When it comes to the stories of charismatic Viking hero Ragnar Lodbrok, who was played by
Travis Fimmel on History's Vikings, there may not be a whole lot that's exactly truthful,
right down to his very existence. This is the untold truth of Ragnar Lodbrok.
Ragnar's story wasn't even written down until 350 years after his death,
which is part of what makes some historians skeptical of his existence.
Most of the sources that mention him are old, and a lot of the information in those sources
is conflicting. Another problem with the historical record is that there wasn't a lot
of real history recorded during the 9th century anyway, which is when Ragnar supposedly existed.
Plus, a lot of Vikings had pretty similar names, which makes it hard to tell the
difference between Ragnar and someone else whose name sounded kind of like "Ragnar."
"We really don't know that much about Ragnar."
Ragnar supposedly had many sons, and historians are fairly certain that they actually existed.
Ivar the Boneless, for example, was a real person,
though we don't know how much of his story is fiction and how much is fact.
Bjorn Ironside probably existed, too, as did Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye. It's possible,
though, that these supposed "sons" only really claimed to be the offspring of the
legendary Ragnar because doing so gave them a certain amount of street cred.
But then again they may not even have said they were Ragnar's sons at all! It's possible that the
authors of the legends tied them to Ragnar's legacy because it made the stories tidier.
Ragnar appears in a number of different stories and doesn't always have the same name,
so he may actually be a combination of different historic people. The best-known of these stories
is The Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok, one of the famous Icelandic sagas written during the 13th century.
He was also the star of an Old Norse poem called "The Poem About Ragnar" and a 12th-century poem
called "Words of the Crow." He even has a lead in Latin texts such as "Deeds of the Norman Dukes''
and a couple of chronicles of Danish kings. The 9th century Frankish Annals of St. Bertin talks
about a Viking chieftain named "Reginherus," who led an invasion on Paris in 845. The name isn't
exactly the same, but it's typically assumed that Reginherus and Ragnar are the same person.
So if Ragnar wasn't real, who was he based on? There are a number of strong candidates,
including the Danish king Horik I, who lived during the mid-9th century and was responsible
for multiple raids against the Frankish king Louis the Pious. Other candidates include King Reginfrid
of Denmark, who died in 814, and Reghnall, whose story is told in the Irish Annals.
"Who wants to be king?!"
The story of the death of Ragnar's parents is a tragic tale. Of course, if Ragnar was just a myth,
then his parents didn't die tragically, because they didn't exist. But if he wasn't a myth,
then some bad things happened during his childhood. His father was King Sigurd Ring,
and his mother was Alfild, who died when he was still a child.
Her passing didn't exactly cause Ragnar and his father to become closer, though,
as Sigurd went off in search of a new bride and set his sights upon Princess Alfsol of Jutland.
Sigurd asked politely at first, but Alfsol's parents weren't interested in obtaining an
aging Viking groom for their daughter. So Sigurd decided to win over Alfsol the old fashioned way:
by force. Alas, he was no match for her overprotective parents,
who poisoned their daughter so that Sigurd couldn't get his hands on her. Instead of giving
up and sailing back to his son, Sigurd jumped onto Alfsol's funeral pyre and stabbed himself,
thus leaving Ragnar an orphan and a king at the tender age of 15.
Ragnar's first wife Lagertha doesn't appear in every one of Ragnar's stories. In fact,
according to the Ancient History Encyclopedia she only appears in the Latin Gesta Danorum.
According to that text, she became Ragnar's love interest shortly after the Swedish King Frø killed
Ragnar's grandfather King Siward of Norway and put all his female relatives in a brothel.
When Ragnar arrived in Norway to take revenge on Siward's killer, he was met by a band of women
who offered to join him in the fight against King Frø. One of those women was Lagertha,
whom the Gesta Danorum describes as a skilled Amazon with the courage of a man.
Ragnar was smitten, but when he arrived at Lagertha's home, he found it guarded by a
bear and a large dog. Still, he managed to slay both animals and claim Lagertha as his bride.
Lagertha eventually warmed to her new husband, probably because she didn't really have a choice.
But alas, Ragnar's heart was fickle. After three years of marriage and three children,
he heard news that his kingdom had been attacked. He then headed back to his
homeland where a seer showed him a magical image of a woman named Thora in a mirror.
She eventually became his second wife. As the Gesta Danorum recounts it,
"[Ragnar] divorced himself from [Lagertha]; for he thought ill of her trustworthiness,
remembering that she had long ago set the most savage beasts to destroy him."
Lagertha wasn't the sort of woman to let a little thing like spousal abandonment get her down,
though. She remarried and when Ragnar came crawling back to her for help to
quell unrest in his kingdom, she graciously offered him 120 ships, won a battle for him,
and then went home and killed her new husband so that she could rule in his place.
Thora looked pretty good in the mirror but alas, there was a catch.
She was a mother of dragons, or possibly just one dragon, or maybe just a really big snake,
depending on which version of the story you're reading. Evidently, Thora had hatched the creature
from a swan's egg and it had grown so large that it coiled around her house and wouldn't
let anyone come close to her. It also breathed fire, spat venom, and produced noxious fumes.
