Dan Snow's History Hit - Ragnar Lothbrok: Viking Legend

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

The ninth-century Danish king and warrior Ragnar Lothbrok became notorious again most recently through the TV series The Vikings. But what do we know about the real Ragnar Lothbrok? In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis finds out from Professor Carolyne Larrington, author of The Norse Myths That Shape the Way We Think.  This episode was edited and produced by Joseph Knight.The scriptwriter was Lucy Davidson.The voice actor was Kimberly ParkerThe Senior Producer was Elena Guthrie.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.PLEASE VOTE NOW! for Dan Snow's History Hit in the British Podcast Awards Listener's Choice category here. Every vote counts, thank you!We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I've got a Gone Medieval episode for you now, our sibling podcast Gone Medieval,

dealing with all things, as you can imagine, medieval. And this one is so good, you're going to love this one. It's all about Ragnar Lothbrok. Ragnar was a legendary Viking hero, a Swedish, a Danish king. We know about him from the old Norse poetry. A lot of you in the past have let me know that you're a big fan of the TV show Vikings. Travis Fimmel is superb as Ragnar, those crazy blue eyes. Love that, could watch him all day. You are going to love this episode. Here everyone is Professor Caroline Larrington talking to Matt Lewis on History Hit's very own Gone Medieval. Enjoy. It is darkest winter.

In Uppsala, folk from near and far have gathered in a mead house for Yule, the festival to celebrate the end of winter and the coming of spring. The air is thick, a mixture of sweat, earth and honey mead, which mingles with the swirling smoke rising from the crackling central hearth. Music from jaw harps and lyres drifts to the highest rafters of the darkening hall. While the sounds of eating, drinking and dancing raise the volume to that of a raucous din. All is well, all is merry. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. We've got something a little bit different for you in today's episode. We're starting with a reading from a Norse saga.

The myth of how Ragnar Lothbrok got his name to be precise. That's because today's guest is Caroline Larrington. You may recognise her from a previous episode about how Norse myths shape the way we think. She's a professor of medieval European literature at Oxford University and has also been awarded the Order of the Falcon by the President of Iceland for services to Icelandic literature, which is incredibly cool. Ragnar Lothbrok is part of the Viking Foundation myth, made famous most recently by the series Vikings. These stories, or sagas, were traditionally passed down by word of mouth. They were gripping stories to be listened to, so we wanted to try it

out to give a sense of how these stories may have sounded. After that, we'll chat to Caroline to explore the story of the man or the myth and find out just what we really know about Ragnar Lothbrok. A shield maiden raises a cup of mead to her lips when she feels a sharp, frigid rush of air snake around her ankles. One by one, all within the longhouse feel the unwelcome cold and turn to the slightly opening door. Laughter turns to quiet murmuring as a stooped, hooded stranger weaves slowly, silently, dexterously through the crowd. The men search for their shields and axes, but realize they are callously out of reach. Children cling to their mother's skirts,

peering at the looming form. Could it be the old man Winter come to join the revelry? Uneasy, the king, a lavishly dressed drunken warlord, complete with wild boar smeared across his mouth, rises from his seat. Who goes there? Who comes to my great hall on the day of our most precious feast? The figure stops. His eyes, small black beads, illuminated by the sparks jumping from the fire, as if Odin himself were dancing across them.

He reaches out his long, withered hands and lowers his dark hood to his shoulders. The folk peer curiously at the strangely fashioned, long-bearded old man. Though small and dishevelled, the old man addresses the king, his soaring voice piercing the furthest reaches of the hall. I am the blood of Brahi Boddhason, legendary skald to King Ragnar Lodbrok. I am here to tell you of the great king's life and deeds. Welcome me to your celebration, and you will be amply entertained. The king considers. amply entertained. The king considers. He is a hospitable man, and indeed, he has heard of the legend of Ragnar Lohbrug. The folk in the hall would do well to be amused. It has been a long winter, and to entertain the tale of such a mighty king would surely reflect favorably upon him.

king would surely reflect favorably upon him. Gloating that he is already familiar with the story, the king commands, Tell me the tale of how Ragnar came to earn his name. The storyteller smiles, and a hush falls upon the crowd. The aged man lowers himself into a seat by the fire, and the curious folk in the hall draw near. You may have heard of King Ragnar Lohbrok, scourge of England and France, father of the great heathen army and conqueror of vast swathes of Scandinavia. He is, however, better known on the tongues of men across the land by the name of Heribritjes. A group of children let out a giggle, but are quickly hushed.

