In this episode Lagertha starts a war, Rollo goes swimming, and Ragnar takes Ivar on a road trip. In Hedeby Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick) is plotting with her girlfriends to take back Kattegat, but Ubbe (Jordan Patrick Smith) and Sigurd (David Lindström), unlike their brothers, have opted to hang out at home and protect the town […]
Vikings Season 4: Episode 12, The Vision
The title of this episode, The Vision, refers to something that happened near the end of the hour, but I’m going to ignore that event because of spoilers. I’ll only note that my favorite part was the waterspout and the breathtaking final scene. Much of the rest of the episode, similar to last week, was […]
Vikings Season 4: Episode 11, The Outsider
The second half of Vikings Season 4 begins right where we left off last spring, with Ragnar (Travis Fimmel) returning to Kattegat after an 8-year absence, and challenging each of his sons: “Who wants to be king?” As it turns out, nobody does. Well, maybe Ivar. But none of them really wants to challenge Ragnar. […]
Historia Interviews: Giles Kristian
The third and final novel in Giles Kristian’s epic Rise of Sigurd series, Wings of the Storm, is published on 1st December. Matthew Harffy chats to Giles about Vikings, the English Civil War, working with a living legend and his past life as a globe-trotting pop star. Wings of the Storm is the concluding novel […]
Vikings: The Story So Far
As Vikings returns to our screens, Patricia Bracewell recaps the first four seasons. The very first episode of the television drama Vikings began in the year 793 A.D. on a corpse-strewn battlefield somewhere in the Eastern Baltic. Two warriors, filthy and bloody, slaughtered the last of their enemies before our eyes while, on a distant hill, […]
On the Trail of the Vikings
On a recent visit to County Wicklow, Ireland, I checked into a B&B just a few miles from where the History Channel’s Vikings series is filming at Lough Tay. I was hoping that I might catch a glimpse of Ragnar and Co. Or better yet, I might have a jolly sit-down with series creator/writer Michael […]
Ancient World Roundup
The King and the Slave – Tim Leach (Atlantic Books) Following on from the magnificent The Last King of Lydia, The King and the Slave isn’t so much a sequel as a depiction of another phase in the life of Croesus, once the King of Lydia, the richest king of them all and now reduced to […]
The Vikings are Coming!
Vikings invaded Harrogate on the evening of Thursday 23 October and, for an hour or so, stomped around the genteel furniture shops and posh kitchen emporia of northern England’s happiest city. In their mail, shields and helmets, carrying burning torches in the dark, they looked quite scary. They drew crowds of children and adults with […]