Victoria Van Gale

"This is Victoria Van Gale of the Greater Trolburg Meteorological Bureau."

Victoria Van Gale is a meteorologist and scientist of the Trolberg Meteorological Bureau. She is first heard on the radio in "Chapter 7: The Lost Clan", before appearing in person in "Chapter 10: The Storm".

Hilda was a great fan of her, until the events of "Chapter 10: The Storm".

Appearance
Victoria is a tall, skinny, Caucasian woman with long grey hair and black eyes. She wears a white lab coat.

Personality
At first glance, Victoria comes off as a nice, if somewhat eccentric woman. She clearly loves her work and research, and will gladly give a tour to everybody who visits the Weather Station. She can also be somewhat clumsy, like accidentally bumping into a lever that turns on her Weather Machine.

However, she isn't above doing morally questionable things to achieve her goals, like abducting a baby Weather Spirit.

Season 1
Up until the events of "Chapter 10", Victoria worked in the Trolberg Weather Station. From here, she would broadcast the daily weather forecasts, which was known to be accurate to the second.

However, unsatisfied with simply predicting the weather, she turned her research towards finding ways to control it, believing humanity could greatly benefit from this. To this end, she build a weather control machine in the Trolberg Weather Station, and even abducted a baby Weather Spirit to lure more Weather Spirits to her.

Sadly, this plan worked too well and dozens of Weather Spirits showed up. They got into a heated argument above Trolberg, causing a severe snow storm. This was when Hilda, David and The Great Raven came to visit her, believing Victoria might be in trouble. Victoria gave the two kids a tour, during which they discovered her weather machine. Hilda convinced Victoria to try and use her machine to blow the storm away from Trolberg and Victoria agreed, but it failed and her machines overheated. Hilda was eventually able to solve the problem by talking to the Weather Spirits, moderating their discussion and getting them to calm down.

David meanwhile discovered the captured baby Weather Spirit, and when Hilda returned he told her about this. This shattered Hilda's image of her idol, and she proclaimed Victoria to be a mad scientist. When the baby's father attacked the weather station, Hilda freed the baby. Victoria fled from the building, which moments later collapsed and fell down the mountain due to the damage caused by the Weather Spirit. This greatly upset Victoria.

Season 2
In "Chapter 5: The Windmill", Victoria reappears now living in a windmill alongside some animals that were scared by the construction works of Trolberg. She is now accompanied by a Nisse that she built herself.

Hilda, Frida and David encounter her during an assignment to photograph birds and she admits to have change and decided to redeem herself by creating a shelter of the animals in the windmill, though Hilda and company don't believe her. Despite this, Hilda decide to help her rebuild her new home in exchange of getting some photos from the animals in the shelter. David doubts her the most and his doubts are made real when after the repairs he founds some documents. Turns out that Victoria was working a way to enter the Nowhere Space and even summoned a Nisse to assist her in this work. After the repairs are done, she kidnaps Frida and activates a machine to open a portal to the Space, believing that since the city have been getting out of space to build maybe in the Nowhere the citizens can create new homes without destroying the forest. However, her machine gets destroyed when David tried to rescue Frida because of his fight with his assistant, creating another portal inside the Space that sends both Victoria and her assistant to an unknown location, apparently a deserted island.

Tie-in series
In the Hilda Tie-In Series, Victoria is briefly mentioned in "Hilda and the Great Parade" when Hilda listens to her weather forecast on the radio.

She appears in person in the book "Hilda and the Ghost Ship", which adapts the events of "Chapter 5: The Windmill". The book reveals that the events from "Chapter 10: The Storm" also happened in this continuity, but they are not shown in detail, just briefly mentioned. According to Hilda, her mom holds a grudge against Victoria for her part in causing the snow storm. Victoria's role in the book is largely identical to that in Season 2 of the series. The adventure takes place simultaneously with Hilda's adventures involving the Draugen and the Kraken, and because of this it is mostly David that helps Victoria with repairing the Windmill while Hilda and Frida are elsewhere. He only does so to keep an eye on her. As in the series, he eventually figures out her true plan to open a breach to Nowhere Space, but is taken captive by Victoria and her Nisse the way Frida was captured by them in the series. He is found by Alfur, who warns Hilda, Frida and Tontu. As in the series, Victoria's plan ultimately fails and she remains behind in Nowhere Space as her machine malfunctions and the portal closes. The book does not reveal where (if anywhere) she ended up afterwards.

Appearances
Animated series
 * "Chapter 7: The Lost Clan" (voice only)
 * "Chapter 10: The Storm"
 * "Chapter 5: The Windmill"

Novelization
 * "Hilda and the Ghost Ship"

Trivia

 * Victoria van Gale does not appear in any of the graphic novels. In "Hildafolk", Hilda can be seen listening to the weather forecast on the radio, but the identity of the forecaster is not revealed.

Victoria Van Gale