An honorific he was given because of his cunning cleverness, his brazen boldness, his ferociousness, fearlessness, when he slayed a great snake. You see, he desired to win the hand of Thora, the daughter of a powerful Jarl. However, the Jarl and his people were suffering greatly, as they were being terrorized by a vast, poisonous serpent, which had once been all but a little snake, a childhood gift to Thora from her father. Day and night, the serpent slithered through Thora's village, waiting silently, snatching victims as it pleased. Cattle, men, women and children, rich and poor, young and old, felt the serpent's teeth sink into their flesh and cried out as they suffered agonizing deaths. Thora's father swore that he would give his daughter's hand in marriage to any man who

could kill the serpent. Ragnar decides to fight the snake, but unlike the men slain before him, cleverly plots to fashion himself protection against the serpent's fangs, which are as sharp as the icicles that hang from this very hall, and longer than our great hero himself. So clever is Ragnar that he coats his hairy breeches in tar, rendering them rigid, impossible for a fang to slice through. After arming himself with his simple trusty sword, he hunts down the snake. Following a bloody trail to find it at the edge of the village, a horrible sight greets him. The snake has savagely killed all but one member of a farmer's family.

Against the backdrop of the farmer's laments, Ragnar calls out to the serpent. Hail Oxal, he roars, healthy and happy, for Ragnar is both fierce and humorous. The listening crowd let out a low hubbub of uneasy laughter. The vile serpent rounds on him, shimmering and hissing, its eyes the shape of a bloody slash around a goat's neck. It weaves towards Ragnar lazily, and raising itself up high so as to block out the very sun and cast a shadow over our hero below, lunges at him. The snake aims to sink its fangs into Ragnar's legs and torso. Indeed, it has done so many times to brave warriors who had struggled to kill it before, and in doing so, sent them to Valhalla.

had struggled to kill it before, and in doing so sent them to Valhalla. However, the serpent's long fangs clang, crack, and shatter against the hard tar coating Ragnar's hairy breeches. His cunning plan has worked. The squirming, hissing snake is vulnerable. Seizing his chance, Ragnar grasps his sword and plunges it downward into the snake's head, instantly slaying the beast. The great creature falls upon Ragnar, pinning him to the ground. Having heard the dreadful hissing and shrieking, a number of remaining village folk rush to his aid. They jubilantly haul the great, dead, bloody serpent off Ragnar's body, then cast it upon a great, blazing bonfire.

The villagers dance around its burning flesh, the flames consuming its fangs and scales visible from even the remote woodlands and snow-covered mountains many days journey from there. True to the Jarl's promise, Ragnar and Thora are hand-fasted shortly after. The villagers venerate Ragnar's tar-covered breeches as a reminder of his heroic act, as they have indeed done so every wintertime in the many leagues since. And thus, the clever King Ragnar Lodbrok, scourge of England and France, father of the great heathen army, and conqueror of vast swathes of Scandinavia,

came to be known as Hairy Breeches. The old storyteller leans back in his chair by the fire, a smile forming across his lips. After a moment of quiet, the folk break out into jubilant shouts of applause, amply entertained by the tale of the great king Hairy Breaches slaying the serpent The king, relieved to see his people entertained, breathes a sigh of relief The storyteller was true to his word And the folk welcome him to their celebration Offering him meat and mead

Music and dancing And press him for more tales, myths and legends until they collapse from exhaustion. United in the extraordinary tale of the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok and how he came to earn his name. welcome back to gone medieval caroline thank you very much for inviting me back again and yeah great opportunity to talk about ragnar who also also features in my latest book, but we just didn't have time to talk about him last time. Yeah, he's too good a character not to come back to, isn't he? And I guess let's get the big question out of the way up front. Was Ragnar Lothbrok a real person? Ooh, well, maybe yes, maybe no. What we do know is that the sons who are attributed to him were definitely real

people. And they're referred to across chronicles and in sagas as well as the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok. So they're real, all right. But the problem with our actual Ragnar is that he turns up in a whole range of sources, some of which are clearly fictional sources. I think the ones where he kills a dragon, we have to conclude that maybe that didn't really happen. But he's also identifiable with a figure who was a kind of sub-king in Sweden, and he turns up in some Swedish traditions. He's also a king of Denmark in Danish traditions, but more likely he's identified with a range of known Vikings called something like Reginherus or Ragnar or Ragnar, who operates in various locations. And so he turns up not in Scandinavian

