Vikings

Title: Vikings

Written/Created by: Michael Hirst

Network: History (via Amazon Prime)

Forget everything you think you know about the historical Vikings. In fact, stop thinking altogether. Do no thinking. Think zero things. This show will improve immeasurably if you do.

I’m on season four (out of five, soon to be six seasons) of this Canadian-Irish co-production, and I’m now deep, deep into guilty pleasure territory. I’m enjoying watching it, though it probably couldn’t be classified as a terribly well-made show. It’s off-brain entertainment, an off-brand version of Game of Thrones, filled with sex but without any tits or bums, filled with battles but without any blood (slow-motion action scenes in particular make it painfully obvious the actors are hitting each other with blunted prop swords), filled with intrigue but none of it any more clever or inventive than “hit the other fella with the blunted prop sword.”

But you know, it’s light, it’s fun, and if nothing else it’s a spur to finding out what the Vikings were actually like.

The show is based on the semi-legendary Viking hero Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel), a simple farmer who first leads his men west to raid the British Isles, the success of which attracts the jealousy of powerful enemies at home, including Earl Harald (Gabriel Byrne) and King Horik (Donal Logue). He defeats them both and becomes king, though he finds this is an empty reward. He is eventually betrayed and murdered by the Anglo-Saxons, which in later seasons spurs his quarrelsome sons to seek revenge by raising an army and invading England.

AHISTORICAL HISTORY

Making your main characters bloodthirsty Vikings poses some challenges in terms of making them sympathetic to the audience. The Vikings TV show’s response has been to completely ignore all that, and portray the Vikings as basically nice people who are constantly done dirty by the scheming, duplicitous Anglo-Saxons.

There is a little bit of bloodthirsty butchery in season one, though always instigated by someone other than Ragnar, of course: His brother Rollo (Clive Standen) mistrusts some Saxon emissaries and slaughters the lot of them; the eccentric boat-builder Floki (Gustaf Skarsgard) kills a priest despite Ragnar’s attempts to avoid bloodshed; a raider attempts to rape a woman but is killed by one of his fellow-countrymen.

Even this ludicrous whitewashing is abandoned after season one however, featuring instead scenes of peaceful Viking settlers being butchered by bloodthirsty Anglo-Sax—and wait a fucking moment. This is completely and utterly bonkers, 100% things which did not happen, indeed the opposite of what happened, you know that. Right? There’s hagiography, then there’s just silly wish-fulfillment, and this show is just frothingly, shield-bitingly, berserkly determined to paint the Vikings in the best possible light.

For a show that was made for the History Channel, it’s blithely cavalier about historical accuracy. This extends across everything from the way people dress, to the activities, ages and relationships among historical figures. A full accounting of all the inaccuracies would probably take as long again as the series has already lasted, but a few random highlights:

• The Vikings are portrayed as being completely oblivious to the existence of the English Isles before the first raid on Lindisfarne in 793 AD (they weren't)
• The Anglo-Saxons are shown wearing scale armor (they didn’t) and fielding massive cavalry armies (which might have come in handy at Hastings)
• In one episode, the Anglo-Saxons crucify an apostate who has joined the Vikings, although there is no evidence Christians ever did this, and indeed, considering the whole Jesus thing it seems unlikely they’d have tried
• Rollo, the founder of the Duchy of Normandy and thus ancestor to William the Conqueror, appears as the brother of Ragnar Lothbrok, though the two were completely unrelated and indeed lived about a century apart
• Speaking of Rollo, he goes from not speaking any French at all to becoming completely fluent in about two episodes, or one year of ‘real’ time, which is not how learning languages works and as someone who has spent years learning and mastering a foreign language this drives me a little bit bonkers
• Prince Burgred of Mercia is murdered by his sister Kwentrith after being captured by the Vikings: The historical Burgred was only distantly related to Kwentrith, became king and ruled Mercia for about 20 years before an invasion led by Ragnar’s sons drove him into exile in Rome
• English princess Judith (Sarah Greene) is portrayed as the daughter of Northumbrian king Aella: She was actually the daughter of the Frankish king Charles the Bald (who also appears in the show, portrayed by the wonderfully-named Lothaire Bluteau with a full and luxuriant head of hair and a Salvador Dali moustache)
• Scheming Count Odo of Paris (Owen Roe) is executed by the Frankish king, when the historical Odo was about 10 years old when Charles the Bald died, and actually became king himself and ruled for 10 years

For all that, one of the good things about the show is that it may inspire you (as it did me) to research the original stories and history the show is based on. A funeral scene, for example, is clearly based on an account of Norse burial practices by Arab Muslim writer Ibn Fadlan. While Ragnar Lothbrok exists mainly in legend, his sons Bjorn Ironside, Ivar the Boneless and others are likely historical, as is Ecbert of Wessex, his son Athelwulf, Frankish king Charles the Bald, Count Odo and a host of others.

