Series / Vikings

"Skeggǫld! Skálmǫld! Skildir ro Klofnir!" ^note "Axe time! Sword time! Shields are splintered!"

If I had a heart, I could love you
If I had a voice, I would sing
After the night when I wake up
I'll see what tomorrow brings...

— Fever Ray, "If I Had a Heart", the series' opening song

Vikings is a medieval drama series produced by The History Channel and created by Michael Hirst, the man behind Elizabeth and The Tudors. It follows a Norse family's efforts to improve the lives of their people and gain power in The Viking Age. The show adapts the semi-legendary sagas of Ragnar Lodbrok and His Sons. Much like the Icelandic sagas from which it is adapted, Vikings is an exploration of human conflicts set against the backdrop of a grim, violent, yet proud society.

Ragnar (Travis Fimmel) is presented as an ambitious man of humble origins who is dissatisfied with the established Norse practices of tending poor homesteads and raiding bankrupt villages to the east. Instead he looks west, dreaming of the riches and glory that await anyone brave enough to sail the open sea. Ragnar's plans of conquest and discovery bring him into a variety of deadly conflicts and introduce him to new cultures that challenge the foundations of his society. When his sons reach adulthood, they take up their father's mantle and attempt to make their own mark on the world.

The series premiered on March 3rd, 2013 and ran for six seasons, with a total of 89 episodes. A sequel series titled Vikings: Valhalla premiered in February 2022 on Netflix and is set a century after the events of the original show with Leif Erikson, Freydis Eiriksdottir, Harald Hardrada and William the Conqueror as the main protagonists during the final years of the Viking Age.

It also has Expanded Universe material including:

Comic Books

• Vikings: Blood Legacy (2014) - Ragnar telling the story of how Thor lost his hammer, Mjölnir, to a giant. from Zenescope Entertainment.
• Vikings: Sword of Kings (2015)
• Vikings (2016) - A Prequel to season 1 from Zenescope Entertainment where Ragnar and Rollo fight alongside their father and meet Lagertha.
• Vikings: Godhead (2016) - A four-issue series set between Season 2 and early Season 3 from Titan Comics.
• Vikings: Uprising (2016) - A four-issue series set after the events of the Paris raid from Titan Comics.

Tabletop Games

• Jarl: The Vikings Tile Laying Game - A Tile-laying game from Catalyst Game Labs.
• Vikings: Raid And Conquer - A strategic deck building card game from High Roller Games Inc.
• Vikings: The Board Game - A Strategy game of exploration and raiding from Catalyst Game Labs.

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Vikings contains examples of:

