The Many Lives and Singular Death of Ragnar Lodbrok
The legendary Viking’s tale isn’t over
“All true saga-writing is a balance between fact and art.”
–Carol J. Clover, The Medieval Saga
Sequels, prequels, spinoffs and reboots… Today, we may be inclined to view these as cheap ways of turning one successful product into an unending stream of successful products, and therefore cheap bucks, but they are literally the stuff of legend. One hero to get this treatment was Ragnar Lodbrok, and his story continues to change even now.
The History
The historicity of Ragnar Lodbrok is debated, so there may never have been a real Ragnar Lodbrok. Nonetheless, historical sources as far back as the 9th century tell of his life intersecting events we know to be true: Viking clashes with Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne (748–814 CE), the Viking siege of Paris in 845 CE, and the invasion of East Anglia that began in 865 CE. Scholars have proposed various possible historical individuals who may correspond to Ragnar, such as Danish King Horik I (d. 854 CE), but for now they agree that most accounts of Ragnar’s life largely consist of legend.¹
In recent years, actor Travis Fimmel embodied Ragnar in the television series Vikings (2013). Most of the time, the character wears the homespun wool of a farmer, the leather and mail of a warrior, the furs of a settler in cold climes, and the rags of a vagrant. As a raider in the Dark Ages, any historical Ragnar may have dressed like that depending on his circumstances, but a 15th-century illustration in the Harleian Library of the British Library, while showing Ragnar worshipping the horned idols medieval Christians expected of pagans, depicts a more regal figure in brocade, cloak and crown. The figures there look more like the Christian kings of Vikings than the show’s tattooed and shaven-headed namesakes.
The Sagas
To its history and imagination, Vikings adds legend. The Norse sagas evolved through an oral tradition meant to entertain wherever people gathered — home, campfire, festival, tavern.² As such, they’re heavy on romance and battle, as well as the magic and unnatural fauna of fantasy. Ragnar has his own saga, The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok, which was an addition to The Völsunga Saga and was in turn supplemented by The Saga of Ragnar’s Sons, a sequel if you like.³ Together, these Icelandic sagas weave a tale that I suspect many from peasant to noble enjoyed binging when the skalds passed through town.
According to The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok, he was born the son of Danish King Sigurd Hring and his wife Afhild. After tragic events befall his parents, he becomes king at age 15,⁴ conducts raids and wins many victories.⁵ He gains the name Lodbrok, which means “shaggy breeches”⁶ or “hairy breeks,”⁷ after his curious manner of attire, which also included a magic shirt from his mother that protected him from harm.⁸ Ragnar is not always good, but there are several strong women behind him.
The Lovers
Ragnar’s foremost love in the current popular imagination is Lagertha, a character of legend in her own right. Lagertha was a ruler and shield-maiden, one of the famed Viking warrior women who so capture the imagination.⁹ The historicity of both her and the profession of shield-maiden remain subjects of debate,¹⁰ but historian Saxo Grammaticus’s 12th-century record Gesta Danorum describes her as follows:
“…a skilled Amazon, who, though a maiden, had the courage of a man, and fought in front among the bravest with her hair loose over her shoulders. All marvelled at her matchless deeds, for her locks flying down her back betrayed that she was a woman.”¹¹
In medieval sources, Ragnar is so impressed when he sees Lagertha in battle that he proposes and ends up living in the land where she is queen.¹² When he feels the need to return to his own kingdom, Lagertha refuses to accompany him and says one of the coolest things, as recounted by author Matt Clayton in Viking Sagas:
“I would not be an idle consort, content merely to wait upon her royal husband. Here I rule, and here I shall stay.”¹³
Katheryn Winnick, who plays Lagertha in Vikings, has a distinct manner of delivery, so I can’t read those lines without imagining her saying them.