In that sense, the real joy of the show has come after each episode, playing detective and trying to figure out what really happened during the events portrayed.

SHOW LOGIC

The writing cleaves strongly to what I’d call Show Logic rather than Character Logic. The serial TV show creates certain requirements for drama, surprise and action to be evenly spaced out within each 40-odd minute episode or 10 to 20-episode season.

A well-written TV show can meet these demands, but have them make internally consistent sense—you can see why the characters did what they did, how the conflict was caused or resolved. Character Logic. A less well-written one figures out what they want to happen first, and then tries to write around character motivation second. Show Logic.

Vikings, alas, is often not a well-written show.

Having a cast of thousands means you need to give those cast members something to do each week, even if there’s nothing especially going on in their part of the story at the moment. So what could be tight, punchy story lines are reduced to wandering, flabby affairs by the need to cut back to Ragnar’s wife and kids getting up to their usual go-nowhere hijinks, just to keep that particular juggler’s ball in the air. For a show about master navigators, it wanders dreadfully to and fro, with no goal in sight.

Episodes often end in abruptly in very odd places, just because they need a dramatic ending. In one early episode, the show resolved the main action with 10 minutes left to spare, so a Saxon prisoner randomly asks, “So, what is Ragnarok?” and a blind seer suddenly appears and everyone has apocalyptic visions, and then the episode ends and none of this is ever mentioned again.

Later, Ragnar turns from raiding to thoughts of settling in England, so agrees to meet King Ecbert of Wessex (Linus Roache), who casually mentions the existence of the City of Paris. Hearing of its glories, peace-loving Ragnar promptly decides the best thing to do is raise a massive army so he can murder-fuck the entire city. This leads to the Siege of Paris, which is admittedly one of the best arcs in the entire show—though the siege itself is a bit too dependent on James Bond gadgets like floating siege towers and rolling spike balls—but makes zero sense based on what we’ve been shown of Ragnar’s transformation from raider to ruler.

Similarly, the relationship between Ragnar and his brother Rollo swings from friendly rivalry to murderous hate almost at random, depending on the needs of the story. In another case, shield-maiden Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick) falls in love with her enemy, Earl Kalf, gets pregnant by him, then murders him on their wedding day because Game of Thrones did something similar and whoops, think I just cracked the code.

Travis Fimmel’s portrayal of Ragnar Lothbrok is, um, eccentric, filled with lunatic twitchy smiles and ticks, like suddenly picking up a goat when caught in an uncomfortable confrontation between his wife and his new lover, or skinning and eating a live rat when talking to the king. It’s hard to fathom why anyone would follow this madman as far as the next piss-up, much less off the supposed edge of the world.

In another scene, Ragnar executes his rival Jarl Borg by the blood eagle, which essentially means cutting open a man’s back and pulling his lungs out. This is played as a touching moment of mutual respect between two men forced by circumstances to be enem … okay, hang on again. He’s literally murdering him in the nastiest, most painful, bloodiest, most gruesome manner the Norse could imagine, and they were no slouches on this score.

THEN WHY ARE YOU WATCHING?

The show is not without its attractions though.

The opening theme song, “If I Had a Heart” by Fever Ray, is nice and moody, for a start.

For another, the show is largely filmed outdoors, and the sweeping panoramas of Ireland, subbing for Norway, are absolutely, piercingly beautiful.

For all that I’ve complained about the acting, the byplay among the Viking leaders, and between Ragnar and King Ecbert does have its moments—contrasting the collegiate leadership style of the Vikings with the more authoritarian Anglo-Saxons.

The siege of Paris arc in season 3 is another standout, partially because it brings almost all the key cast together so we don’t have to go wandering off every five minutes for a superfluous 30-second cameo scene just to remind you who everyone is. Instead, the show can finally focus on the planning, scheming and action, and deliver tense, action-packed and suitably Vikings-y brutal scenes.

Last but not least, as I mentioned above although the show itself is about as historical as Charlton Heston’s wristwatch in “The Ten Commandments”*, the show + looking up the history and mythology on your own is actually quite enjoyable. 

(*Joke within a joke: He never wore a watch, it's an urban legend)

So while I find it hard to recommend the show, I’d recommend the overall “Vikings” experience as a kind of starting point for engaging with history, a doorway rather than a destination itself.