What Vikings Gets Wrong About History

No one's really fooled into thinking that History Channel's Vikings is, you know, history. All that swoon-worthy masculinity, the fitted leather armor, the manly-man beards and the testosterone-fueled pillaging, well, it's pretty clear this show's audience was never supposed to be a bunch of stuffy old historians.   

Still, it is the "History Channel," so you'd think they'd try to be more or less faithful to the truth. And they are in a lot of cases. You won't ever see History Channel Vikings running around in horned helmets, for example — those were probably an invention of 19th century Scandinavian artists. Horned helmets did exist in antiquity, but they predated the Vikings by at least a century and their use was almost certainly ceremonial. 

Some other things the show gets right: Vikings did wear kohl eyeliner, and sunstones — which Ragnar uses to help find the way to England — are also known to have existed, though archaeologists have yet to find an example in a Viking burial site. But for every faithful recreation of the truth, there is at least one serious historical mistruth — some are minor, some are fairly inexcusable. Here are some of the worst. 

In season one, we get to witness firsthand the brutality of the Viking raiders when they attack a monastery on the island of Lindisfarne off the coast of Northumbria. During the raid, the Rollo kills an elderly Christian monk named Cuthbert, who was the mentor of Athelstan, one of the show's other major characters. 

According to English Heritage, the actual raid happened in 793, and it really was as horrific as the series makes it out to be. Gold and silver was plundered, many monks perished, and some of the younger ones were abducted as slaves, which is basically what happens in the Athelstan storyline. But the major problem with the event as depicted is Cuthbert — he was a real person, in fact he was canonized St. Cuthbert after his death from natural causes in 687. Yes, Cuthbert died more than 100 years before the History Channel Vikings supposedly killed him in 793. 

The real-life Cuthbert was an "incorrupt saint" (which means his remains didn't decompose), and his body and its relics attracted pilgrims to the shrine of St. Cuthbert in Lindisfarne long before the Vikings ever showed up. And unlike the living, fictional version of Cuthbert, the dead, canonized version of Cuthbert actually survived the Viking raid — his body was eventually moved and after the Norman conquest ended up in a Norman shrine, where it continued to attract pilgrims throughout the Middle Ages.

So we've already established that Vikings didn't wear horned helmets, and thank the gods that the History Channel was at least faithful to that particular truth. Imagine Bjorn Ironsides goring his enemies like a bull — it would have been amusing for like five minutes but it would have dissolved into unwatchability pretty early on. But the show takes the whole helmet question into interesting direction by simply choosing to exclude them altogether. 

The idea that the Vikings may have gone into battle with no protective headgear whatsoever seems far-fetched. According to the National Museum of Denmark, so far there is only one complete example of a Viking helmet in the archaeological record, though there are also several partially complete examples. These artifacts show that a Viking helmet had brow ridges to help protect the face, which makes perfect sense when you're, you know, planning to be in a place where people might be swinging sharp things at your face. 

Now that's not to say that it isn't possible that some Vikings went into battle without headgear — in fact the scant few surviving examples of Viking helmets might imply that they weren't in widespread use, though it's also possible that it just wasn't traditional to include them in a burial. The second reason seems more likely than the first. Sure, Vikings were badasses, but they weren't stupid. Everyone knows you need a fully-functioning head to be an effective plunderer. 

In the series, the Vikings have some crazily elaborate hairstyles that include cool braids, partially shaved heads and long beards. All very manly and punk rock, which is clearly the look the show is going for. But is it accurate? Not very. For a start, Vikings probably did not shave the sides of their heads. It's freaking cold in Scandinavia, and deliberately exposing most of your head to freezing temperatures seems stupid even for someone whose brains are already a little scrambled by multiple plundering-related head injuries. It's not super clear, though. Series creator Michael Hirst thinks they might have shaved their heads to keep lice at bay, though that would really only make sense if they were shaving their entire heads. 

They did, according to historical drawings, shave the backs of their necks, but hair was kept longer on the top and front, which is similar to how Bjorn Ironsides wears his hair early in the series. Women wore their hair long, probably tied at the back and adorned with ribbons. It was also common for women to wear head scarves. So did they do those super cool elaborate braids? There doesn't seem to be much evidence for that, but who says they didn't? "In the end," Hirst once said, "how the f*** do you know what the Vikings looked like?"

Yeah, that's disappointing. We all love depictions of fierce women warriors and society actually needs that right now. Strong female protagonists are great role models, whether historically accurate or not.

There are some references to women warriors in Old Norse literature. According to historian A.E Larsen, most of the fighting women the texts refer to are Valkyries, which aren't mortal women but supernatural beings who work for the god Odin. And some ancient observers wrote about women who "dressed themselves to look like men and spent almost every minute cultivating soldier's skills," but many of those writers were trying to depict non-Christian people as hedonistic, so they're not exactly stellar sources of information. And although some Viking women have been found in graves with weapons, it's hard to draw conclusions based on that kind of evidence. We don't know if the weapons were used in battle, were family heirlooms, or were simply kept for protection.

Even the literary Lagertha has mythical qualities. In one source, she's described as "flying about" on the battlefield, which may mean she was not a mortal woman but a Valkyrie. Or maybe just a mortal woman who was super-fast, we really can't tell. But hey, one could argue that the mere fact that they could have existed is enough to justify their inclusion in the series. After all, fierce women are great role models.

Any time the entertainment industry tells the story of a far away, ancient land, there's bound to be some awkwardness. Vikings handles that awkwardness well in some cases, and poorly in others. For example, there are scenes where characters speak to each other in subtitled Old Norse or Old English, which provides a kind of authenticity that is lacking in other scenes, where characters are speaking to each other in fake Norwegian accented modern English. 

But one problem that occasionally sticks out is the problem of what Vikings actually would have called each other. For the most part, we hear the British using terms like "Northmen" to describe Ragnar and his lot, but there are also scenes where the Vikings call each other "Viking," like when Erlendur says, "A Viking never gives up on his revenge." 

According to the Conversation, the Norse word "vikingr" was used to describe a person who went on an adventure or expedition overseas, and the word "viking" was used to describe the activity itself. Neither word was used for an ethnic group, just as you wouldn't use "road-tripper" as a synonym for "American." It wasn't until the 14th and 15th centuries that the word "Viking" was applied the Vikings as a group. Of course this is a show where everyone speaks modern English during a time when no one spoke modern English, so why are we being picky?

If you've devoted a few seasons to this show, at some point it's probably occurred to you that Lagertha looks pretty danged excellent for a grandmother. Must be the fresh, northern air and all the bloodshed. In fact, her character really doesn't start to look old until well into the fifth season, and sorry, special effects guys, gray hair alone does not complete the illusion. Also, at the time of his death, Ragnar has many grown sons yet only appears to have aged beard-wise and bald-wise. Time moves pretty strangely in Vikings. 

The raid on the monastery at Lindisfarne happens early in the series — that real-life event happened in 793. Then in season three we jump forward in time to the raid on Paris in 845, which was more than a half a century after Lindisfarne. Okay, so maybe an elderly Ragnar could have pulled that off and we do know the northern air has that weird youth giving quality. But then in season four the Vikings raid Paris again — but the Ancient History Encyclopedia says that particular raid happened between the years 885 and 886, nearly a century after the raid on Lindisfarne. So at this point, we're starting to buy the whole ageless Viking thing a little bit less. But hey, we're suspending a lot of disbelief already, what's another 100 years?