A-E

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Bishop Heahmund's sword is sharp enough that Ivar is able to slice a great white shark in half with a single single-handed strike. Somewhat lampshaded by Ivar who states the sword must have been made by dwarfs.
• Action Mom:
  • Lagertha is a shieldmaiden as well as a mother of two.
  • The shieldmaiden wife and queen of Horik, Gunnhild.
• Action Prologue:
  • The first scene of the show involves Ragnar and Rollo kicking ass on a battlefield.
  • The second season opens up with a massive battle between the hordes of King Horik and Jarl Borg.
• Adapted Out: Given that real life has a tendency to include multiple characters, leaving some people out is a given. Also considering that the Sagas features an equally enormous amount of characters and sometimes contradict each other, it's understandable that some people are left out while others end up Compsite Characters.
  • Notable historical characters left out: Charlemagne, Guthrum (although he is combined with Hvitserk), Edmund the Martyr, king Osberht, Erik Bloodaxe, Hæstein and Aethelwulf's sons Æthelstan, Æthelbald and Æthelberht as well as his daughter Æthelswith.
    • Eirik Bloodaxe ends up getting a shout-out in Vikings: Valhalla, making him part of the show's canon.
  • Notable legendary characters left out: Thora Town-Hart, Eysteinn Beli, Áki and Grima, Heimer, Gardar Svavarsson, Naddoddr, Hákon the Good, Daxo and Ragnar's sons Eiríkr, Agnar and Ragnvald.
• Adaptational Nationality:
  • Thorkell the Tall, a historical jarl of Skåne, is turned into a Norwegian jarl.
  • Well, for a given value of nationality given that no nation state currently existing was even close to being formed during the centuries Vikings takes place in, but Ragnar Lothbrok in almost every primary medieval source we have from the Viking Age is nearly always either a king of Denmark or Sweden (or sometimes both), and his sons typically end up as kings of either place through inheritance, such as Sigurd ending up in Denmark and Björn ending up in Sweden. Ragnar himself typically has regionally appropriate ancestry depending on whether he's in Denmark or Götaland. In the show however, Ragnar's family is explicitly stated to be Norwegian, so as to put them in conflict with Harald Finehair, who's also a character here.
• Adipose Rex: King Aelle is a mountain of a man who is often seen feasting.
• Adorably Precocious Child: Björn takes it upon himself to keep his parents from fighting.
  Ragnar: It's a great thing, when the little pig teaches a boar how to listen.
• Age Lift: Due to being a Compressed Adaptation characters such as Rollo and the Ragnarssons are considerably younger.
• All Myths Are True: The metaphysics of both Norse and Christian belief are both implied to be valid, such as when Odin tells the Vikings of Ragnar's death and Athelstan posthumously appears to Ragnar.
• All There in the Manual:
  • You really have to be familiar with the mythology of king Harald to understand why he would cut his hair after marrying. They do explain it a bit, but it's rather vague.
  • And unless you have read the first part of The Saga of the People of Laxardal you would not understand that Jorunn is Kjetill Flatnose's daughter and that Helgi the Lean's Eyvind's and the complex family dymanic their marrige implies in the show.
  • A web tie-in has the Seer explain how Ragnar got the name "Lothbrok", featuring a interesting twist on some episodes in the sagas.
• A Love to Dismember: Jarl Borg not only listens to the advice of his beloved first wife's skull, he also lovingly strokes it. At one point, he gives it a somewhat one-sided French kiss.
• Amazon Brigade: Aside from Lagertha who likes to keep a multitude of shieldmaidens around her, Oleg has a cadre of female warriors that always follow him around.
• Ambiguously Bi: Ragnar, Floki, Athelstan, Ecbert, Aslaug, and even Emperor Charles all have ambiguous relationships with members of the same sex. It's never clear whether they're just really intense friendships or actual romantic interest.
• Amicable Exes: Ragnar and Lagertha in the second season. They're shown to be still very friendly with one another, and Lagertha is shown to frequently back up her ex-husband when he's in conflict with someone else. By Season 4, Ragnar and Lagertha get along better than Ragnar and Aslaug.
• Anachronism Stew: The Rus' are Orthodox Christian (150 years too early), dress like 13th century Mongols, use Ethiopian shields from the 19th century and use opium.
• Anger Montage: Rollo (of Viking origin) has a lesson of Old French at court in Paris. The lesson doesn't go well at all. Rollo gets increasingly fluent in Angrish resembling Old French, and then it just escalates to tearing a book page in tiny pieces and crumpling it, flipping his own table, grabbing his teacher by the collar, flinging said teacher across the room, knocking down a chair and storming out of the room.
