The Real Ragnar Lothbrok // Vikings Documentary

[Music] just under 800 years ago in the midst of a dark and gloomy icelandic winter story was written down the tale had already been told for hundreds of years it talked of myths and monsters but great heroes too and now because of the revolutionary new literary tradition sweeping through Iceland it would be recorded in its current state an austerity from Greenland to the Mediterranean all across the Viking world open till the 12 hundreds the story had been memorized by one generation of poets after another becoming one of the most popular and long-lasting of all the story is still being retold today the saga of Ragnar lothbrok but is there any truth to the tailor let's find out [Music] in the year 814 the great King Charlemagne ruler of the largest empire in Western Europe since the fall of Rome was dead in the wake of his death is once prosperous realm soon devolved into civil war between his descendants in some of the other states that filled the void left by the Romans such as in Visigothic Spain and Austria gothic Italy the Roman tradition of giving hereditary inheritance to one son had become the norm this wasn't to be the case for the Franks they continued their ancient tradition of dividing up an inheritance between sons a tradition that had plagued them for centuries when the dust from the succession finally settled all of Charlemagne's hard work had been undone largely through the actions of his own descendants three distinct kingdoms were born on the one side was east Frankia the state which would eventually go on to become Germany in the middle was loitering gia a realm which would eventually be absorbed by the other two kingdoms in the West however in the original heartlands of the Franks along the Atlantic coast the hinterlands of Gaul was West Frankia the kingdom that would eventually become France it was here under the rule of Louis the pious and his descendant Charles the bald that a new distinct lack of centralized power would increasingly be capitalized upon by a new power for years the Franks had pushed ever onwards to the pagan north to conquer new lands and bring more people into the Christian fold and now a reckoning was on the way at first they came in trickles just handfuls of boats trying their luck but as the years dragged on ever larger waves of piratical sea Raiders came flooding down from the unforgiving north the Viking Age had begun Frankish sources of the time mention horik the king of the Danes likely just one Danish king amongst many being undermined by the West Frankish king Louis the pious who had supported a rival claimant to Horrocks throne Harald clack in a struggle to overthrow him whilst this policy of divide and rule might have worked under the strong hand of Charlemagne whose elite army might have made light work of the piratical newcomers from North standards had slipped over the years and the Frankish army was now a mere shadow of its former self after horik successfully fought off the attacks from his rival the full ferocity of the North men was about to come crashing down catastrophically upon Louie's head first in the form of small fleet and later in the form of a powerful and influential warlord who would smash his way onto the scene over the coming years if the legends and stories later told about his life even bear any resemblance to the truth then he was one of the first examples of a sea king during the Viking Age and certainly one of the most memorable Ragnar lothbrok had arrived since the end of the Saxon Wars of the late 18th century Scandinavian raids had been conducted into frankerq those wars had been a long and drawn-out conflict against the inhabitants of old Saxony the still pagan land immediately to the south of Denmark and they had ended in the forced conversion of death much of its inhabitants it was after this 30 year long evangelizing crusade that the Franks had first come into direct contact with the inhabitants of Denmark though the reputation of the Franks had almost certainly preceded them as long as the emperor lived yura remained largely safe according to Charlemagne's biographer Einhard writing just a handful of years later the only places looted and sacked during his lifetime were certain islands off the coast of freesia near to the German coast he even set up squadrons of Coast Guard to defend the river systems after his death all this was to change with no strong handed powerful ruler to lead it Charlemagne's empire quickly unraveled and within just a few years Danes moved in like carrion to pick at the corpse squadrons of three or four opportunistic ships became common throughout the eight tens and eight 20s they met with significant success by raiding remote and lightly populated areas on the peripheries of the West Frankish coastline by the 830 s however these fleets began to consist of tens of vessels and as words traveled of the successes they found they increasingly tested their luck against larger and larger targets they sacked the silver minting center of dorestad in 834 835 836 and plundered the trading town of al-karim in 837 on the face of it King horik seems to have disapproved of these raids which he publicly condemned in letters to Charlemagne successor Louie the pious though this could easily have been a ruse it does suggest that in reality King horik