Kristin Hällberg

Thumbless (Second son)

Subject 2/"Niklas" (Third child, *deceased*)

Subject 3/"Tindra" (Fourth child, *deceased*)

Kristin Hällberg is one of the antagonistic characters in ***Uriah***. She was the wife of **Tomas** and the mother of **Vincent** and **Thumbless**, including the two children who were used as subjects for **Project Bullfinch**.

Kristin played a significant role in Tomas' snuff business and Project Bullfinch, but her true nature and feelings remain very vague due to her mysterious and withdrawn character. Her status was unknown for most of the story, but later it was confirmed that she was killed and decapitated by her son, Vincent. Kristin's disembodied head was kept by him; while her remains, found in the trunk of Vincent's car, were later burnt with the ashes disposed of into the sea along with Tomas'.

## Appearance

Kristin is a very petite woman having quite a frail figure, along with a fair pinkish complexion. Her dark brown hair is in a straight bob ending at her neck, and while sometimes parted in the middle, her hair usually hangs on her face, covering her eye. She has straight eyebrows with big purple eyes, which appear to be quite dull, and are often shown to have eyebags underneath as well. Throughout the story, Kristin has always been characterized by stand-offish body language - she hardly ever smiles or makes any exaggerated facial expression for that matter, with her face conveying nothing except impassivity and a worn-out disposition.

Apart from this, in her appearances, Kristin is usually seen wearing light-coloured shirts or tops with pants.

## Personality

Kristin is a very apathetic person, being completely inexpressive and having a cold and dull approach to everyone and everything. She has always been extremely distant, hence rarely ever exhibiting any emotions or feelings to those around her. Kristin, in general, has an utter lack of interest in other people, not caring or being concerned about anything in any sort of way. It's almost as if she isn't even there, with how little involvement or interactions she has with her surroundings.

Having an extremely antisocial personality, Kristin has the tendency to get quite aggressive when someone happens to get close to her, just like when she had angrily yelled at **Thumbless** to get away after he had accidentally tripped her over while standing in the middle of the doorway - which is also one of the rare instances of her expressing any strong emotion. Kristin sticks to being uncommunicative, not having any friends either, and was cut off by her family as well in her teenage years. She is seen engaging only with **Tomas**, **Vincent** and **Bo**; that too in a very reserved manner.

Kristin has also shown sadistic behaviour and is quite manipulative as well, sometimes showcasing a very macabre personality. She is pretty cruel, as shown in the way she had approached Thumbless and tortured him after he had ended up killing Tomas out of self-defence. Besides, Kristin had always been an active part of Tomas' snuff films. Though it's vague to what extent Kristin actually enjoyed it, she was Tomas' foremost partner-in-crime, helping him torture the victims and record the videos in their basement, and was seemingly on board with the idea of **Project Bullfinch**. She is also evidently not the best mother as she is completely detached from her children, not doing anything or bothering at all when they get abused and treated inhumanely, let alone show them any sort of affection. She's hardly capable of compassion and is indifferent to everything, staying cold-hearted and even emotionally abusive. Besides these, Kristin can be really mean; getting angered or annoyed easily sometimes, and is also shown to feel jealousy as she had herself admitted to Tomas about him being with **Anita.** In a way, it is pretty hard to know what is actually going on in her mind, due to her uncaring and blank demeanour.

Excluding these traits, there has been a very fearful and vulnerable side to Kristin. Even though it was never depicted explicitly, Kristin was seemingly exhausted with everything, and overall held a melancholic outlook on life. She appeared to be very depressive and even suicidal as well, and genuinely never protested against whatever happened to her, as in Tomas' ill-treatment.

   All these attributes together make Kristin the mysterious, unfeeling void of a person she is. However, her character in a way is somewhat transparent in the sense that she never feels the need to falsify feelings or put up a pretence in front of others, unlike her close comparison - Tomas. Even though her thought process is perplexing to assess, it's certainly not driven by any form of emotion, let alone empathy; defining Kristin as an undoubtedly psychotic and irredeemable person. Her degree of depravity is *almost* equal to Tomas' - she's just the quieter of the two.

## Relationships

#### Tomas Hällberg

*Tomas* is Kristin's husband. Though being married, there wasn't any love in their relationship - they acted solely like "work-partners". Apart from Tomas being the primary figure of their snuff business, Kristin was always on the side helping him with the execution of their snuff projects - which was, actually, the whole reason behind their marriage.

Kristin had also been in agreement with Tomas' ideas for **Project Bullfinch** - with her keeping her entire pregnancy a secret and giving birth to **Thumbless** in their basement. Eventually, after the entire project was ruined with **Bo** taking away Thumbless, Tomas' temper and impulsiveness had become indescribably worse - and in the end, it resulted in Kristin being treated as nothing more than a "bullfinch-producing machine", repeatedly having to give birth to more children to be used as subjects for Project Bullfinch. Except these, even though Kristin was Tomas' partner, she too has been hinted to fear him - as suggested by her more stiff and withdrawn body language around Tomas, especially when he's angry. While being treated somewhat better by him in comparison to the children, she still wasn't an exception to Tomas' severe abuse.

Kristin had also insisted on Tomas herself to go look for other relationships, because it was exhausting for her to keep up with his whims, given his intense sex addiction. However, later on, when Tomas had invited **Anita** over to their house for a date night, Kristin deliberately let Thumbless go upstairs from the basement and interrupt Tomas and Anita's time together - and when later asked to explain herself by Tomas, Kristin plainly mentions that she had got jealous, resulting in a hard slap from him. Except for these, Kristin genuinely remained unaffected by Tomas' frequent and violent outbursts. However, it has been hinted that, at some point, Tomas' brutal physical and emotional abuse did have an impact on her, and as per speculations, it left her emotionally exhausted and worn out.

