Hols was saved from a village being destroyed by his grandfather when he was a baby, who fled the burning village in a boat. Hols has since lived in a run down boat-made-house on the river shoreline. Hols has lived a very hard life, since the area is full of dangerous animals such as wolves. It is his savagery, from living such a hard life, that allows him to kill the Pike that a group of grown men could not, and it is his own desperate loneliness through which he can identify with Hilda, and try to help her overcome her own suffering.