• Annoying Arrows: Varies by the needs of the plot. Mooks of course instantly drop dead if hit with arrows, main characters are usually safe, while secondary character Torstein gets shot in the arm with an arrow, only for the wound to become infected and require amputation. It's somewhat subverted in Season 1 where Ragnar is hit and it takes many months for him to fully recover. Halfdan is shot at one point and is still kicking, but it can be seen as justified because he does not appear again until after a timeskip of at least a decade. Torvi has been shot twice and is as healthy as ever.
• Anti-Hero: Ragnar is a pillaging murderer, though no worse than any other warrior of his culture. He's also shown to have personality flaws and make mistakes. He has an extramarital affair that drives away his loving wife and partially alienates him from his eldest son. He's occasionally shown to be selfish, prone to rage and sometimes just seems to lose his mind. However, he also has positive aspects to his character, saving him from becoming a Villain Protagonist.
• Anyone Can Die: As of the end of Season 5, only three characters from the first season are still alive: Lagertha, Björn, and presumably Rollo. By the end of season six, this number seems to drop to zero.
  • Floki is in the first episode of the show and is still alive in Newfoundland at the end. He's even in the final scene, watching the sunset with Ubbe.
• Aristocrats Are Evil:
  • Earl Haraldson is a petty despot who dominates and persecutes his people.
  • King Aelle betrays his own brother and punishes failure with torturous executions.
  • Jarl Borg is a deceitful snake who sows dissension and betrayal amongst his enemies.
  • King Ecbert seems to be a ruthless but reasonable monarch until he kicks a dog in Season 3 by essentially prostituting his son's wife.
• Armor Is Useless: The Vikings have no problem hacking through armored English soldiers, usually while wearing no armor themselves. Ragnar wears a coat of ring armor for his duel with the Earl, and the only wound he receives is a slash that goes right through the coat.
• Arranged Marriage:
  • The Earl marries his daughter to an old Swedish earl for 20lbs of silver. Earlier, he offers her hand to Rollo as payment for a favor.
  • In order to seal their alliance and aid in the unification of England, King Ecbert marries his son to King Aelle's daughter.
  • Horik proposes doing this between his daughters and Ragnar's sons. It doesn't take since Ragnar has all of Horik's daughters killed when the king attempts to take over Kattegat.
• Artificial Limbs: Count Odo has a metal hand. As the commander of Paris's defenses, he apparently lost his hand in battle.
• Artistic License – Geography: Where do we begin...
  • Kattegat is located in Norway, but apparently you can travel there by horseback from Hedeby, which was located in southern Denmark/northern Saxony, and is separated from major Scandinavia by the sea. Not to mention that in real life, Kattegat is the name of the sound that separates Jutland from what is today the west coast of Sweden, and not related to any historic settlement or political entity.
  • Uppsala is shown as being located in the mountains as opposed to the actual rather flat farmlands and woodlands. There are no signs of the famous mounds of Uppsala. Also excluded is a impressive hall with hinges made out of javelins and spears fitted onto the door.
    • The areas around Uppsala and what is today the west coast of Sweden are generally portrayed as inhospitable wastelands. In reality these areas are among the most fertile agricultural lands in the region, and were definitely so during the Viking age.
  • According to medieval sources, a journey between Iceland and Greenland would take roughly a week. When Draken Harald Hårfagre (a modern recreation of a viking ship) made the journey in 6 days and that was by taking the long rout over open sea rather than taking the short rout and following the coast line. In the show they appear to be lost for weeks.
• Artistic License – History: Has its own page.
• Artistic License – Ships: Longships are consistently shown as having their steering oars on the wrong side. They're shown on the left, when they should be the right, as in starboard side, as in steerboard.
• As the Good Book Says...: Athelstan is very attached to his Bible and has quoted it. Ragnar does a pagan variation by citing a poem that is attributed to Odin in Norse Mythology. And bishop Heahmund really, really loves quoting the Book of Psalms.
• Ascended Extra: Alicia Agneson as Freydis and Donna Dent as Rafarta.
• As You Know:
  • Jarl Borg notes to his fellow Norsemen that Yggdrasil is the tree that holds up the heavens.
  • Subverted with Athelstan. Ragnar has to tell Athelstan that he tends to speak of "saints" and "miracles" as if Ragnar had any idea of what he is talking about.
• Attempted Rape: Lagertha is 5-0 against wannabe rapists