sources at that point, but in the chronicles of the places which come under attack. And so there's a bit of a problem about getting all of the chronologies to match up here. But basically, there was certainly one, maybe more than one Viking called Ragnar operating in Ireland, operating in France, operating maybe in the British Isles too. Just to add to the confusion, it's interesting that it's not the Vikings who are talking about Ragnar, it's all of the people who are being attacked who seem to be attributing it to this figure called Ragnar. Yeah, and there's certainly this Regin Harris character was found, first of all, attacking Normandy in the years just before 845. And of course, because Normandy was anyway a Viking settlement, Norman means Northman. And so this was the

beginning of the settlement of that part of what's now France by Scandinavians. And he gained some land there, but the story seems to be he wasn't satisfied with how much of it he got. And so he sailed at the River Seine and attacked Paris, besieged it, and eventually was bought off with, I think it's something like 70,000 livres, which was an awful lot of money. And it took something like 90 men and ox carts to carry all this silver off. So this was a good investment. And that's the last we hear about that particular character. Maybe he also gets some land in the low countries, but that's the French account of him. And then we have this guy called Ragnall, who maybe about eight or nine years later is raiding an island. And then we have the

traditions which have him attacking England and meeting his death in England. But those are much more fictional than these little references that we have, first of all, in the French Chronicles, then in the Irish Chronicles. The Anglo-Saxon chronicle tells us about his sons, who are a particularly ferocious bunch associated with the great heathen army, and they're operating a bit later. So it is interesting that the historical germ is there in the chronicles of the people that he attacked. But there's clearly some lasting traditions in Scandinavia as well. And of course, he has a really interesting afterlife in what we might call popular culture.

Also, the other question I feel compelled to ask, we talked a little bit there about the various different names that he appears under. We remember him as Ragnar Lothbrok. Is it true that Lothbrok means hairy trousers? Yeah. And this is part of the story that we have in his saga, which was basically composed round about probably 1250 or so. And in that story, there's a princess in southern Sweden in the area around what's now Götaborg. And she's called Thora. And her father one day gives her for a birthday a tiny little snake, no bigger than her hand. And she asked her father how to make the snake grow. And he says, well, every day put a piece of gold underneath it and it will grow bigger. And as time passes, the serpent gets bigger and bigger. So does the gold pile that the serpent is sitting on.

And the serpent coils itself around the outside of Thora's bower. He's perfectly friendly to Thora, but he's very big. He eats an ox every day. So there's a kind of resource problem. I mean, I guess her father probably stops giving her any more gold after a while. But the serpent is not going to let any suitors in to see Thora. So Thora's father says, I will give my daughter to the man who can kill the serpent. And obviously the gold will come along with that. And so Ragnar, who is at this point the son of the king of Denmark, hears about this and he knows that serpents are extremely dangerous in their death throes because they spout out lots of poison. So he gets this suit of clothing made of a sheep's fleece turned with the shaggy side out and then he rolls in pitch. So he's got what we

can imagine as a kind of fireproof suit. You can imagine that the whole thing is quite resistant to this tidal wave of poison. And he gets a special spear and he loosens the nail that secures the spear tip to the shaft. And early one morning pops up by the dragon's sleeping place and promptly stabs it in the back between the shoulder blades and then ducks and skips away very quickly. And the dragon pours out all of this venom. But Ragnar escapes from the splashes because of his amazing shaggy trousers. And then when everybody discovers the dead dragon, they say, well, who on earth killed this? And Ragnar turns up and says, well, here is the shaft of the spear. And you will find that this shaft fits in the spear head that's still embedded

in the dragon's body. And that's the kind of motif that normally in story, you have that kind of detail because some false claimant is going to turn up and say, well, I killed the dragon. And then people say, well, do you have the shaft that will fit the spearhead? But that seems not to follow through in that story. It seems to be a bit of a blind motif. So that's where he gets his shaggy trousers from. Interesting. So the spear is almost like Cinderella's glass slipper.

Yeah, it's one of those recognition tokens. But in a way, he doesn't really need it because nobody else is making the claim. So then he gets to marry Princess Thora, which is great, but they're not married for very long. She has two sons and then she dies. So Ragnar is on the lookout for another wife. And I guess that saga in itself might answer the question as to why Ragnar becomes so famous. But why does he linger in the consciousness? What do the sources tell us that he did other than, I guess, slaying a dragon? That's pretty impressive in its own. Was he potentially some kind of composite character who tries to give some thought to the origin of the Vikings, either by those threatened

by the Vikings or those people later on looking back at their own history. He's not seen so much as an originating figure of Viking raids because there's plenty of Viking activity kind of going on already. If we think of the historical Regan Harris's at the Siege of Paris in 845, That's already 50 years after the first Viking attack on Lindisfarne. So Viking has been going on for quite a long time already before that. What Ragnar seems to be responsible for is, in some of the Scandinavian historical sources, being the father of this incredible pack of sons. And he goes around attacking everywhere pretty well in the Viking world in these sources, and then planting a son as the king of a particular