Another of Ragnar’s loves is Thora. Winning her requires the completion of a trial, as she’s tucked away in a bower surrounded by a giant serpent — think dragon — which Ragnar slays with a spear.¹⁴ The spear is one of those curious items in lore for identifying extraordinary individuals. It’s like Cinderella’s slipper only more phallic. Thora is later able to recognize Ragnar by its uncommon girth, which naturally leads to progeny, and central to Ragnar’s tale are his many sons.¹⁵ He may sire them, but it’s Thora who carries and gives birth to the first two: Erik and Agnar.¹⁶
The third woman in Ragnar’s life is Aslaug, also known as Kráka, the foundling of a penniless elderly couple.¹⁷ Ragnar was out raiding when his men went ashore in search of food and ended up baking bread at the old couple’s house.¹⁸ Aslaug so stunned them with her beauty that they couldn’t concentrate on the work and the bread turned out horribly.¹⁹ Intrigued by their excuse, Ragnar sent a man to invite Aslaug to his ship, but with a challenge to test her wit:
“I want her to be neither clad nor unclad, neither fed nor unfed, and what is more she must not be alone, however, no man must accompany her.”²⁰
Aslaug devises a way to satisfy the conditions of this riddle, but when Ragnar asks for her hand in marriage, she responds with a challenge of her own. She knows how fickle men can be — even Odin says, “unstable are men’s minds towards women; ’tis then we speak most fair when we most falsely think”²¹— so she tells Ragnar that he must continue his voyage and if he still desires her hand in marriage afterward, she will consent.²² Never one to shy from a good challenge, Ragnar returns a year later and the two are married,²³ much to the disgruntlement of Ragnar’s subjects, who think a peasant isn’t good enough for their king.²⁴
But there’s a prequel of sorts here, whose events are found in The Völsunga Saga. Aslaug is no peasant girl. She was the daughter of the legendary member of the Völsung clan named Sigurd and the Valkyrie named Brynhild, none other than the daughter of the king of the gods.²⁵ That explains her unworldly beauty, unworldly yet captured by Alyssa Sutherland in Vikings. From the first moment you see her, you know she’s a woman of uncanny attributes.
Ignorant of Aslaug’s background, Ragnar accedes to his countryfolk’s demands to seek another wife. He finds a candidate in Ingeborg, daughter of King Eystein of Sweden, but the engagement proves catastrophic. Not only is Aslaug displeased (to say the least) when some little birds (literally) tell her about it, but when Ragnar learns the truth of his wife’s parentage and breaks off the betrothal, it leads to war and the death of his sons by his second wife Thora.²⁶
The Sons
Ragnar has even more sons, because Aslaug gives birth to Bjorn Ironsides, Hvitserk, Rognvald, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye and Ivar the Boneless.²⁷ Ivar’s condition is due to a trait Aslaug predicted on the night of his conception when she would rather not have but Ragnar insisted,²⁸ which All the Tropes designates the trope of Marital Rape License. Many of these sons appear in Vikings, though not all fathered by Ragnar. Raiders were away from home for long periods of time, the lonely will seek solace, and screenwriters love a little sex on the side. Ragnar may have as well, because other sources mention other women — Swanloga and an unnamed farmer’s daughter whom he woos (for one night) and impregnates to beget Ubba.²⁹
Historians agree that some of Ragnar’s sons, unlike their father, likely existed in history.³⁰ There’s a riddle there, but I’ll leave it to you to ponder it. In legend, the sons’ exploits were enough to make even their father jealous, so Ragnar declared he would embark on one last raid.³¹ He should have taken Aslaug’s advice and stayed home.³²
The Death
Both Ragnar’s saga and that of his sons leads to one end. Ragnar’s war goes poorly and King Aella of Northumbria takes him prisoner without knowing his identity.³³ When Ragnar won’t reveal who he is, Aella throws him in a pit of vipers, which eventually overcomes the Viking’s charmed, cursed and — since the average lifespan for Vikings was around 40 —probably short life.³⁴
Before dying, he breaks into verse:
“Many folk did I
Harm,-fifty and one;
I did not think snakes
Would slay me;
Often things occur
That one least expects.”³⁵
In The Death Song of Ragnar Lodbrok, found in the 12th-century skaldic poem Krákumál, he makes it clear that death is the least of his concerns:
“Laughing I die.”³⁶
The TV series Vikings reconstructs Ragnar’s death with few embellishments, at least to my eyes. Ragnar is suspended in a cage over an earthen pit full of vipers — some of which actually bit actor Travis Fimmel,³⁷ while others were added digitally.³⁸ As a crowd gathers, including his old friend and foe King Ecbert of Wessex, he delivers his last words:
“It gladdens me to know that Odin prepares for a feast. Soon I shall be drinking ale from curved horns. The hero that comes into Valhalla does not lament his death. I shall not enter Odin’s hall with fear. There, I shall wait for my sons to join me. And when they do, I will bask in their tales of triumph. The Aesir will welcome me! My death comes without apology! And I welcome the Valkyries to summon me home!”