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Electric guitar is occasionally heard in the soundtrack during tense or action-packed parts. The early advertisements made good use of AWOLNATION's "Sail."
• Ax-Crazy: Ivar is prone to killing people on impulse, usually with an actual axe.
• Back for the Finale: After dropping out of the narrative for a while under mysterious circumstances, Floki shows back up for the last two episodes of the series.
• Badass Family:
  • Ragnar's first wife and sons are all badass fighters like himself.
  • King Ecbert, his son Aethelwulf, and his grandson Alfred are all capable rulers, strategists, and combatants in battle.
  • Horik's too, to a lesser extent. He's a great warrior, and his wife is a shield-maiden, which makes them similar to Ragnar and Lagertha.
• Badass Crew: Ragnar's warband in season 1 seems to be the toughest group of warriors around.
• Bad Boss:
  • Due to Earl Haraldson's greed and paranoia, it can be just as dangerous to be one of his loyal followers as being one of his enemies. He goes as far as to give one of his men the permission to sleep with the Earl's wife and then have the man executed when he takes the Earl up on the offer.
  • King Horik too. Ragnar showed him nothing but loyalty, and yet he still tried to kill him.
• Bash Brothers: Ubbe and Ivar team up to take revenge on Lagertha.
• Beard of Barbarism: The Vikings have wild, barbarous (and impressive) beards in contrast to the simple beards or clean-shaven looks of Saxons.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished:
  • Rollo's gruesome facial scars fade to the point that they're hardly visible.
  • Subverted. Thorunn's gruesome facial scars become a major plot point. She has a very badly hurt face and leaves Björn.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Depending on the story arc and the perspective, there has been more than one Big Bad over the course of the series with Earl Haraldson serving as the Big Bad for the first part of Season 1, Ragnar serving as the Big Bad from the Frankish perspective and Lagertha serving as the Big Bad for Ubbe's story arc following her murder of Aslaug.
• Bilingual Bonus: That's actual Old Norse and Old English they're speaking, or as close as most linguists can get.
• Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Athelstan and Judith's son is born the same episode Athelstan is murdered by Floki.
• Bittersweet Ending: Ivar's self-destruction comes to an end when he dies on the battlefield weeping. Hvitserk is captured by the Christians and forced to convert. The last we see of him is giving a hollow-eyed smile. For better or worse, Kattegat is now ruled by Ingrid, a ruthless sorceress. Ubbe and Floki share a peaceful moment of reflection while gazing out at the sunrise over the ocean in the New World, but we know from history that no permanent Norse settlement will arise there, so his group will either abandon it or die out.
• Blatant Lies: Ragnar's claim that he and his men are traders to the Northumbrian sheriff who meets them when they land in England for the second time. While the sheriff himself seems to desperately be trying to believe it, the claim is quickly disproven when Floki steals a cross from a Northumbrian soldier, and the two sides set about killing each other. This truly happened according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, mind you.
• Blind Seer: The Seer's eyes appear to be sewn shut.
• Blood from the Mouth: Ragnar after being wounded during the siege of Paris.
• Blood Knight: Most Vikings seem to enjoy the thrill of combat, though this seems to be the defining feature of Harald Fairhair and Halfdan the Black, who talk about how they feel most alive while fighting, cackle madly as they fight, and even take a moment to horseplay with each other in the middle of a melee.
• Bloody Hallucinations of Guilt: Athelstan guiltily leafs through the Bible of a monk he's killed and hallucinates that an illustrated Jesus bleeds real blood. The blood oozes onto Athelstan's hands, causing him to frantically wipe at them, but the blood has disappeared.
• Bondage Is Bad: Count Odo likes to whip chained women, though he says that he only does it to willing participants. Because he has an influential position in the city, he can convince women seeking his favor to endure his fetish.
• Braids of Action: The Viking men wear them for their hair and beards. Ragnar's signature hairstyle is a single fat braid.
• Break the Haughty: Whenever the Norsemen characters suffer a loss, they think the gods are punishing them for some reason or another. Major examples:
  • Ragnar can only think of his and Lagertha's son being miscarried being a result of this.
  • Rollo is so envious of Ragnar that he can no longer see the point of his life and thinks the gods are just playing with him and teasing him with his brother's good fortune. He falls into drunken binges often depending on how much he lets the given situation get to him.