sub-kingdom, then moving on to the next place. So in a way from the Scandinavian perspective, Ragnar figures, maybe in a kind of symbolic way, the emerging, it would be hard to say it's the Viking Empire, because nobody, I think, would really admit the claim that there was a Viking Empire, but at least Viking sphere of influence, starting in Scandinavia and then radiating outwards to the very north of Scandinavia and then out to Normandy, across to Ireland, and taking the British Isles as well. But as far as the saga is concerned, the dragon slaying was very early in his career, but it was the peak of his career. And after that, we have the story of his marriage to Auslug, who is the daughter of the great dragon slayer hero,

Sigurd the Dragon Slayer, Sigurd Fafnissarni. And then Ragnar rules Denmark and kicks around not doing very much, except, according to the saga, thinking maybe it would be a better bet to marry the daughter of the King of Sweden and ditch Auslög. But that gets aborted for several complicated reasons. And then after that, he still carries on ruling and gets to the point where his sons are eclipsing him in fame because they're whizzing off all over the place, conquering parts of France, traveling through Germany. They've even got a plan to go and conquer Rome, but they're thwarted in that by a rather cunning man who meets them on the way to Rome. And he's set out to meet the sons of Ragnar,

carrying this sack load of shoes and wearing iron shoes himself. And they say, wherever you come from, that you've worn out all these shoes. And he said, well, I've come from Rome because it's really far. And look, even these shoes with the iron soles have been worn out on this journey. This is an old folkloric motif that you quite often find with clever peasants stopping giants from going to attack somewhere. And the sons of Ragnar go, yeah, on balance, I think we'll forget the whole Rome idea. It sounds like too much of a hassle going all the way there. Let's go and attack someone else instead. So the sons of Ragnar got these big plans and Ragnar himself

gets a bit tired of this, according to the saga. And he says to his wife, I think I'm going to go and conquer England. And I've got a plan to do this. I'm just going to go with two ships. And his wife says, darling, that is really a bad idea because it's going to take a lot more than two ships loads of men to conquer England. And he says, well, if to take a lot more than two shipsloads of men to conquer England. And he says, well, if I fail, we only lose two ships. If I succeed, then look at all the glory I'll get conquering the whole of England with two ships. So he's not a great listener to advice, Ragnar, I think it could be said. And his wife says, well, I still don't think it's a great idea, but here's a shirt of invulnerability

that she sews for him and charges with magic. So that might help. And so he's wearing that when he attacks King Ela of Northumbria, who is a constant through the sagas, the various stories about Ragnar as the man who's his nemesis. And Ella captures him, demands to know who he is. Ragnar won't tell him. And so he casts him into a serpent pit. And the serpents are all trying to attack him. But because of the shirt of invulnerability, their teeth are skidding off him, as it were. And Ella begins to think this is a bit suspicious and demands that all his clothes be removed, including the shirt. And then a snake strikes to his heart. And he, in tradition, recites a really long poem and dies very gloriously. In the final stanza of the poem,

Ragnar is exulting in his past battles and saying, yes, I'm dying, but I'm going to Valhalla, laughing shall I die. And that seems to kind of epitomize the idea of the Viking as laughing in the face of death, as having courage and resolution, no regrets, even though it's kind of his own stupid fault that he ended up in the snake pit. that he ended up in the snake pit. And I always quite liked the idea that the serpents got him in the end, that there's a kind of symmetry in how his final feat of endurance in the snake pit matches his first great feat of the serpent slaying. Yeah, it's an interesting element to the story. I'm also imagining Ella and everyone standing around with Ragnar bitten by a snake, starting this massive long poem and thinking, oh, how long is this going to go on for? This is an impressive guy. The effects of the venom are making their way to his heart,

but he's listing all of these battles that he fought in. And he's saying, oh, that day, that battle was so fantastic, such great fun, so much blood was flowing. It was even better than kissing a young widow at a feast. So the idea that fighting is better than sex is something that the real Viking hero would rather be doing that any day. And very famously, before the laughing shall I die line, Ragnar always says how the little pigs would grunt if they knew the situation the old boar is in. And this is a line that then gets relayed to the sons back at home in Denmark. And the idea that they're little piglets maybe is a bit of a challenge to their own masculinity. And so now their main task is to go and avenge their father on King Ella which they carry out

