Summary

Mark was born in the Faroe Islands, Denmark to a Dutch man and a Norwegian woman with Japanese roots. He lived in Denmark for about one year and half, before moving to Norway, to his mother's villa near the mountains. In there, him and his siblings were raised by their parents and grandparents, and had several dogs in the house. Around his four years old, he started to go with his grandfather on the sleigh pulled by their dogs, gaining a taste for the snow.

On that same year, his parents put him on a kindergarten so that he would interact with people of his age. On one occasion, he was hit by the head of a doll, that Eva had thrown against another boy on their class. A few days later, Eva accidentally hit him on the head with an apple, while trying to hit the previous boy again. This caused the famous "Dang it, Mark!" sentence to appear, and opened Mark's forehead, causing him to have a scar on the same place.

Ever since that meeting, Mark and Eva befriended each other and quickly became close friends, and after a certain point, inseparable, as they did almost everything together, as if they were twins. At the age of five, he enrolled into the Norwegian Scouts, while Eva went to a swimming club, and both remained in those hobbies for several years, eventually quitting after reaching the age of nine, when both got interested in snowboarding after trying it in one of their winter vacations. They signed up on a club, and soon Mark climbed on the ranks of his class and became one of the best students.

Due this, his coach signed him up in a regional competition, which he won. Ever since there, Mark started to make a name for himself in the snowboarding community, being seen as a genius on that sport, as he would win several competitions, winning medals in almost every single one of them. However, several years later, when he was around his 14-15 years old, he decided to move to Japan for High School, since it was a common dream of him and Eva to visit their ancestry's lands.

He had finished practicing with Eva for a last competition, but Eva never returned to the resort they were staying in. Mark decided to go to the track to find her, and found her snowboard torn apart after what seemed to be an ugly crash, and entered in the forest after the clues and trying to find her. To make everything worse, a snow storm formed on that mountain, catching them on it. Mark was able to find Eva whom was hiding behind some trees, scared by the storm and by the pain she was feeling. Quickly thinking, he took her to a nearby hunting hut, after bandaging her ankle, and the two managed to survive that night, but Eva's accident made both of them drop the snowboard, scared of what could happen.

As they moved to Japan, they decide to enroll in Iwatobi as it is the closest to their apartment, and eventually meet Haruka Nanase and Makoto Tachibana, whom were freshmen just like them. Mark had some troubles in befriending Haruka, as he didn't know what the other was thinking, but became quick friends with Makoto.