  • Floki leads the raid on Paris, only to be humiliated with a crushing defeat — he can't fathom why he'd be punished for anything he's done and curses the gods before falling into despair.
• Bullying the Dragon:
  • People seem to keep forgetting that Lagertha is a shieldmaiden and knows how to fight. People try to sexually assault her three times, and each time she gets the upper hand on her attacker.
  • Basically anyone who insults Ivar. That is what got Sigurd killed.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Floki is... weird. However, he's also a brilliant shipwright.
• Bury Your Gays: Lagertha and Astrid, the show's LGBT+ characters (they're both bisexual women who have a relationship for a time) are killed off by the end of the show (the latter by the former, at her urging).
• The Bus Came Back:
  • King Aelle returns in Season 2 as an ally to King Ecbert.
  • Erlendur Horiksson and Torvi, wife of Jarl Borg, return in S 3 E 4 to join forces with Kalf after not being mentioned since the finale of Season 2 and the end of the episode Blood Eagle, respectively.
  • Thyri returns briefly in Season 3 after her death, appearing to Siggy just before she drowns. It's left unclear whether she's a ghost or if this is just Siggy's dying hallucination.
  • Athelstan, after getting killed by Floki in Season 3, comes back three times in Season 4 — the first two times, he's implied to be appearing at the same time to Ragnar and King Ecbert in Kattegat and Wessex respectively as... a ghost of some sort? The next time, he appears in Ragnar's hallucination of simpler times alongside the previous incarnation of Ragnar's family.
  • Sinric reappears in Season 5 for the Björn-Halfdan bromance after being gone for all of Season 4 almost. That's a gap of over 20 episodes!
  • Rafarta appears in season 1 in the very first episode as the sister of the victim of Eric Tryggvasson: the man whom earl Haraldson is prosecuting for murder. Then she reappears in season 5 as Eyvind's wife. While this could easily have been a case of them just reusing an actress, they have Rafarta tell Aud a story about her grandfather that describes the whole Eric Tryggvasson-plot basicly making it clear it's the same character.
  • Rollo makes a surprise visit in the half of season 5, after some time away in France.
  • The leader of Ivar's bodyguard vanishes after Ivar and Hvitserk leaves York only to show up in episode 5.20 as Ivar's dragon.
• Cain and Abel: Or Baldr and Hodr. A favourite trope of the show. One has to ponder if Hirst has some unresolved sibling-issues?
  • Rollo and Ragnar. Rollo has spent his life in Ragnar's shadow and is envious of everything in his life. Throughout the show, he's constantly tempted to betray his brother for his own gain. At the end of Season 3, he accepts a French offer to be made Duke of Normandy and marry the Emperor's daughter Gisla in exchange for defending Paris against his brother. The next time Ragnar tries to raid Paris in Season 4, Rollo's forces slaughter the Vikings.
  • Ivar with Sigurd-Ubbe-Björn. After Ivar's and Aslaug's dull reaction to little Siggy's death Sigurd hates both of them with passion, and Ivar returns the favour. Björn does not want to hurt his half-brothers but is prepared to kill any who try to hurt Lagartha. Ivar in turn is prepared to kill any of his brothers who stand in the way of his revenge against Lagartha. Ubbe initially supports Ivar but grows to resent him for taking control of the Great Heathen Army and sidelining Ubbe. While aligned with Björn, Ubbe is also quite aware that if Ivar is defeated and something happens to Björn, Ubbe would become the natural choice to inherit Kattagat.
  • Jarl Borg's brother tried to poison him and accidentally killed his first wife, causing Borg's Start of Darkness.
  • Emperor Charles and his brothers is another example, althrough not explored that deeply.
  • Eventually Harald and Halfdan becomes this after the latter decides stop living in his brother's shadow and then becomes indebted to Björn.
  • Oleg towards his brothers Askold and Dir. It's is implied that Oleg's wife cheated on him with Askold.
• Call-Back: In Season 1, when Floki peruses the monastery at Lindisfarne, he inspects some parchment and lights it on fire, destroying Athelstan's work at the monastery. In Season 4, when raiding the castle at Wessex, he lights a scroll on fire sets alight a whole cabinet of parchment, once again destroying Athelstan's work.
  • In season 1, Ragnar paint's a bloody cross of Aethelwulf the older's forehead in episode 1.7 prior to killing him. In season 4, Aella repays the favour by cutting a bloody cross into Ragnar's forehead.
• Calling the Old Man Out:
  • Björn takes his father to task for cheating on Lagertha.
  • Inverted when Ragnar boldly challenges his sons to strike him down for abandoning them.
