Ragnar Lothbrok: The Legendary Viking Warrior explained by Historian | Lars Brownworth

0:02 Uh you mentioned Ragnar Lothbrok.

0:04 Uh who was Ragnar Lothbrok?

0:08 Did he actually exist?

0:10 Uh some people believe he's a composite from several

0:13 real 9th century Viking leaders versus an actual singular human.

0:19 Yeah, I'm I'm a romantic.

0:21 I would like to believe he existed.

0:23 Um I think probably he's a he's a compilation of of a lot

0:27 of different There probably is a seed of truth there.

0:31 There probably was someone named Ragnar.

0:34 Um the last name is a little suspicious.

0:37 Lothbrok means uh hairy breeches.

0:39 He supposedly had magic pants that would prevent

0:41 him from being poisoned by dragons or snakes.

0:45 Maybe a clue we're dealing with myth here.

0:48 Um but he is really the template for for Vikings.

0:50 You want to figure out like what the Vikings wanted.

0:53 Who's their success story?

0:55 It's Ragnar Lothbrok.

0:56 He's born um Norway, Denmark.

1:00 Countries argue that.

1:01 Um maybe Sweden.

1:03 Some some sagas say he's in Uppsala.

1:06 Anyway, he is you know, penniless and when he is in his late teens or early 20s,

1:13 he decides to invade sail up the Seine.

1:17 Uh there is a well-known city on the Seine uh and he raids it.

1:22 Supposedly he takes the hinge of one of the gates

1:25 from Paris to prove that he's been there.

1:28 Uh the the Frankish king.

1:31 I love the Frankish kings because they their citizens

1:35 give them names based on how much they hate them.

1:38 So you have you have Charles the Great, right?

1:41 Charles the Great, Charlemagne.

1:42 Yeah.

1:43 He's followed by Louis the Pious.

1:45 That's probably the best one.

1:46 Uh-huh.

1:46 And Louis the Pious is followed by Charles uh the Fat.

1:50 Uh-huh.

1:50 Who's followed by Charles the Bald.

1:52 Yep.

1:53 Who's followed by Charles the Simple or Stupid.

1:55 Nice.

1:56 So you can trust the names

1:57 You can trust to give you the TLDR of how good of a ruler they were.

2:01 Yeah.

2:01 Yeah, exactly.

2:02 Okay.

2:02 Exactly.

2:03 So Charles the Great widely acknowledges as sort

2:06 of one of the great leaders of the Frankish Empire.

2:09 Yeah.

2:09 AKA Charlemagne.

2:10 Yeah.

2:11 Uh so what what else do we know about him?

2:14 So he's there's um Going to perplexity,

2:17 Ragnar's portrayed as a Scandinavian warlord

2:20 often called a Danish or Swedish king, like you were mentioning,

2:25 uh active in the 9th century during the height of the Viking raids.

2:30 And then descriptions of the raids and the exploits,

2:34 medieval traditions link Ragnar to famous raids on the Frankish realms,

2:38 especially the attack on Paris in 845 where he reputedly sails up

2:46 the Seine and extorts a huge ransom from King Charles the Bald.

2:53 He's also associated with repeated attacks

2:55 on Anglo-Saxon England embodying the archetypal Viking chieftain,

2:59 charismatic, brutal, and focused on wealth, fame, and honor in battle.

3:07 So that those are the ideals of the the Vikings, charisma, brutality, Mhm.

3:12 and focusing on wealth, fame, and honor, especially honor in battle.

3:16 Then also, what does he do with it, right?

3:19 What does he do with it?

3:19 So this he gets about 7,000 lb of silver from Charles the Bald,

3:22 which destroys essentially destroys Charles the Bald's kingship.

3:26 But he goes back home to to Denmark and the Danish

3:31 king doesn't want him around because he's too powerful,

3:35 he's too rich, he's a ring giver.

3:37 You know, think Beowulf here, right?

3:38 He's he's got this large personal army which wants

3:43 to join him for he can do, you know,

3:44 they'll follow him and he is a threat and so

3:46 he is he kind of is encouraged to go elsewhere.

3:49 He ends up raiding England for something like 15 years.

3:53 And then there's a probably the most famous bit

3:55 of the story is he he's shipwrecked and King

3:58 Aella of Northumbria captures him and decides to kill

4:02 him by throwing him into a pit with vipers.

4:06 They throw him in this and the snakes are biting him

4:08 but he's got his hairy breeches on so it's not working.

4:11 So he's singing a hymn to Odin and he gets pulled out

4:16 and he's asked why he's not dying and he explains rather foolishly that he

4:20 has these hairy breeches so they take the pants off and throw him

4:23 back and his last words are um when the boar bleeds, the piglets come.

4:30 Uh but what he means my I have sons, he had 12 of them, and they will avenge me.

4:36 And they do.

4:36 They lead the uh the Great Heathen

4:39 Army um to invade and eventually conquer England.

