Upcoming Day of Remembrance – Ragnar Lodbrok’s Day

March 28 – Ragnar Lodbrok’s Day When we celebrate this famous Viking’s sack of Paris.

Ragnar’s Death Song : “It gladdens me to know that Baldr’s father [Odin] makes ready the benches for a banquet. Soon we shall be drinking ale from the curved horns. The champion who comes into Odin’s dwelling [Valhalla] does not lament his death. I shall not enter his hall with words of fear upon my lips. The Æsir will welcome me. Death comes without lamenting… Eager am I to depart. The Dísir summon me home, those whom Odin sends for me [Valkyries] from the halls of the Lord of Hosts. Gladly shall I drink ale in the high-seat with the Æsir. The days of my life are ended. I laugh as I die.”

Ragnar’s special day marks the supposed anniversary of his capture of Paris in 845 Anno Domini.

While “Captors of Paris” isn’t exactly an exclusive club, Ragnar did it with far better style and with far fewer men.  In fact, he was quite a prolific conqueror, and his stated motivation is beyond reproach: he feared his deeds would be exceeded in glory and fame by his four sons, and so resolved to build up the biggest notoriety cushion possible while he still drew breath.  Isn’t it sad that we’ve really lost the art of being deeply suspicious of, and ruthlessly competing with, our own family members?  No?  Ok.

While we’re on the subject of family and lost arts, these guys were packing some serious heat in the Nifty Epithets Department: Ragnar’s sons were Bjorn Ironside, Ivor the Boneless, Sigurd Snake-Eye, and Halfdan Whiteshirt.  You can’t tell me, guys, that you don’t wish your name was Sigurd “Snake-Eye” Ragnarsson.  Ragnar himself was called Loðbrok, which means “hairy breeches,” and indeed it was these selfsame fuzzy pantaloons that helped the surly Viking in a series of tense encounters with snakes (but sadly failed to save him from the encounter with snakes that ultimately claimed his life).  We’ll get back to Ragnar’s sons and britches later.

Like many of his contemporaries, Ragnar claimed that he was descended from Odin himself.  In pagan culture this sort of thing is standard practice – family and honor are of the utmost importance and it’s good to link those things with the divine.  But it wasn’t just himself and his great-great grandfather Odin that made Ragnar scared of his sons.  His two wives were perennial badasses themselves and carried heroic genes of their own.

The first, Lathgertha, was a Skjaldmær or “shieldmaiden:” one who goes to battle with men and usually possesses extraordinary courage.  (Tolkien modeled Eowyn’s character on the shieldmaiden).  When Lathgertha’s town was captured, she led the local girls away to fight with the invading Ragnar rather than be subjected to rape.  Ragnar was so impressed by her ass-kicking skills that he asked to marry her.  They later divorced – he always resented the fact that she set a bear and a hound on him when he came to court her and only accepted his proposal when he’d killed both.

His second wife, Aslaug Sigurdsdottir, was also named Kraka or “Crow.”  Her dad Sigurd was the slayer of the famous dragon Fafnir.  No big deal.  Aslaug, like Odin, got the daily news from birds and could predict the future.  It was she who made Ragnar his special snake-proof pants and bore him his famous sons.  Ragnar’s only real mistakes were not listening to Aslaug – she told him his fleet was in shoddy shape when he went to fight the Saxons, and he succumbed to snake poison when he lost her specially-made garments.

Ragnar’s exploits are impressive by anyone’s standards.  During some portion of his life (we’re not really sure about many exact dates here), he was king of most of Scandinavia.  Though holding together the kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden was no small feat, he is perhaps better known for his invasions of France and England.  Ragnar’s deeds are similar to those described in Led Zeppelin’s iconic 1970 track “Immigrant Song.”

