If you watch the History Channel’s Vikings, you will notice that it is the kings of Wessex, rather than the other areas of England, that are held up as the main leaders of the resistance against the Danish encroachment. While the TV show takes a lot of liberties with its timeline, this is a reflection…
The appearance of Icelandic actress and former swimmer Ragga Ragnars as Gunnhild on the TV show Vikings has inspired a lot of interest in this powerful woman. In the program, she is a mighty shieldmaiden who was married to Jarl Olavsson. Following her husband’s death, she fell for and married Bjorn Ironside and returned as…
In the Norse sagas, it always seems like the protagonist of the story has an unbelievable life that spans the known world of the day and that they are blessed with uncanny luck until the end. It is not hard to believe that these warriors are touched by divine fate. The saga of Olaf Tryggvason…
It is well established that one of the ways that Christianity was able to convert Pagans and bring them into the Christian fold was to incorporate important Pagan practices into Christian rituals. As a result, many of the holidays that exist in the Christian calendar have clear Pagan roots both in terms of the date…
Poor Sigurd gets treated poorly in the History Channel’s Vikings series. The least memorable of Ragnar’s many sons, he is killed off pretty early in the storyline of Ragnar’s sons. Ivar throws a knife at him, which hits him in the chest and kills him. This is a plot point to exacerbate the conflict between…
You have probably heard somewhere that modern Heathens and followers of the old Norse ways celebrate Halloween as an important holiday but under the traditional name of Samhain. This is only partly true. The end of the harvest system at the end of October and the start of November was certainly an important time for…
The Vikings are infamous for raiding and terrorizing their neighbors in Britain and France and are known to have been active in the east around the Balkans and as far as Constantinople. But we hear very little about the Vikings in Spain and Portugal. Did the Vikings leave these nearby lands untouched? The Vikings were…
All Viking warriors were known by their neighbors to be strong, ferocious, and bloodthirsty. But among the Vikings themselves, there was an elite group of warriors known as the Berserkers. They were believed to fight with the ferocity of wild animals and to be immune to steel and fire. But did these warriors really exist,…
The term Vikings is often used as a generic term to refer to a wide and varied group of people, and it is not always clear who exactly those people are. We are very guilty of doing this! So today, let’s take a closer look at who exactly we are referring to when we use…
Ragnar Lothbrok is the most famous Viking we know about today. But he was at least as famous for the vast number of warrior sons that he fathered as he was for his own exploits and deeds. Ragnar seems to have had at least nine sons and two daughters, though different sources record different lineages…