quite spectacularly in the saga. Does Ragnar's story, so whether it's real or otherwise, whether he's a composite character, does the various stories that we have of him tell us anything about the origins of the Viking Age? Does it give us a hint as to why they're looking to expand? Is it just all about glory and battle and getting more gold? Yeah, essentially. And fame, that's a very important part of it too. And we can see in the saga how Ragnar has a kind of sphere of activity really in the Baltic, going across between Denmark and Sweden, and with the odd trip over to Norway in one of the Latin sources about him. And then the sphere of influence expands. And maybe we can connect that with better seagoing vessels that Viking ship technology is advancing at this point. Maybe we can connect it

to the idea that if you want some kind of immortality, you have to do something extraordinary because the only thing that's going to live after you is your fame. And that will last for two, three generations while people remember you. And then maybe the songs about you will be forgotten. So it is basically about tribute, about gold plundering, and also the kind of question of what do you do with young noble men? How do you train them up? How do you occupy them so that they're not spending all their time fighting each other? You put them in a ship and take them off to raid somewhere else. It's the kind of consistent medieval problem of the young man who hasn't got the resources to get married yet and settle. It's the kind of consistent medieval problem of the young man who

hasn't got the resources to get married yet and settle down, needs some kind of occupation. But what we can see when we get on to the next generation, to the sons, is that the great heathen army is coming to England, not just to do a hit and run series of raids and go home with the booty, but they're bringing people who are actually going to conquer and settle. And that's the next phase, if you like, of this kind of Viking expansionism. It's not about going home in the winter now. It's overwintering at camps in places like Torquay and Lincoln and in Repton, and then being well-placed to start campaigning early in the next year and really spreading out the amount of territory that you can control. That perennial medieval problem of what you

do with a warrior class when there's no war, where you go and pick a fight somewhere else. Yeah, because if you don't do that, they're going to start fighting each other. Or if you're the leader, they're going to start ganging up on you. So it's always good policy. And just on the other side of that equation, what can we learn about Ragnar's story about how the rest of Europe was viewing the Viking threat? I guess particularly from the point of view of Christians who are witnessing pagans having so much success. Do we see anything in the way that they talk about Ragnar or the various Ragnars of how

they're trying to rationalise the Viking success? Usually the chroniclers are writing in a kind of monastic context. And so the simplest way of ascribing or of explaining the success of Ragnar and his sons is saying it's the devil. And particularly in the account that we have of the martyrdom of St Edmund, the King of East Anglia, after whom Bury St Edmunds is named. He's killed by the sons of Ragnar. And the Chronicle tells us that it was just a battle and he got killed. And that was very sad for the East Anglians, but that's how it happens. But we also have a very dramatic saint's

life in which we're told that Hingwar and Hubba, the two sons of Ragnar, who've just finished avenging themselves on Ella in Northumbria, have come down to East Anglia. And Hingwar sends a message to Edmund saying, you must give up your Christianity and give us all of your treasure and agree to swear allegiance to us. And Edmund says, no, I will never forswear my religion. You can't have any of my treasure and I will not submit to your authority. So they tie him to a post and shoot him full of arrows like Saint Sebastian. And the old English text we have says that he has as many arrows in him as the bristles on a hedgehog. Pretty intense way of killing someone. And then they cut his head off and to annoy the Sanglians because they want to get the whole of the body and bury it reverently.

They take the head with them on their way back to the ships and chuck it in the woods. But God sends a wolf to guard the head. And so after the Vikings have gone, the people go out to look for the lost head and the head shouts out to them, as they call, where are you? And the head shouts, here, here, here. And then they come and find it between the paws of the wolf who's guarding it from the other animals. But the wolf lets them take the head and take it back into town and put it back together with the body and bury it. And then eventually the shrine of Bury St. Edmunds is erected over that. So that particular source says very clearly that the two brothers are united by the devil and also makes the observation that all evil comes from the north, which is a line that you find in the Bible. I think it's somewhere

in the book of Isaiah. But it was very pertinent from the point of view of monastic chroniclers trying to find a way of talking about the continuing or recurrent Viking threat was that it's always from the north that this bad stuff comes. This is history's heroes, people with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes.

Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. So we've mentioned a couple of Ragnar's sons then. We're on firmer ground when we're talking about those that are attributed to be the children of Ragnar. They tend to be real people, even if we're not sure Ragnar was their father. Yeah. And so we've got Ivar, as he's called in Old Norse, and Ubba, definitely involved in the killing of Edmund. We've got somebody called Kvitsak, who's also operative. And we've got the very interesting figure of Sigurd, Snake in the Eye. And Sigurd is the youngest of the children that Ragnar has with this daughter of Sigurd the Dragonslayer, Ausleg. And just before he's born, Ausleg finds out that Ragnar is planning to marry the daughter of the King of Sweden. And

she explains that, in fact, she has a much more heroic heritage because she's the daughter of the King of Sweden. And she explains that, in fact, she has a much more heroic heritage because she's the daughter of the greatest hero that has ever been seen in the North. And she's never got around to mentioning this before. And Ragnar is a bit sceptical, but she says, well, I'll prove it because the son that I'm carrying will have pupils in his eyes, which are S-shaped like a serpent. And that's the legacy of his grandfather. And sure enough, the baby is born with these S-shaped pupils. And Ragnar immediately calls off the whole Swedish marriage plan.