“Immigrant Song” was inspired by Zeppelin’s tour of Iceland that same year, and tells a story loosely based on Erik the Red’s journeys west to discover Iceland, Greenland, and North America.   (Side note: the four counts of static fuzz at the beginning of the studio track are a totally underrated piece of iconic detail in metal lore).

I come from the land of the ice and snow;

with the midnight sun, where the hot-springs blow.

Ragnar and his Viking warriors used their [superweapon] longboats to travel up river estuaries at extremely shallow depth to easily reach targets that were startlingly far inland, such as Paris.

The Hammer of the Gods will drive our ships to new lands,

fighting the horde, singing and crying, “Valhalla I am coming!”

He not only resisted the advent of Christianity to Northern Europe; Ragnar took pleasure in terrorizing Christian settlements and planned his attacks to fall on Christian feastdays to ensure that his victims would be complacent and preoccupied.

On we sweep with threshing oar

our only goal will be the western shore!

Ragnar’s military reputation was in fact so terrifying that when his army sailed down the Seine in 845, the Frankish king Charles the Bald (grandson of some guy named Charlemagne) was forced to pay the Norsemen 7,000 pounds of solid silver (roughly eleventy billion dollars in today’s money) not to destroy Paris completely once he’d captured the city.  It also didn’t stop him from essentially laying waste to West Francia.  The Franks weren’t exactly pushovers – giving huge amounts of loot to foreigners wasn’t their favorite activity.  But Ragnar was simply too fierce.  He had to stay ahead of his kids.

He ran into trouble, though, while yachting off the coast of Northumbria.  He was blown ashore, where some Saxons under Aella captured him and took him hostage.  Another story says he invaded and was defeated by Aella’s troops.  Whatever happened, Aella decided that the best place for Ragnar was a pit of poisonous vipers.  Duly stripped of his special serpent-retardant raiment, he was bitten to death.  His mind, as usual, was on his sons as he died, exclaiming “how the little piglets would squeal if they knew the plight of the old boar!”

Viking art depicting the Blood Eagle 

And squeal they did.  When Halfdan Whiteshirt found out, he was playing Gary Kasparov in chess.  He gripped his rook so tightly that blood squirted out of his fingernails.  Bjorn Ironside gripped his spear so tightly that HE left an impression on IT (not, incidentally, in Soviet Russia).  Sigurd Snake-Eye was trimming his nails, and promptly sliced his finger to the bone.  Ivor the Boneless had a slightly more proactive reaction.  He gathered probably the largest single force of Vikings (sometimes referred to as the Great Heathen Army) and laid waste to York, Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia.  When they captured Aella, they executed him by the spectacular method of the “Blood Eagle” – making incisions in the back outward from the spine, then breaking the ribs so that the victim appears to have wings of blood.  The lungs are then extracted through the existing wounds, which are afterwards salted.  This grisly execution was often used by pagan Vikings as a means of terrorizing well-known Christian victims.

I should mention, as a responsible historian, that most of what we know about Ragnar comes from Viking sagas and skaldic poetry.  These are heroic tales passed down via oral tradition until they were recorded by people like Snorri Sturluson.  Like all legends, much of the record concerning Ragnar is fuzzy and it’s difficult to discern exactly what is true.  But I kept the historiography out of the narrative because it’s much more fun that way.

At any rate, Ragnar Lodbrok’s deeds in France and England had extremely far-reaching consequences.  His work in northwest France was continued by Norsemen, namely Rollo, who eventually were granted fiefs in the area by the Carolingian kings, which is why we now call that region “Normandy” – it’s populated by Norsemen.  Ragnar’s sons were especially successful in Britain, and may have even succeeded in conquering the whole island if not for the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great.  Nevertheless, their base at York persisted for over a century and the whole north of England was theirs by treaty, called at that time the “Danelaw.”  The Nordic imprint on that region remains to this day.

How soft your fields, so green, can whisper tales of gore,

of how we calmed the tides of war.

We are your overlords.

Some Silly Vikings celebrating with silly horned helms