Ever since the release of the History Channel’s TV show Vikings in 2012, there have been a lot of new people discovering the Viking world.
For those audiences, we have dedicated a series of articles to explain the real history behind many of the stories that appear in Vikings, which are based on true people and events, even if they are pushed out of time and dramatized for entertainment purposes.
In this series of articles, rather than look at history, we are going to look at the show itself and the timeline for what happens in each of the six seasons.
We’ll link events back to history, but this is more about the adventures of the characters who, while not always 100% historic, capture the spirit of the Viking Age.
Meet Ragnar Lodbrok and Lagertha
In Season One, we meet the charismatic warrior Ragnar Lodbrok, played by Travis Flimmel, and his equally impressive wife Lagertha, played by Katheryn Winnick.
While details are not given, it is implied that the pair met in battle.
Historically, Lagertha assisted Ragnar in an important battle, and he fell in love with her for her ferocity and leadership skills, which turned the tide of the fighting.
He then had to face certain challenges, like fighting a guard bear (not a dog), to win her hand.
They are small landowners who fight and raid for the local chief in Kattegat, Earl Haraldson.
This is consistent with Viking social structure, as during the height of the Viking Age, most raiders were landowners who had family, workers, and slaves to look after their farms, giving them the wealth and freedom to join local raiding parties each year.
While Lagertha is known for her prowess as a shieldmaiden, she initially stays home to look after the farm and their two young children, Bjorn and Gyda.
This is inconsistent with history, as the young man who would grow up to be Bjorn Ironside was the son of Ragnar with Aslaug (more on her soon), not Lagertha.
Raiding From the Baltics to the British Isles
While raiding for his chief in the Baltics alongside his brother Rollo, Ragnar receives a vision from Odin of rich lands in the West and information on how to sail there.
This seems consistent with history since the Vikings raided the Baltics for at least a century before turning their attention to the British Isles.
Ragnar can’t convince the chief that it is worth sailing west, so he works with his friend Floki, an expert boat maker, to create a ship suitable for the journey.
Ragner, Rollo, and Floki then gather volunteers and find themselves in England, where they raid the monastery of Lindisfarne, a historical event that happened in 793 CE, though there is no indication that the historical Ragnar Lodbrok was involved.
Ragnar brings the monk Athelstan back to Kattegat as a slave, as was common practice in the Viking Age.
The form of booty most taken and traded by the Vikings was slaves.
Ragnar Becomes Chief
When Ragnar returns, Earl Haraldson takes the treasure looted by the rogue raiding as payment for their betrayal.
Each is allowed to choose just one piece, and to everyone’s surprise, Ragnar chooses Athelstand, whom he takes home as a slave.
Athelstan, who conveniently speaks some Old Norse, gets to know Viking life and also shares information about England.
With information learned from Athelstan, Ragnar convinces Earl Haraldson to mount a raid of Northumbria.
This time, Lagertha joins the raiding party. The Vikings wreak havoc in Northumbria.
The brother of the Earl, Knut, is killed during the mission by Lagertha, when he tries to rape a local Saxon woman, and then Lagertha herself.
Back in Kattegat, Earl Haraldsson unsuccessfully puts Ragnar on trial for the death of Knut.
He then tries to kill Ragnar and his family, an acceptable act as the pair are now in a blood feud.
This is eventually resolved in a duel between the two men, which Ragnar wins, making him the new chief of Kattegat.
He allows Haraldson a chief’s burial, and a slave girl offers herself to be sacrificed with him, following the historical eyewitness report of a Muslim observer of a chief’s funeral among the Volga Vikings.
Conflict with Aelle
As the new chief of Kattegat, Ragnar decides to make Britain the new target for his raiding activity.
He organized another raid of Northumbria while leaving Lagertha in Kattegat to rule in his stead.
It seems that this was not uncommon in the Viking world, and women were trusted with positions of power, though they could only obtain those positions through connections to men.
In Northumbria, Ragnar and his men capture the brother of King Aelle, Aethelwulf, and demand gold from the king for the return of his brother and for the Vikings to depart.
Aelle agrees, but only if one of the Vikings agrees to be baptized. Rollo agrees to be the one, and it raises questions among the group as to whether the experience changed Rollo since the Vikings consider the English weak and passive.
This kind of baptism was relatively common, as Christians could only trade and make agreements with other Christians, so the process was required to authorize the agreement.
Aelle agrees to pay the ransom but still attacks the Viking camp.
Rollow fights particularly ferociously and kills many Saxons singlehandedly, proving that being baptized has done nothing to dampen his warrior spirit.
In retaliation for the attack, Ragnar kills Aethelwulf and sends his corpse to Aelle, who finally pays the ransom but swears revenge on Ragnar.
Honoring the Gods
When he returns to Kattegat, Ragnar learns that Lagertha suffered a miscarriage and cannot bear him any more children.
Believing that he is destined to have many sons, he takes his family and followers to the temple at Uppsala to honor the Aesir and Vanir gods, the two main groups of gods honored in the Viking world.
There, he pledges his allegiance to King Horik, reflecting Viking power dynamics with chiefs pledging their allegiance to more powerful chiefs.
While there, Ragnar offers Athelstan as a sacrifice to the gods.
Human sacrifice was probably very rare among the Vikings, but there is evidence that it did occur.
Records suggest that sometimes nine men – nine was a sacred number – were gathered and sacrificed at temples along with animal victims.
Athelstan has adopted Norse clothing by this time and suppressed his Christian beliefs to better fit in, but the priests overseeing the sacrifice see that he is still a Christian and, therefore, not fit to be sacrificed to the Norse gods.
Death and Disease
Ragnar finds himself in conflict with Jarl Borg due to his relationship with King Horik.
The infighting portrayed here is consistent with the stories in the sagas, which saw Earls, Jarls, and petty kings locked in power conflicts until the larger states of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark emerged under more powerful kings.
While Ragnar is away, a deadly plague hits Kattegat, resulting in the death of Ragnar and Lagertha’s daughter Gyna and many others.
Thus, Gyna is relegated to less than a footnote in history, as was so common for women in histories written by men.
Plagues were common in the Viking Age, with strains of smallpox probably prevalent.
The fact that the Vikings traveled widely meant that they both spread disease and brought diseases they had no immunity for back to their own communities.
Distraught by the loss of his daughter and the knowledge that Lagertha can give him no more children, Ragnar travels to see a seer to give him advice.
Seers were common in the Viking world, but these Volva witches usually traveled from community to community where they were received and delivered prophecies, rather than having a set abode where they were visited, which was common in the Greek world.
Ragnar Meets Aslaug
As the nine-episode season draws to a close, while traveling back from seeing the seeress, Ragnar meets a beautiful woman named Aslaug, and they have an affair.
She claims that she is the daughter of the hero Sigurd and the Valkyrie Brynhild.
The same dubious claim was made about the real Aslaug that Ragnar would go on to marry in the sagas, whom seemed to be a penniless peasant when Ragnar first met her, and then had her mysterious parentage revealed.
Before Ragnar leaves, she reveals to him that she is pregnant with his child. In the show, she would go on to have most of Ragnar’s children, and she was also the mother of most of Ragnar’s children in the sagas.
Watch out for our Season Two timeline soon.