That has much to warm the cockles of a Viking metal fan’s heart. As good as Fimmel is, I’d love to hear these words delivered by Amon Amarth front man Johan Hegg.
Ragnar’s life and death continue to fascinate over a thousand years since he is said to have lived. In recent years, Vikings have been the subject of renewed interest. We gorge ourselves on entertainment media related to ye olde warriors even as we look to the past for intimations of a more fulfilling present. The popularity of shows like Vikings, which is soon to get a spin-off in Vikings: Valhalla, are part of the same impulse driving greater numbers of people to Ásatrú, a modern movement in Norse spirituality.³⁹ Until climate change ends civilization — Ragnarök, if anything deserves the name — the famed Viking king is with us.
Are there lessons in Ragnar’s life and the Viking way? I think there are, but rather than diminish them with my reflections, I encourage interested readers to engage with the sagas, Ragnar’s as well as others, and at the very least sit down for the first few episodes of Vikings. The television series takes its liberties, but so did the authors of the sagas. It’s the way we tell stories.
[1] Emma Groeneveld, “Ragnar Lothbrok,” World History Encyclopedia, August 31, 2018, https://bit.ly/3nBJ3Og.
[2] Matt Clayton, Viking Sagas: The Captivating Tale of Ragnar Lothbrok, Ivar the Boneless, Lagertha, and More, in Their Historical Context (self-published, 2020), 21.
[3] Gavin Chappell, introduction to The Saga of Ragnar Shaggy-Breeches and the Yarn of Ragnar’s Sons (Thor’s Stone Press, 2013), 4, 71.
[4] Clayton, Viking Sagas, 38.
[5] Gavin Chappell (ed.), The Saga of Ragnar Shaggy-Breeches and the Yarn of Ragnar’s Sons (Thor’s Stone Press, 2013), 14.
[6] Groeneveld, “Ragnar Lothbrok.”
[7] Martin Andersson, Of Regner Lodbrog, Hugh Blair, and Mistranslations (Hippocampus Press, 2012), 36.
[8] Clayton, Viking Sagas, 39.
[9] Emma Groeneveld, “Lagertha,” World History Encyclopedia, August 31, 2018, https://bit.ly/3FxFvCX.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Clayton, Viking Sagas, 41.
[13] Ibid.
[14] The Saga of Ragnar, 11.
[15] Ibid., 14.
[16] Clayton, Viking Sagas, 46.
[17] The Saga of Ragnar, 8.
[18] Ibid., 16.
[19] Ibid., 17.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Benjamin Thorpe (trans.), The Pocket Hávamál (Huginn & Muninn Publishing, 2013), 25.
[22] The Saga of Ragnar, 20.
[23] Ibid., 21–22.
[24] Clayton, Viking Sagas, 56.
[25] The Saga of Ragnar, 28.
[26] Ibid., 27–35.
[27] Ibid., 23, 29.
[28] Ibid., 22.
[29] Groeneveld, “Ragnar Lothbrok.”
[30] Ibid.
[31] The Saga of Ragnar, 77.
[32] Ibid., 78.
[33] Ibid., 51.
[34] “What Did the Vikings Look Like?” Skjalden.com, 2018, https://bit.ly/3IQAQym.
[35] The Saga of Ragnar, 52.
[36] The Cambridge History of English and American Literature on Bartleby.com, https://bit.ly/3oIPpLq.
[37] Kirstin McCarthy, “20 Little-Known Facts About the Filming of Vikings,” The Things, January 15, 2020, https://bit.ly/3DEbCjY.
[38] Sarah Deen, “Freezing rain, tears and real snakes: Vikings director Ciaran Donnelly takes us inside Ragnar’s violent snake pit death scene,” Metro, June 4, 2019, https://bit.ly/3FATpEA.
[39] Gunnary Hlynsson, Ásatrú for Beginners: A Modern Guide to Heathenry & Norse Paganism, Their Gods, Rituals, and Ceremonies to Understanding and Integrating Ásatrú into Your Daily Life (self-published, 2021), 6.
