RAGNAR LOTHBROK: Played by Travis Fimmel, Ragnar is the protagonist of the History Channel‘s historical drama television series Vikings that debuted in 2013.
Ragnar Lothbrok was undoubtedly the most colorful member of Horik’s court. His surname Lothbrok means ‘hairy breeches’, a reference to a curious pair of hide leggings that he wore into battle and which, he claimed, offered him some sort of magical protection. According to one legend, he made them to win his first wife, who was being held prisoner by a dragon-like serpent. To save himself from its venomous bite he boiled a pair of leather pants in pitch, and rolled them in sand. This unorthodox garment protected him long enough to dispatch the beast and claim his bride.
Ragnar’s actual origins are unknown. He became the hero of so many later Viking sagas that his historical accomplishments have become obscured. Stories were told to fill in the gaps, most of them charming, and almost all certainly false. His second wife Aslaug – a woman so beautiful that bakers would let their bread burn while staring at her – was, according to these stories, his equal in cunning. Ragnar, still grieving the death of his first wife, agreed to marry her if she could visit him ‘neither dressed nor undressed, neither fasting nor satisfied, and neither in company nor alone’. She won his heart by appearing naked, but covered by her long hair, having eaten an onion the previous night, and with a sheepdog for company.
These stories would undoubtedly have pleased Ragnar. He claimed to be a direct descendant of the god Odin, which – since Horik claimed the same – was an oblique way of asserting his fitness for the throne. Rule in the Viking world, however, was a question of prowess more than ancestry, so in 845 Ragnar led a force of Vikings in an attack on Paris.
Ragnar was not a simple pirate. He was one of the first ‘sea-kings’; a Viking who gained enough wealth and power through raiding to be recognized as a virtual king. A measure of the respect in which he was held was the size of his force. In a time when ‘armies’ were numbered in hundreds of men, Ragnar commanded over five thousand warriors in a fleet of a hundred and twenty longships.
Sailing south from Denmark, it took the sea wolves just over a week to reach the Seine river estuary. From there, they rowed upstream and pillaged Rouen and Carolivenna (modern Chaussy), roughly nine miles from the wealthy Abbey of St. Denis. His men helped themselves to whatever riches they could find and systematically plundered the fertile districts within easy reach of the river. Rumors of each fresh attack panicked the locals, and they and the monks of St. Denis fled, carrying their relics and valuables with them. However, they were met by the Frankish king Charles the Bald, who tried to stem the flood of refugees by ordering them back to their homes and churches. He had raised an army to confront the raiders, and advanced cautiously.
Ragnar presented the king with a difficult choice. The Viking was well known for his blitzkrieg-like tactics to keep his enemies off balance, and only fought when the odds favored him. If Charles approached on one bank of the river, Ragnar and his men could just slip to the other side and avoid a battle. Since he wanted to force a showdown, the king split his forces and advanced along both banks.
Unfortunately for the Franks, Charles’ army was not the premiere fighting force it had been in Charlemagne’s day. Standards had fallen to such a degree that it now regularly fell into confusion, and was well known for its carelessness and inefficiency. Ragnar attacked the smaller section of the Frankish forces with his entire army, easily slaughtering it as the horrified Charles watched impotently from the other side of the river. Worse was to come. The captured Frankish soldiers – a hundred and eleven of them – were transported to an island in the Seine and hung in full view of Charles’ army as a sacrifice to Odin.
This was equal part religious observation and equal part calculated strategy of psychological terror. To modern eyes, the Vikings appear appallingly brutal, but there were limits to their violence. They seldom willingly destroyed harvests and despite routine plundering never disturbed the vineyards of Aquitaine. There was much more money to be had in extortion. As far as the execution of prisoners, Charlemagne had done far worse with his Saxon captives at Verdun, where he had beheaded forty-five hundred of them as punishment for a revolt.
Ragnar’s display had the desired effect. The Franks were unnerved, and easily routed when Ragnar charged at them. Charles was forced to withdraw with what was left of his army to the abbey of St. Dennis, which he vowed to defend at all costs. The presence of an army at his rear would normally have been worrying, but Ragnar had measured its quality and tellingly saw no reason to delay his approach to the now relatively undefended Paris.
In many ways, medieval Paris was the ideal Viking target. Not only was it rich, but it was largely confined to the Ile de la Cité, an island in the middle of the Seine. The first sight of the city, however, must have been momentarily disappointing. Despite Ragnar’s strategy of attacking on a holy day when churches would be full of potential victims, news of their approach had preceded his army, and most of the population had already fled. The Vikings flooded in, spreading out through the streets in search of plunder. They had been raiding Europe for the better part of five decades, but never had they looted such a prize.
Thanks to advance warning, which enabled the monks to remove most of the valuables, the Abbey of St. Germain managed to escape most of the destruction. When they returned six weeks later, they found several of the outbuildings burned and superficial damage to the abbey church. The only real casualty was the wine-cellar, which the Vikings had managed to break into and empty.