  • Aethelwulf calls out his father on both how the Greath Heathen army that has come for them is here because of Ecbert's actions, and how Echbert has manipulated and humiliated him his entire life. In particular, he references Ecbert forcing him to raise the child born out of his wife's infidelity.
• Canis Major: Björn walks his gigantic wolfhound to the Thing.
• Cannot Keep a Secret: When Siggy asks if he can keep a secret, Floki grins and says, "No!"
• Cassandra Truth: Floki is outright antagonistic to Athelstan and dismissive of his religion, and constantly warns everyone around him (especially Ragnar) not to trust or make peace with Christians. Not because he thinks they're bad people, but because he believes that the Christian God is out to destroy the Norse Gods, and the only resolution will be the utter destruction of one faith or the other. Given what eventually happened to Norse Paganism at the hands of Christians... he's not wrong.
• The Cast Showoff: Since Oleg's and Dir's actors actually are Russian, ever scene were they are alone they have the characters talking in old East Slavic instead of English.
• Casual Crucifixion: In Season 2, Athelstan is crucified as an apostate. He's only on the cross for a few minutes before King Ecbert orders him cut down. He spends some time afterwards hobbling with a crutch, but after an undisclosed period of time is back to illuminating manuscripts with no hint that the nails in his hands have affected his ability to do so.
• Child by Rape:
  • Possibly the case with Astrid's baby. She was gang raped before getting pregnant, although the baby could also be her husband's. This appears to be why Astrid gets Lagertha to kill her.
  • There's an ambiguous example with Ingrid as well. First she's raped by Harald, and later turns out to be pregnant. She's adamant that the baby is Björn's, though Harald insists otherwise. It's uncertain if she's lying, right or this is wishful thinking.
• Christianity is Catholic: In 793 AD England, it was. It's centuries before the Great Catholic/Orthodox Schism and the even later Protestant Reformation.
• Cliffhanger:
  • Season 1 ends with Aslaug being pregnant with Ubbe, Ragnar's second son, and Rollo deciding to betray his brother and fight with Jarl Borg.
  • Season 3 ends with Ragnar revealing to Floki that he knows he killed Athelstan.
  • The Season 4 mid-season finale has Ragnar sticking a sword in the ground and bellowing for someone, including his sons, to try to kill him.
• Cold-Blooded Torture:
  • Haraldson dishes out some of this to Rollo.
  • During the sack of Winchester, King Horik has the bishop tied to a pillar and slowly riddled with arrows. It only ends when Athelstan puts him out of his misery.
  • It's more a method of execution rather than torture, but the blood eagle is a truly horrifying way to kill someone.
  • Aelle tortures Ragnar before having him killed and it is indeed cold-blooded.
  • Lagertha employs this to get information from Egil the Bastard.
  • Oleg dishes out one on both Vigrid and Dir.
• Combat Breakdown: Ragnar and Earl Haraldson's duel. They start out with sword and shield, but their shields get smashed and Ragnar's sword breaks. It concludes with axes.
• Comforting the Widow: Rollo seeks out Siggy and offers her his protection after the death of her husband. Luckily for her, she seemed interested in him beforehand.
• Comic-Book Time: The only concrete date given on the show is that the first episode is set in 793 AD. After that the passage of time is handled very vaguely, with different characters aging at different rates and large time skips sprinkled throughout. No specific age is mentioned until halfway through Season 4, when after a long Time Skip it is mentioned that Magnus is already over 12 years old.
• Coming and Going: At the same time Bjorn and Astrid are having sex, Lagertha conducts a human sacrifice. There is nothing subtle in the fact that two kinds of penetration occur at the same time, since Lagertha impales the man she sacrifices quite slowly on a sword while Bjorn is with Astrid, and they're juxtaposed.
• Composite Character:
  • The lead hero Ragnar Lodbrok himself occasionally steps in for various other Norse chieftains. For example, his daring and clever trick to play dead and sneak into Paris inside of a coffin was supposedly originally done by another famous Viking raider Hastein in the capture of Luna, Italy. Albeit, Hastein was a good pal of Björn and, possibly, Ragnar's son as well.
  • The whole Paris story arc in Season 3 is three separate historical events glued together — the quick and successful siege of Paris in 845 by Ragnar, when the Vikings breached the city walls, overrun and occupied Paris, and were subsequently paid off with around 2,570 kilos of silver; the much longer and failed siege of Paris in 885-886 by Rollo, Sigfred, and Sinric, when the Vikings stormed the city several times using elaborate siege weapons, while Paris was defended by Count Odo; and the Mediterranean voyage of Hastein and Björn Ironside in 859-862, when they tricked the guards of the city of Luna by staging a funeral of Hastein.