held little power over the increasingly unruly and ambitious warlords of Denmark in 845 an entirely new breed of army arrived on the continent not just tens of vessels but a fleet of hundreds crammed full with as many as five thousand Viking warriors where this fleet came from is anyone's guess but according to the Frankish sources it was led by a man named reckon Harris a figure who a number of modern scholars associate with the most famous Viking of all Ragnar lothbrok [Music] a number of Sarkis relate the tales of Ragnar's early life yet the vast majority of these are likely to be later additions added in as the tale of his legends and deeds became inflated over time especially is a large number of later warlords claimed descent from him and would have wanted to inflate their own egos much like he himself apparently claimed to have been a direct descendant of Odin as did most Danish kings and warlords at the time including his overlord horik from 12th century runic inscriptions on the Orkneys to the Icelandic sagas of the 13th century Ragnar became nothing short of a celebrity in the centuries after his death truth be told if anything of his unusually flamboyant nature as related in the sagas as any basis in reality Ragnar himself would probably be quite amused by these later stories that grew up around him nevertheless whether he wore magical hairy trousers or not the Ragnar that landed on the Frankish coastland in ain't 45 commanded a huge force of warriors over 5000 Vikings if the Frankish sources are to be believed all crammed aboard around a hundred and twenty long ships whether they had been sent directly by horik or not the Danish King was about to have his spectacular revenge against the Franks [Music] certainly one of the most colorful members of Horrocks court ragnar surname allegedly stemmed from the cowhides trousers that he wore into battle which if the stories is to be believed he claimed offered him magical protection against enemies according to the Old Norse Sagas which are quasi historical at very best and pure myth a lot of the time especially during this early period he made these magical trousers by boiling cowhide in pitch and subsequently used them to win his second wife our slog by defeating a serpent that guarded her precisely because he was one of the earliest sea kings to ravage Europe if Ragnar lothbrok was indeed a real historical character and scholars today still rigorously debate the issue his genuine historical accomplishments have been obscured over time over the centuries stories were told to fill in the gaps of his life as genuine events were embellished so much that his tale became largely a fantasy nonetheless if he was indeed a real historical character and several Frankish sources seemed to imply that he was Ragnar was no mayor pirates like those who came before him he was one of the very first instances of a sea king a seaborne ruler powerful enough in his own right to launch his own autonomous attacks and seize lands for himself and his followers on foreign shores regin eros or Ragnar had probably been active in Frankia since the 830 s and by 8:41 he was granted land in freesia but King Charles the bald probably as a bulwark against other Viking raiders after a few years however he lost these lands as well as his favor with the king in 845 he entered the river sand at the head of a huge host the largest to hit Frankia yet in a time when armies usually numbered hundreds of man according to the Frankish sources Ragnar's force numbered 5000 they sacked Rouen and made off with huge amounts of wealth before heading further south towards the capital where they systematically plundered the fertile districts around Paris like his predecessors and his descendants after him Ragnar only fought when the odds were with him intended to favour blitzkrieg tactics to terrorize demoralize and overwhelm opponents before they could muster a strong enough force to oppose him determined to not allow the invaders to sack the royal abbey of st. denis charles assembled his army into two parts one of which he placed on either side of the river a shrewd tactician Ragnar simply attacked the smaller army wiping it out in full view of their helpless comrades on the other side Frankish warriors could do nothing but watch as just over a hundred survivors were sacrificed to Odin on a small island in the river San faced with insurmountable odds the horrified defenders of the city could do little but wait for the eventual Viking attack at the time Paris was situated on an island in the river sand it was fortified with strong defenses though isolated as it was it was perfectly suited for a Viking blockade and attack on March 29th Easter Sunday almost certainly a date picked on purpose in order to demoralize the already terrified locals Ragnar's men arrived and plundered the outskirts of the city before long however disease began to run rife throughout Ragnar's camp which significantly weakened his position terms were eventually offered and Charles begrudging Lee consented to paying around six thousand pounds of gold and silver to get Ragnar and his man to leave this was the very first of at least thirteen payments of Dane gelt paid over the century to come to get Viking raiders to leave Frankia peacefully whilst Charles was heavily criticized for this payment he had bigger fish