25. Jan, 2019

Vikings - A Right Royal Family

I've come late to Vikings.  It's been running since 2013 and we're nearly on season six.  It's been a long story, a very long story, in fact, it's a bit of a saga.  You're never likely to forget the name of the protagonist, intoned throughout as the farmer turned warrior, 'Ragnar Lothbruk' progresses on and later, in case you weren't sure, 'the sons of Ragnar Lothbruk'.  Time passes and you find Ragnar has been sojourning longer than you thought, his offspring having sprung up by numbers of years in his absence on raiding parties.  Ragnar's triumphs have been facilitated, luckily for him, by chancing on a number of 'wanderers'.  This happens quite a lot and so, without the need for much explanation, he acquires the wooden compass and sunstone enabling navigation on sea voyages and is inspired by tales of likely spots to raid- Paris, say.  Another way of following the chronology is to note the increasing length of his sons' plaited scalp locks. 

There's a bit of visionary stuff; old gods, new Christianity, the seer but mostly people are driven by revenge, sex, venality, opportunism and a hell of a lot of feasting.  The fight scenes are many and spectacular and a bit mythical.  Disappointingly, we're told the shield maidens were not quite so much at the forefront as they are in this.  I'm quite convinced though that the medieval English kings (who enjoy a lot of floating about in Roman baths) were quite as cold heartedly cunning as accounted for here.  The apostates have a lot more fun, obviously, what with all the pillaging, than the Christians they usually demolish but not always, allowing for unusual friendships and some outstanding treacheries.  The people were, in some cases, real historical figures, although not always living simultaneously, or related as the fictional account shows.

I think the actor, Danny Dyer, would have benefited from this when he begins to track his royal lineage, descended, he's told, from Rollo the original Viking king of Normandy, William the Conqueror and as far as we've got so far, Edward the Second and Louis the Ninth of France.  All of them being of Viking descent, it seems.  Had Danny been up to scratch with the 'Vikings' series he wouldn't have been fobbed off with the food they gave him in Scandinavia, oh, no, (sheep's head complete with tongue, anyone)?   In 'Vikings'  the trenchers were groaning with luxurious meaty bounties whenever a caller popped in to give their regards to whoever was the surviving King or Queen of Kattegat in Norway at the time.  Danny hasn't learnt the lingo.  Far from saying things like,

"I could have told you so because the gods have foretold our destiny," and

"I swear on my armring," he 'can't get his nut round it' and he's already had to fill an entire swear box for the poor by the time he's tried to walk in the penitent King Louis' shoes while getting 'regalled out of his brains'.

I was pretty impressed by this lineage of Danny's until I read that some scholar had worked out that exponentially we are all descended from Edward the Third, or at the very least, Charlemagne.  As Danny might say,

"It's enough to give you the 'ump", but we haven't got to Richard the Third yet.