And this Sigurd's snake in the eye is also mentioned in historical sources and is one of the more important ancestors of various Icelanders who are instrumental in recording the saga in the late 13th, early 14th century. So we can place Ivar or Hingvar, Oba and Björn, who's another of these sons, and Kvitsak as operating at various times in the British Isles and in Ireland. It looks as if Ivar actually dies in Ireland, and then Uwe goes off to avenge him, leaving Björn and Kvitsak to carry on campaigning in Britain. But that's after the whole Heathen Army episode, so that's at some point in the 870s. So the sons are certainly mentioned as fighting against in the campaign

that Alfred the Great is involved in. And we know that Oba dies in the Battle of Kinwit in Devon in the later 870s. And that seems to spell the end of the Sons at that point. Eve are dead in Ireland, Ubbe dead in Devon. And what happens to the others is not very clear. They seem to fade out. But they at least, because we can associate them with the great heathen army, and because they're mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Life as an Edmund and the Irish Chronicles, it seems as if they're pretty solidly historical figures. And do we know, I mean, being the sons of Ragnar assumes that they're all brothers,

do we know that they were all connected in that way? Or is there some assumption there that they were working together and therefore maybe brothers descended from this great Viking hero, Ragnar. Yeah, it's hard to say. You can imagine that the bond between brothers is absolutely the best way of being sure that your fellow war leaders aren't going to stitch you up in some way or incite half of the army against you. And there seems to be quite a strong tradition that they are the sons of Ragnar,

whether there's any truth in it. Not always by the same mother, of course, because we've got different stories. In fact, the two sons by Princess Thora get killed in Sweden, supposedly, quite early on. And then there's a bunch of sons with Auslög, but there's also from the tradition that we find in Denmark from around 1200, some earlier sons, and I think Björn and Kvitek may be part of that. Ragnar, in that particular tradition, still attacked a pair of serpents this time in Sweden, but it was nothing to do with a woman. There was a king fro of Sweden who had a pair of killer serpents. And Ragnar goes and attacks these with the same kind of hairy trouser thing, I think, but also with the aid of a ferocious shield maiden called Lagertha.

And after they've dispatched the serpents and killed the king, Ragnar marries Lagertha, who's not very keen on getting married because she wants to be a shield maiden. And they have a couple of sons in the tradition that we find in the earliest Danish historical sources. But then Lagertha clears off to do some more shield maidening. And Ragnar marries more women in this kind of serial way that you can do as a heathen war leader. So not all of the sons are from the same mother, but we do have a kind of ever-expanding set of them. Quite like the idea of Lagertha feeling like this great heroic warrior Ragnar is cramping her style and she wants to go off and do a bit on her own. Yeah, quite how he persuaded her into the whole marriage thing. I'm not sure,

but it does sound like it was kind of force majeure in some ways. That's something that plays out, of course, in the TV Viking series. There we have Ragnar married to Lager, the great shield maiden warrior fighter. And you have that theme of, yeah, do I really want to be married to a hero or do I want to carry on with my fighting career? It's a very modern preoccupation, but it's one that modern TV shows are very interested in this figure of the female warrior, taking in some ways its cues from some of the new evidence that we're getting from graves, which have been maybe misgendered in the past. But it's also obviously important in TV shows to have some women heroines who are not just sitting at home looking after the cows while the men are getting all the fighting action.

Yeah, but I do think it's interesting that they're at least able to base that on some emerging evidence, because quite often you'll find those characters are sort of plucked out of nowhere because of the need to fill that space. But actually in Viking tradition, there's more and more evidence that there were women who did involve themselves in fighting. And so the TV series is able to play into that a little bit. Yeah, to some extent. I mean, there's a lot of literary tradition around these fighting women. It's kind of like the Greek idea of the Amazons or other kinds of made up elite female forces that if you didn't have some fighting women, you'd have to invent them.