to fry his brothers disgruntled Nobles and regional revolts all threatened to stamp out his position at any time he preferred instead to try to get the Vikings arguably the least of his concerns at the time to leave peacefully if at all possible Ragnar agreed to withdraw from Paris though he seems to have pillaged several sites along the coast on his way home presumably to Denmark upon his arrival he allegedly showed the wealth he had acquired to King horik and boasted about how easy the attack had been though he also related that the only resistance they had met was by the long deceased saint germain of Paris who he believed had sent the plague that had tore through his camp shortly after Ragnar's return however the king of East Frankia Louie the German had apparently forced his overlordship over the Danes probably only some of the Southerners though this prompted horik to execute many of the men who had been responsible for the Paris raid and to seize back their plunder to return to the Franks [Music] along with a whole host of other reasons namely economic and societal this cracking down on Raiders could be one reason why so many Scandinavians left Denmark at this point to arrive in other Viking settlements across the North Sea searches in Ireland and the Scottish Isles ragnar meanwhile had apparently already left by this point embarking on a piratical career that remains impossible to detangle from the mists of legend he may have gone raiding into the Irish Sea back to frankerq or most famously of all he may have raided into Northumbria though the king he supposedly fought against Ayla wouldn't become king there until the mid 860 s in 854 horik was killed by one of his nephews and the axils from the paris raid apparently were allowed to return home though regin Harris or Ragnar is never heard from again in the Frankish sources stories are bounded to his eventual demise some say he was killed during a botched attack on the Isle of Anglesey others that he died in a civil war between Danes and Norse men off the coast of Ireland most famous of all however as the tale that he was shipwrecked off the English coast in a storm and captured by the Northumbrian King Ayla who in a cruel punishment against the old Sea King had him thrown into a pit of snakes according to one telling of the tale his famous trousers protected him to the very end the disgruntled English king having to pull his foe out of the pit to have them removed before throwing him back in Viking raiders again returns to Paris in the 880's this time led by another of the most famous Vikings in history a sea king named ralo in reality no relation to Ragnar in one of the great turning points in the history of France and potentially one of the largest sieges of the Viking Age a huge force of many hundreds of ships was finally repelled in 886 by this time much of Britain had already fell under the sway of the Vikings this time according to the legends under a brood of brothers who according to a number of traditions called themselves the sons of Ragnar according to the tale of Ragnar lothbrok written down sometime in the 13th century were told in mead halls from Dublin to Kiev for centuries before Ragnar had several sons all legendary sea kings in their own rights according to the saga as he was dying in Ellis snakebit Ragnar made a famous reference to these sons [Music] piggies when they hear these sons of Ragnar were indeed illustrious figures Ivar the boneless perhaps the king of Dublin for a time and progenitor of the famed om a dynasty it would terrorize the Irish Sea for centuries to come Bjorn Ironside Raider of the Mediterranean later said to have retired to Sweden Oba the duke of the Friesians and participant in the invasion of Britain in the 1860s Halfdan ragnarson one of the first kings of viking occupied Northumbria and Sigurd snake in the eye born from a sorceress all famed warriors in their own right there in all likelihood not in fact descended from Ragnar in the sagas upon hearing of their father's death Ivar and Abba both swore to cross the sea to avenge him half-down was playing chess and when told the news he gripped a piece so hard that his nails bled the impending invasion is known to us today as the great heathen army the legend of the cracker mouth probably composed in the Scottish Isles in the 12th century epitomizes the legend that Ragnar became when it records his last words Tsonga loud as the snakes of Ellis pits circled in it gladdens me to know that Boulder's father makes ready the benches for a banquets soon we shall be drinking ale from curved horns the champion who comes in to Odin's dwelling Valhalla does not lament his death I shall not enter his Hall with words of fear upon my lips the Aesir will welcome me death comes without lamenting eager am I to depart the dis air summoned 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 a seer the days of my life are ended I laugh as I die [Music] you

Channel: History Time

Views: 2,486,929

Rating: 4.86624 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, ragnar lothbrok, ragnar, ragnar lodbrok, vikings, vikings documenatry, vikings documentary, vikings ragnar lothbrok, vikigns ragnar, vikings ragnar, the real ragnar, the real ragnar lothbrok

Id: 4bjo_WYgRd0

Length: 22min 35sec (1355 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 29 2018