death. Twice. I have starved. I have eaten things no man should eat. I've crawled through the snow and the ice and damn near lost my other thumb to frostbite like I lost my first. And a man without thumbs is nothing. I could have laid down and died a thousand times over the last ten years, but I didn't . I kept going, because all the time, I knew my gold was waiting for me." (21.32)
And you thought your life was hard… There's no doubt this guy is made of sterner stuff, and with good reason—trekking through the arctic, searching for gold and a long-lost enemy will do that to a guy. It turns out Wolff wasn't a looker to begin with, but by the time Sig first meets the guy, he's shaking in his boots at the mere sight of him.
Mirror, Mirror
One thing's for sure: Wolff is not the fairest of them all. Check out what Sig thinks when he first sees Wolff:
His features were coarse, his eyes far apart, his nose broad, his mouth hidden by a rough beard of ginger and white. His head, when he removed his fur hat, was shaven to his scalp. His skull was a disturbing shape, flat at the back, his ears too small. It was not a face stroked into creation by God's loving hand, but battered into shape by the Devil's hammer. (6.10)
He sounds like one scary dude, doesn't he? It's no wonder Sig is worried when he's alone in the cabin with the guy. Over the course of the book, we see that it's not just his face that's stern and stoic either—he's built like a monster, and as his personality emerges, we see that Wolff has become one as well. We suspect he isn't a nice guy when he pushes his way into Sig's home and demands his gold, but he's just getting started at that point, and before the book is over, we realize Wolff's monstrous behavior goes way beyond inviting himself in and refusing to leave.
No Sheep in Wolff's Clothing
As Wolff realizes Einar is dead, he says the following to his corpse:
"Einar," Wolff whispered, so softly that Sig wasn't sure of what he heard. "Einar. You have cheated me, but you won't win." (15.5)
Um, okay… So this guy can definitely hold a grudge. While less-evil dudes might take their sworn enemy's death as an indication that it's time to let bygones be bygones, that's totally not the case with Wolff. And later in the book, we learn that he killed Sig's mom and we see him try to take advantage of Anna—he tells her, "'I'm not going to kill you. Not yet. I want something for my trouble'" (35.8)—which leaves no room for doubt about whether or not Wolff is the ultimate bad guy. The only thing he's good at, it seems, is making us hate him.
Wolff's Timeline