Jasper Pääkkönen

Joona Jasper Pääkkönen (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈjoːnɑ ˈjɑsper ˈpæːkːønen]; born 15 July 1980) is a Finnish film actor and entrepreneur.

Following a two-decade-plus career in Finnish movies, Pääkkönen’s international breakthrough role came in 2015 in the historical drama television series Vikings (2016–2018; 2020) as Halfdan the Black. His next roles were in Spike Lee’s comedy-drama film BlacKkKlansman (2018) and in the war drama film Da 5 Bloods (2020).

Pääkkönen was born in Helsinki, Finland, the son of actor Seppo Pääkkönen and Virve Havelin.[4] His uncle Antti Pääkkönen is also an actor.[5][6] Already as a child, Pääkkönen was a theater assistant and attended Kallio Upper Secondary School of Performing Arts in Kallio, Helsinki. When Pääkkönen was 17, he spent a year in Maryland as an exchange student at Baltimore’s Owings Mills High School during the 1997–98 school year.