And the show Vikings, and to some extent, The Last Kingdom as well, which also taps into the same kind of set of beliefs, likes to have its fighting women. But the evidence for The Grave in Birka, for example, which has just been reanalyzed, is more recent than the TV show. So it's a case of life seeming to confirm art in some ways, but it does strengthen the case that's increasingly made in these Viking-themed movies to have women who are not only holding the fort at home or being the love interest or being the sorceress who prophesies what's going to happen in the expedition, but one's actually going along with the men as we know they must have done in these huge armies. There must have been women along with them providing domestic services,

being wives, being lovers, doing the washing, milking the cows, making the cheese. The women must always have been there. And so the question of whether sometimes they picked up a sword and went into battle seems less of a leap now than maybe it did 30, 40, 50 years ago. I mean, so your book is called The Norse Myths That Shaped the Way We Think. So how should we think about Ragnar today? Do we see the influence of his story still around us today? We do in quite an interesting way. And first of all, we've got Ragnar as the hero of Vikings, the TV show.

And he and his sons are able to tell a story about how Ragnar is just a kind of regular farmer from Denmark or Norway. Ragnar was just a kind of regular farmer from Denmark or Norway, maybe I think it's from Norway in the show, has been doing a bit of raiding in the summer and looking after the pigs in the winter. And then suddenly goes, oh, I've heard there are these lands in the West we could go and attack. And it's ridiculous to think that people in Scandinavia didn't know of the existence of the British Isles at this point. Of course, they knew they'd been trading across the North Sea for centuries. But the idea that from this kind of epicenter of raiding in Scandinavia, between the different Scandinavian tribes, you could spread out to attack the British Isles, you could go to Normandy, to France, eventually you'd be going into the Mediterranean, you'd be going down the Great Rivers, you'd be going to Iceland by the end of the Viking TV show,

they've colonized Iceland. And Ubbe, who isn't dead yet, in the show is saying, oh, I've heard about this land, this golden land in the West. And yeah, maybe he's going to North America. So the Viking TV show is really interested in this kind of idea of the global reach of the Vikings. Whereas in The Last Kingdom, it's all scrapping around sovereignty in England, and to some extent, I guess, in Wales as well, and going up to the Scottish border with Uxred's ancestral castle in Bamburgh. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny,

you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. So Ragnar and his sons are really interesting figures in these two quite similar but also quite different in their scope TV shows. But also interestingly, Ragnar and his sons are responsible for the Viking movie, the Hollywood Viking movie. And although the earliest movie called The Viking, which is a silent movie from 1928 is more interested in Greenland and America. The fantastic 1958 movie, The Vikings, with Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Ernest Borgnine, and so on, is ostensibly about Ragnar. And Ragnar is,

in fact, the kind of anti-hero. And so the story is about how he attacked Britain, raped the Queen of Northumbria, begot this child on her and then for complicated reasons the child Eric ends up as a slave in the household of Ragnar and his son Einar in Norway and Eric and Einar don't like each other but they don't know that they're half-brothers. And then Janet Leigh turns up as the love interest, and then the half-brothers fall out over that. It has all the, what we think of as the kind of cliches of the Viking movie now. It has the girl with plaits pinioned in the wall of the Viking hall while people throw axes at her to try and cut their plaits off. And it has the mighty spectacle of the long ship, full sail, sailing down the field with Kirk Douglas, who's very proud of doing his own stunts,

performs this feat, which is called the Running of the Oars, which is bounding from oar to oar as the ship is being rowed down the field with the sail up as well. And the director of the movie was very keen to say this is the first time this feat had been seen in up as well. And the director of the movie was very keen to say this is the first time this feat had been seen in a thousand years. And it is a great scene where you see Kirk confidently leaping from all to all. And then the serpents aren't quite dramatic enough there. So Ragnar ends up in a pit full of half-starved wolves instead, which is a bit more dramatic. I guess they're probably Alsatians or something. And there's quite a lot about how by this time,

Erik and Einar and Ragnar are a bit of a team. And when one of them dies, they make sure that they die with a weapon in their hands so they can go to Valhalla. And then you have a classic Viking funeral with the ship and the body and being set on fire with a flaming arrow and so on. That story then underlies the Vikings. And then every other Viking movie, Eric the Viking, for example, the Terry Jones film, is playing a lot with the cliches from what has now become cliches in the Viking movie, too. what will now become cliches in the Viking movie too.