All in all, Kristin, in a way, had been a passive victim of Tomas. She did cooperate with him most of the time, but never cared or fought back against his mistreatment - whether for herself or her kids, allowing him to do whatever he wanted. Finally, when Kristin saw Tomas' dead body after Thumbless had killed him, there wasn't a single trace of emotion on her, or any sort of reaction at all - and then later asked **Vincent** to get rid of his corpse, coldly regarding it as just ''the man's body''.

#### Bo Vahlin

*Bo* was Tomas and Kristin's snuff partner and family friend. Working together, Kristin and Bo mostly maintained a neutral relationship with each other. However, slightly exceptional to her usual indifference towards people, Kristin seemingly had a good impression of Bo - as suggested by the cool attitude she had around him most of the time.

There were also a few instances where Kristin had been relatively forthright with her emotions in front of Bo. When she had found him in the basement painting a bloody, morbid portrait of **Thumbless**, she bluntly commented on how disgusting that was and put on a plain judgemental approach after hearing Bo's reasoning behind his paintings. Apart from this, when Bo was getting rid of **Jesper's** body while **Tomas** was away, Kristin was comparatively curious while questioning Bo and discussing what Tomas did to the boy and his remains, and in the end, directly asked him if they'd be having the child for dinner that night.

On the whole, Kristin's undisclosed, subtle attachment to Bo's presence was showcased through her regarding him as a ''good man'' and telling **Vincent** how he would've taken care of them if he was still there. These feelings were likely to have stemmed from Bo always shielding her and the children from Tomas' uncontrolled abuse - and Kristin's sorrow over that safety being gone was reinforced by her acknowledging that Bo must hate them after having been framed and sent to jail, never to come back again.

#### Vincent Hällberg

*Vincent* is Kristin's oldest son. Her relationship with him is quite complicated, with her feelings towards Vincent being quite a mystery. For the most part, Kristin was nothing more than unconcerned and distant when it came to Vincent, just like the rest of her children. However, there were faint traces of affection towards her son, that in a way, also slightly differentiated from her overly cold and unkind approach to the other kids.

When Vincent had discovered **Jesper's** disembodied head in the freezer and broke down in shock and fear, Kristin came across him and held him gently, asking the boy to calm down - but soon called him annoying in an exasperated tone and simply decided to give Vincent some anti-anxiety medicine, instead of trying to comfort him any further. Again, in other instances, such as when **Tomas** left Vincent with Kristin after he caught him running away from their house, an abused, beaten-up Kristin plainly commented on his unsuccessful plans for escaping and uttered that they should just kill each other to put an end to their pain once and for all, along with mentioning how both of them would've been safe under the long-gone protection of **Bo**.

The overall abstruse nature of their relationship makes it tricky to judge Kristin's thoughts about Vincent. From Vincent's words, however, Kristin never directly reciprocated his affection and didn't even attempt to rescue him from Tomas' abuse or cooperate with him to get out of the house together. In short, whatever negligible forms of fondness Kristin would ever express for Vincent - they would always be outweighed by Kristin's ignorant, dispassionate personality and her inability to connect with others - that ultimately became the reason for her demise in Vincent's hands.

#### Thumbless

*Thumbless* is Kristin's younger son. He hardly holds any importance to her, being seen as nothing more than a product birthed for **Project Bullfinch**. Kristin only interacted with Thumbless under very rare circumstances, not caring about him at all otherwise. In their few interactions, Kristin expressed great annoyance at Thumbless's presence, often scolding or yelling at him harshly. She would always have a frosty approach towards him and be quite emotionally abusive as well.

Besides, her extremely manipulative and menacing behaviour towards Thumbless when she found out he had stabbed **Tomas** to death in the basement, was for the clear depiction of her sadistic nature. Kristin had taken advantage of Thumbless's shocked and vulnerable state of mind, taunting him about Anita's death and him ''escaping'' from her house to ''seek revenge''. She had messed with his head even more by convincing him he was a killer by nature and proceeded to tie him down with **Vincent's** help and carve 'MURDERER' on his back with a pair of scissors. Then, Kristin seemingly had quickly lost interest in torturing the boy, and offhandedly left it to Vincent to do whatever he wanted to him and later get rid of his body along with Tomas' - once again exhibiting how utterly insignificant Thumbless was to her.

## Trivia

* Kristin was originally planned to be Tomas's daughter, and was Thumbless's both mother and half-sister. But this plot point was removed from the story due to the overly dark themes.
* Kristin has always struggled with making facial expressions, and it's not intentional.
* Kristin apparently loves reading books.
* She likes dolls as well.
* Kristin had siblings.

## Gallery

* Episode 24
* Episode 24
* Episode 31
* Episode 57
* Episode 63
* Episode 93
* Episode 94
* Episode 95
* Episode 97
* Episode 98
* Episode 70
1/11
## References

1. ↑ Episode 70 (S2)
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Episode 57 (S2)
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Episode 24 (S1)
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Episode 95 (S3)
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Episode 63 (S2)
6. ↑ Episode 105 (S3)
7. ↑ Episode 93 (S3)
8. ↑ Episode 94 (S3)
9. ↑ Episode 97 (S3)
10. ↑ Episode 98 (S3)
11. ↑ Episode 69 (S2)
12. ↑ Episode 83 (S3)