Most of us fairly assume that television shows are not historically accurate. Real life almost
never unfolds like a well-crafted TV drama. However, that's not always the case when it
comes to the hit series Vikings. We're here to talk about what the show has gotten right.
Ragnar Lothbrok may not have been a real person. It's hard to tell if someone really lived or not
when the stories in question took place over 1,000 years ago. What we do know, however,
is that Ragnar features in a very real Icelandic saga.
Despite questions about his realness, Ragnar shows up in multiple medieval
sources. Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum, published around 1185 AD,
confidently states that Ragnar was a ninth-century Danish king who went head-to-head with
Charlemagne. This account says that Ragnar was eventually captured by King Aella of Northumbria
and thrown into a pit full of venomous snakes. He also pops up in the 12th-century
Icelandic works Krákumál and Háttalykill, from the now-Scottish Orkney Islands.
The literary Ragnar wasn't done just yet. In the 13th century, readers paging through the
manuscript of the Völsunga saga, an Icelandic epic, would also likely find the Saga of Ragnar
Lodbrok. According to the introduction, the closest we can get to a maybe-real person
is a Viking leader named Reginheri, who is referenced in a Frankish chronicle.
According to contemporary sources, Reginheri sacked Paris in 845 AD. The earliest anyone
can connect the names "Ragnar" or "Lothbrok" in any source is much later, in the 11th century.
Vikings obviously plays fast and loose with some aspects of history,
especially the timeline. For example, there's no evidence that Ragnar Lothbrok was a real
person who took part in the eighth-century raid on England's famous and treasured Lindisfarne Abbey.
Admittedly, eyewitness accounts from people who were actually there haven't surfaced,
so there's some wiggle room as to who, exactly, was on-site causing mayhem.
The first recorded account of the raid comes from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
which was assembled in the late ninth century from earlier sources.
We do know that the island of Lindisfarne really was attacked by Scandinavian raiders in the year
793. Chroniclers tend to characterize that year as one doomed from the start,
beginning with ominous portents like whirlwinds, widespread famine, and
fire-breathing dragons spotted cruising through the air. Then, in June, the chroniclers wrote :
"Heathen men came and miserably destroyed
God's church on Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter."
Lagertha, the shield maiden featured throughout Vikings, is a fearsome warrior.
Detractors might allege that we're just overlaying modern feminist sensibilities on
what was surely another patriarchal culture. Norse women never went into battle. Right?
One extraordinary grave proves that they did. First excavated in the 1880s in Birka, Sweden,
this burial was packed full of evidence showing that the occupant must have been a
warrior. They were interred with a sword, a spear, an ax, arrows, a knife, two shields,
and two horses. The original archaeologists assumed that the occupant was male. However,
DNA evidence later proved that the individual was female.
Literary sources also indicate that the Norse wouldn't have been shocked by the
sight of a female warrior. According to the Ancient History Encyclopedia,
literate Vikings could have listed multiple examples of women going into battle. These
include Lagertha, a maiden warrior mentioned in the Gesta Danorum, or History of the Danes.
Vikings and Norse traders were impressively well-traveled. Runes tell us they made it all
the way to Hagia Sophia in Constantinople -- now Istanbul, Turkey. We also know that
they traveled far afield to Iceland, Greenland, and, if the stories of Leif Erikson are true,
all the way to the eastern coast of Canada. Also, a sixth-century metal sculpture,
which researchers have identified as a Buddha figure, was found in a Norse grave in Helgö,
Sweden. Research shows that the statue would have been made in India,
meaning that Vikings at least had contact with traders who had been there.
The point is that the society of the Norse could be quite diverse.
A large genetic study of human remains from 2400 BC to 1600 AD shows that Vikings often mixed
with a wide variety of ethnic groups. In fact, the Norse of the Viking Age only passed down
somewhere around 15 to 30 percent of their genetic markers to modern Scandinavians.
This indicates a continued disregard for concepts like tribes or ethnic groups.
"And I look forward to getting to know your sons, and introducing mine."
Though he almost certainly wasn't the brother of Ragnar Lothbrok, Rollo was a real Viking
warrior and leader who took part in the siege of Paris in the years 885 to 886 . In most sources,
he's known as Rollo of Normandy, having founded that duchy. He was born in what's now Norway
and then participated in many raids, which eventually landed him in France sometime in
the tenth century. He besieged Paris -- again -- and was so successful in that venture that
French King Charles III resorted to a treaty around the year 911 to get Rollo to stop.
The treaty ended the siege and gave Rollo control of Normandy, where he settled.
Sources go on to say that Rollo and his men behaved themselves decently enough,
with Rollo even reportedly getting baptized a Christian. Then again,
much of Rollo's story has been embellished over the years. We'll never know for sure.
Halls were integral to Viking culture,
as they were centers of community life where the local lord would conduct business,
throw parties, and show off for visitors. Without the glory of a local mead hall,
something truly special would have been missing both from the show and from actual Norse life.
Halls tended to have a few common features. They were usually a large building with a single room,
placed in a central location on a large farm. Halls also tended to be unusually tall and with
little interior posts blocking the action. Excavations make it pretty clear that these
weren't everyday places. Archaeologists rarely find workaday items like cooking
utensils in halls, for instance. Instead, they might uncover precious objects that
would have belonged to high-ranking folk, or religious items like amulets or statues.