And you see some of that work in what we might see as the latest Viking movie, Rob Eggers' The Northman from last year. And although it's quite important, so people like Neil Price, who were consultants on the film, say that the word Viking is never mentioned in the film. These are not Vikings. But actually in the script, they kind of are. But it's supposed to be trying to get away from the cliches of the Viking movie in some way. So it's not about the glory of getting treasure. It's actually sordid human

trafficking that's at stake. And at the beginning, when you have the feast in the hall as Fjellnir comes home and you expect everybody roaring and thumping on the table and cheering, there's a kind of deadly silence. And everyone's like, oh, he's back. So that's a film that's really interested in undoing a lot of the cliches of the Viking movie. But Ragnar and his sons have really got a huge part to play in the way that Hollywood has seen that particular story. And I guess the idea of Ragnar and his sons is one of those universal themes, isn't it? You know, of a father and his sons, the relationship between them, the relationship between brothers, how do you do better than someone who is a dragon slaying hero? How do you live up to your father?

How do you live with your brothers? brothers I mean all of those are kind of universal themes I guess yeah and one of the most interesting things I think about the saga itself is that although there's absolutely no historical evidence for this whatsoever but in the saga when Ragnar gets together with Aslug and they get married, she says, we shouldn't consummate the wedding for three nights because it's better for rather unclear reasons that we wait. And Ragnar says, nonsense, we're man and wife now, I'm certainly going to sleep with you. And she says, well, I think the son that we conceive will not be as fine a specimen as he would be if you waited. But nevertheless, Ragnar has his way. And their son is born with no bones, but just with cartilage. And so he gets the by name Ivar the Boneless. And he's a really interesting figure in terms of a hero, nonetheless, but not the conventional

hero. He can't fight. He can't stand up even. He has to be carried around from battle to battle on a shield borne up by stout men who can hold him. But nevertheless, he's the brains of the operation. And when it comes to staging the vengeance on King Elah, the other brothers are all kind of, oh, let's go and invade Northumbria and feed Elah to his own serpents. And Ivar goes, no, what we'll do is we'll go and have a little chat with him. We'll probably have to fight for a bit, but then we'll

make peace and then let's see what happens. And so a peace is arranged between the sons. And Ivar says, what I would like from you, Ella, is just a little bit of land, enough land that a couple of ox hides would cover. And Ella, like an idiot, says, yeah, sure, you can have the land that's covered by an ox hide. I mean, what are you going to do with that? But Ivar cuts the ox hide into very thin strips and knots them all together so that he can then outline a really rather substantial piece of land, outline a really rather substantial piece of land, which is going to be the foundation of London. And so he claims London and says, right, I'm going to rule over this. And Ella is justifiably annoyed by this trick. So he attacks Ivar. He's now broken the settlement that they've made.

And so the brothers fall on Ella and kill him in this famous barbaric method of killing called the Blood Eagle, about which there is a huge amount of discussion. It probably is completely made up by the saga author. But as a sacrifice to Odin, they split him open and break his ribcage, then drag his lungs out and plaster them over his back. So it looks as if he has bloody eagle wings on his torso. And then I guess you die, if not a shock of asphyxiation, if your lungs aren't working properly. And this is a kind of example. And Ivar says, right, I'll just rule over London for now. You others can go off and do other things. And so that depiction of a really successful disabled hero is something that I don't know of anywhere else. We have Vikings with one leg in the saga from

Iceland, and occasionally people lose their hands. But somebody who's got this congenital disability, but yet manages to not only make a kind of success, but actually becomes a hero in his own right. It's a really interesting kind of gloss, I think, on the way that at least by the late 13th, early 14th century, people were thinking about the kind of possibilities of what a hero could be. Yeah, that's a really fascinating aspect of the story that I hadn't really thought about before. Such a positive presentation of disability in such an early source is quite unusual, particularly around a society that is so focused on fighting and warrior's abilities that someone who can't be a warrior can still be so successful within that environment.

Yeah, and can't be a warrior from birth either, because I think a militaristic society is quite used to people who've had traumatic brain injuries, maybe, or you've lost a hand or you've lost a leg and you have a kind of wooden prosthesis and you limp around the place. But somebody who's never been trained to fight. So all of Ivar's capacities are in his head and he's always thinking strategically. He's the oldest, of course, of that particular set of brothers. And he's the one who says, no, we're not going to do this. We're going to do that all the time. And they fall in with it because he's got a real track record of success.

Well, I've really enjoyed that. Hopefully we know Ragnar a little bit better than we did at the start. It's been absolutely fascinating to explore the stories of his life with you. So thank you very much. Well, thank you for the opportunity to talk about him. Caroline's book, The Norse Myths That Shape The Way We Think is out now if you'd like to explore the impact of Ragnar and Norse myths on life today a little bit more. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcasts from and to tell all of your friends

and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to podcasts. It really does help new audiences to find us. If you're enjoying this and looking for a bit more medieval goodness in your life, you can subscribe to our Medieval Mondays newsletter by following the links in the show notes below. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hits. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you.

Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.