4:43 Aella, fun fact, not so fun for him,

4:46 is the supposedly was captured by the son of Ragnar.

4:50 His name is Ivar the Boneless, which is somewhat terrifying of a name.

4:54 Uh and he is he's the first person that a blood eagle was performed on.

4:58 What's the blood eagle?

4:59 It's when they remove the lungs they while you're still alive they cut

5:03 you open and remove the lungs and put the lungs on your back Mhm.

5:07 and then when you try to breathe they flutter like wings.

5:10 So it's called like an eagle.

5:12 It's called the blood eagle.

5:13 That is disgusting.

5:14 Yes.

5:15 And this is what Aella, you know, deserves according to, you know,

5:19 Björn Ironside and Ivar the Boneless, the sons of Ragnar.

5:23 Like this is what they get.

5:24 This is the the piglets coming Yeah.

5:27 Yeah.

5:27 boar, you know.

5:29 Uh one one last thing about our um about

5:32 Ragnar is his wife is also an important part.

5:35 He had something like 12 sons.

5:38 The accounts differ and probably three marriages.

5:41 But his most famous wife was named Aslaug and she fell in love with him.

5:47 He was on a ship he was passing through.

5:49 So kind of a glamorous sea king, right?

5:52 With his he's the he's living the dream.

5:54 And she sees him and she wants to be married to him and he he says no.

5:59 He says cuz he wants a clever wife.

6:01 And so he says, "If you can accomplish these three things, you can marry me.

6:05 So tomorrow I'll be here tonight and then

6:07 tomorrow I want you to come to my ship.

6:10 I want you um to have no clothes on Mhm.

6:15 but not be naked.

6:17 I want you to have not eaten a meal but not have fasted.

6:23 And I want you to come without a companion

6:25 but not alone." And so she shows up with a dog.

6:30 She doesn't have a companion but she's not alone.

6:32 She's taken a bite out of an onion so she's eaten.

6:36 She hasn't fasted but she hasn't had a meal.

6:37 Mhm.

6:38 And then she has very long hair and so she's using the hair to cover herself.

6:43 So she has no clothes on.

6:45 but she's but clothed.

6:46 Right.

6:47 And so in this so this kind of the cleverness

6:49 that would be expected of of a Viking woman.

6:52 So they're well-matched.

6:53 They're like the ideal couple.

6:55 And then they have 12 kids.

6:56 12 sons, not just 12 kids, 12 sons.

6:59 And many of them end up Many of them end up almost as famous as their father.

7:03 Ivar the Boneless.

7:04 Yeah.

7:05 Uh Björn Ironside and many others.

7:08 These sons later appear as leaders of major Viking forces in England,

7:12 particularly the so-called Great Heathen Army that invades in 865.

7:17 And they are historical.

7:19 Um they are I mean there's no these were

7:21 the names of Vikings who attacked and conquered England.

7:25 They end up attacking Islamic Spain.

7:27 They go all over Europe.

7:30 Well, for them it sounds like glory in battles really important.

7:34 That's right.

7:34 Yeah.

7:35 And so it's not even it's just part of the culture.

7:37 It's part of the the honor culture.

7:39 Men die but uh names live forever.

7:42 Uh as a small aside, since Ragnar is the star of the Vikings TV series,

7:50 I don't know if you've gotten a chance to watch any of it.

7:53 Uh it is there any accuracy to it?

7:56 I think it's well done.

7:58 My one quibble, Ragnar's brother is Rollo in the show, right?

8:05 Yeah.

8:05 They weren't brothers.

8:07 In fact, by some accounts, they were born 80 years apart.

8:10 Yeah.

8:11 Um but as a storytelling [clears throat] device, I applaud that.

8:14 Yeah, they basically take all the main Vikings

8:18 and put them all together and just sort of like get it.

8:20 I get it.

8:20 It's confusing.

8:21 Honestly, in writing a book about it,

8:23 the hardest part was coming up with an organizational scheme.

8:26 Like what's what's the overarching thing that links them together?

8:29 Well, there's there's certainly an overarching thing

8:33 but we don't have information about it.

8:34 This is the problem is we get uh to see just slivers of information right.

8:41 from the raids.

8:42 [clears throat] There's there might be just

8:43 this rich history that we know nothing about.

8:46 Yeah.

8:47 Like where did this warrior culture come from?

8:49 Yeah.

8:49 Like what was the evolution of these of these ideas of honor in battle.

8:56 I mean maybe it's being overly romantic but you can

8:58 imagine the ideals of battle from the Roman and Empire

9:04 from the from the Roman Republic and the early Imperial period coming

9:09 up north to Scandinavia and we just know very little traces about that.

9:15 Yeah.

9:15 Even the name Scandinavia is is from a Roman author.

9:19 Mhm.

9:19 I mean I mean they thought it was an island.

9:21 They thought Scandinavia was an island with one tribe,

9:23 the Scandia tribe, but you know, close enough.