We have clear evidence that the Norse used makeup, though the ingredients in
their cosmetics were different from the ones on a modern makeup artist's table.
Materials aside, the looks sported by actors on the show aren't too
different from what Norse folk were wearing during the tenth century.
One Arab visitor, Ibrahim al-Tartushi, visited the Swedish town of Hedeby around 950. He wrote,
"There is also an artificial makeup for the eyes;
when they use it, beauty never fades; on the contrary, increases in men and women as well."
Vikings probably used mineral-based kohl. Based on al-Tartushi's accounts, the Norse also used
a semi-permanent "indelible cosmetic." That may have been eyedrops dosed with atropine,
a toxic substance found in plants like belladonna. Atropine drops would have
caused prolonged eye dilation, which other cultures have found attractive.
Vikings portrays a diverse array of cultural traditions.
In the show, funerals are exceptionally grand.
Though Vikings didn't keep written records, archaeologists have discovered that funeral
arrangements centered on either burial or cremation, and often varied based on status.
Those lower in society were usually buried in simple, relatively shallow graves,
while the higher-ups sometimes got monumental burial mounds, sometimes called barrows.
Some of the biggest deals in Norse society were buried with ships. The Oseberg,
a 70-foot-long ship uncovered in Norway, was undoubtedly reserved for some seriously big names,
including two women. Also, while popular imagination leads you to believe that many of
these ships were sent into the sea and then set alight with flaming arrows, most of these craft
were apparently buried in the ground. The effort and cost of constructing these finely crafted
vessels may have been too much to simply burn one to ashes, even for the highest Norse chieftain.
No one's found reliable physical or literary evidence of such a dramatic tradition.
In the show, Ragnar often used an opaque,
naturally-formed device -- known as a sunstone -- to navigate the treacherous seas.
As it turns out, sunstones might have actually been real. They're mentioned in the Norse sagas,
but the writers don't give much detail. Archaeologists did recover a calcite crystal
in a 15th-century English shipwreck, indicating that this was a tradition that might have been
carried from the Vikings into the Tudor era. A Hungarian team ran computer simulations which
indicated that a calcite-based sunstone would have been helpful,
though Vikings probably used other navigational techniques like observing whale migrations,
looking for familiar landmarks, and following other astronomical phenomena like the stars.
Researchers have tested a sunstone. It was so accurate that the team were
able to track the sun within one percent of its actual location.
Flóki Vilgerðarson is known as the first Norseman to intentionally sail to Iceland
in the ninth century. Beyond that, there's a lot of myth and legend surrounding him;
that story forms the basis for the master shipbuilder named Floki shown on Vikings.
Iceland may have seemed like a mythical place already to the settling Norse folk. Even today,
many see it as a primeval land of ice and fire, with harsh winters and short summers
marked by volcanoes occasionally spewing lava and ash across the landscape. The first known
people to see this dramatic land, according to the 13th-century Book of the Settlements, were
led by Naddodd the Viking - or sometimes called Naddor, who was blown off course around 830.
Gardar the Swede followed some 30 years later. Both eventually returned back to Scandinavia,
leaving Flóki to establish a more permanent community around 868.
According to the legend, he became known as Hrafna-Flóki,
or "Raven Floki," because he released a series of three ravens in order to find
land. When the third raven flew off and didn't try to return,
Flóki followed it to land. After a hard winter, he returned to Norway and complained about the trip,
but glowing reviews from his fellow travelers led others to seek out new homesteads in Iceland.
The Vikings were pretty fashionable, it appears. Excavations of their graves and other sites reveal
troves of jewelry, says the National Museum of Denmark. If archaeologists are lucky,
they might even uncover intricate textiles, which tend to decay pretty
quickly if conditions aren't just right. Between excavations and literary sources,
we know that the Vikings and Norse alike cared about their appearance.
We have more concrete information about how male Vikings styled their hair than we do
about women's fashion. Men typically wore beards and kept their hair relatively long.
Sometimes, they even colored or bleached their hair with compounds like lye,
gathered from the ashes of a fire. Some were well-known for their hair,
as evidenced by names of figures like Harald Fairhair and Sweyn Forkbeard.
The National Museum of Denmark notes that the "reverse mullet" was one of the more popular
male styles. This "Danish fashion," as some Anglo-Saxon writers called it, dictated that
men keep the hair on the top of the head long, while closely cropping the hair at the back,
similar to what Ragnar and others sport on Vikings.
Compared to women from other societies of the time, Viking women had much
more freedom. Like the character of Lagertha, they ran their own affairs,
from conducting business on their own to initiating divorces when a relationship failed.
While there were Viking warrior women, most Norse lived in a gendered world. Women
were expected to govern the household, acting as hosts, cooks, storytellers,
and business owners. They managed whatever the family produced, like livestock or textiles,
and took charge of the family's financial well-being. Women were also tasked with raising
children - which is nothing to dismiss. Proper household management was vital,
especially during the intense Scandinavian winters and on frontiers like Iceland.
Women weren't necessarily restricted to the homestead. For instance, they could act as
seeresses, who played an important religious role in pre-Christian Norse society. Queens and other
nobles enjoyed even greater status, as indicated by the women found in burial sites around Norway.
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