Thora's father was understandably concerned about the creature, so he offered his daughter's hand in
marriage and gold to whomever was brave and strong enough to slay the beast. Ragnar took the job,
slayed the beast, and married Thora. This story is also the origin of the name "Lothbrok," which
means "hairy breeches." Ragnar made himself a pair of armored pants from furry animal skin.
To harden them against the snake or dragon, he boiled them in pitch, rolled them in sand,
and then froze them so they'd be difficult for his foe to bite through.
This time Ragnar's love appeared to be genuine, because for all the years of
this marriage he gave up going on raids. Thora and Ragnar had two sons, but she died young,
and that's when Ragnar finally decided to go back to raiding and pillaging.
Ragnar's grief over Thora was temporary. He was off raiding again when he became intrigued by
the beauty of a peasant named Kraka. She was a commoner and to prove her worthiness, he sent
her a riddle: she was to come to him neither clothed nor unclothed, neither full nor hungry
and not alone but without anyone accompanying her. So Kraka ate one onion, wrapped herself up in her
own hair and a fishing net, and brought along a dog. Ragnar was impressed by her cleverness and
married her. Then he found out that she actually wasn't a peasant girl but instead the daughter of
a legendary dragon slayer and a Valkyrie. Also her name wasn't really Kraka, it was Aslaug.
Aslaug and Ragnar went on to have many children, including Ivar the Boneless, who according to
the sagas indeed has no bones but manages to become a legendary warrior anyway. Incidentally,
Ivar was cursed with bonelessness because his father was too eager on his wedding night.
After Ragnar's third marriage, the Swedish king was hoping that Ragnar would leave his peasant
wife for a real princess. It almost worked, until Ragnar found out about his wife's actual
bloodlines and he snubbed the marriage offer. This situation led to violence when two of
Ragnar's sons tried to engage the Swedes but found themselves thwarted by a magical cow.
Then Aslaug took her own sons into battle, thus winning the war.
Ragnar should've been pleased at all of this but he wasn't. His own sons were messing with
his reputation by being mightier than he was, and he didn't like that one bit. So he boasted
that he was going to invade England, and with only two ships. He met the forces of King Aelle,
but he failed to defeat them and was then captured. This led to the most famous version
of Ragnar's death, in which he was thrown into a pit of vipers after his capture.
The snake pit version of Ragnar's death is obviously epic, so it's understandable that
it's repeated in multiple versions of his story. But that's not the only way that he supposedly met
his end. In one version, he died from dysentery while leading a huge force against Paris,
which makes death by snake pit look like a stroll along the beach by comparison.
But that wasn't the only end of Ragnar. For years after his death by dysentery
he turned up in places like Scotland and Ireland, where he eventually got
tortured or just generically killed by his own countrymen. Later on,
some rivals killed him, then he died in a raid before finally landing in Aelle's snake pit.
"We're all fated to die on a certain day."
A common postmortem theme in Ragnar's stories is how his grown sons reacted to his demise,
which was to bring an army to the land where their father died and fight everyone that they saw.
But there are variations on the events leading up to the arrival of the Great Heathen Army.
One is the famous snake pit story, which happened after Ragnar tried to attack
England with only two ships. In another version, though, Ragnar is innocent.
He was just out sailing around in a boat when he got caught up by a storm and became shipwrecked on
the coast of East Anglia. Instead of getting thrown into a snake pit he was rescued and
eventually became pals with Edmund, king of the East Angles. The two spent a lot of time hunting
together, which evidently annoyed Edmund's chief huntsman Bern. In fact, Bern was so annoyed that
he challenged Ragnar to a secret hunting contest out in the woods and then stabbed him to death.
One thing led to another and eventually Bern ended up back in the land of the Vikings,
where he lied and told Ragnar's sons that it was actually King Edmund who killed their father,
thus bringing the Great Heathen Army down upon them all. Then the Vikings killed Edmund and
played football with his decapitated head until they grew bored and threw it away into a thicket.
In some of the legends, Ragnar's eventual demise is connected to the invasion of the Great Heathen
Army, which was an actual invasion that occurred around 865. Ragnar's sons did indeed grunt when
they heard how the old boar suffered, and they vowed to avenge their dad just like any good
Viking kid would. They brought an enormous fleet of ships with them to East Anglia,
captured and killed King Edmund, sacked the city of York and then captured King Aelle and executed
him by the blood eagle method. The details of this killing are likely part of the myth, though,
since they involved skin removal and lung removal and all kinds of additional nasty elements.
Unfortunately for Ragnar fans, the legends about him are the only sources that really
call the 865 invasion an act of revenge. There do seem to have been some characters
involved in those events who shared names with Ragnar's sons, though. There's also an account
of Aelle's death that is mercifully free of any mention of the blood eagle. So what was
Ragnar's actual historical part in all of this, if any? We can guess, but only Odin knows for sure.
"And I welcome the Valkyries to summon me home!"
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