  • Thus, the Frankish king in the show is made up of Charles II the Bald (843-877), Charlemagne's grandson, and Charles III the Fat (885-888), who was the Holy Roman Emperor. Ironically, the show's king is both Charlemagne's grandson and the Emperor, but neither bald, nor fat.
  • Frankish princess Gisla is generally modeled after princess Gisela, Rollo's future wife, but her pious attitude, clerical speech manners, refusal to marry different nobles and her heroic actions during the siege of Paris mimic Gozlin, the Bishop of Paris, known for fighting and boosting morale.
  • Tradition gives Ragnar three wives — Lagertha, Thora, and Aslaug. Thora is the only one to appear in every version, so ironically she got cut. Aslaug takes on the role as the geatish princess Ragnar leaves Lagertha for, as Thora is portrayed in Gesta Danorum. Björn was made Lagertha's son, which he never was in any Saga source. It's interesting to note that Ragnar's famous sons are almost always attributed to his second wife.
  • Gyda takes on the role of Ragnar's several unnamed daughters as well as his one named one Álöv.
  • Hvitserk and Halfdan are combined into one. It's justified in that some historians have suggested that Hvitserk and Halfdan are different names for the same person, Hvitserk (literary White-Shirt) being a nickname.
    • Hvitserk is also combined with Guthrum and ultimately shares his fate.
  • Ivar the Boneless takes on attributes of Eirik Bloodaxe and Harald Wartooth, who are more straight-up villainous characters than saga-Ivar.
• Compressed Adaptation: With characters being combined such as Alfred the Great's mother and stepmother as well as events such as the Siege of Paris, this series takes what would be almost 150 years and brings it down to just a few decades.
• Crapsack World: The setting of the series is undeniably bleak. Murder, mayhem, destruction, deception, and fanaticism are prevalent.
• Crippling Castration: Lagertha makes a point of cutting off Einar's manhood with a blade before allowing him to be killed for good.
• Crisis of Faith:
  • Athelstan.
  “Where are you Lord? Tell me… is it your will that I am here with these heathens? How does it serve you? I don’t understand and for the first time in my life I am angry with you. You allow my brothers to be slaughtered and sold. Is this really your will? for the first time… I feel lonely. Where are you, Lord? Where are you? And why don’t you answer me?”
  • This gets even worse when he is captured by the Anglo-Saxons, where he finds himself once again immersed in Christianity and Anglo-Saxon culture while simultaneously attracted to the Viking religion he's been practicing for years.
  • Haraldsson has one regarding the Norse gods.
  • Even The Fundamentalist Floki has one after the Viking defeat during the first assault on Paris. He did everything he could to please the gods and yet was rewarded with utter failure.
    • And the is nothing compared to the sequence were he decides to climb into a volcanic cave he believes to be Helgrindr (the gate to the Norse underworld) in order to find the gods only to find a cross planted in the ground. Cue Laughing Mad that turns into harrowing screams. Many fans that were not familiar with the historical background of the scene^note Google the Papar if you are curious]] (which is never explained in the show) the scene came off as even more distressing as they were as confused as Floki about what was going on.
• Curbstomp Battle:
  • The battles against the Mercians armies end up in massive victories for the Viking and Wessex forces despite the Mercians outnumbering them. The Mercians cannot stand the Viking onslaught, rout and their leaders are killed or captured.
  • Rollo (now Duke of Normandy and the Emperor's son-in-law) inflicts one on his brother when he first tries to raid Paris again. Their second battle is more closely contested.
  • The Great Heathen Army's defeat of the Northumbrians.
  • Ivar and Harald's army get out-flanked by Lagertha's army, the rare guard led by Hvitserk gets crushed by the sami-partisans and Harald is forced to flee, leaving Heahmund for dead. The second time around it's get turned around on them.
• Cutting Back to Reality:
  • In one episode, a Christian missionary preaching in Scandinavia comes to Kattegat, where he gets a very rough welcome from the locals when he tells them their gods are fake. Aslaug gives him a challenge to prove the power and existence of the Christian god: to carry a red hot bar of steel a relatively short distance without being harmed. The missionary seems to do it perfectly, to the astonishment of everyone... and then we see that this was actually an Imagine Spot the missionary was having without any visual cues for the audience. Then the steel bar actually gets put in the missionary's hands, and the result is... messy. And very, very painful for the unfortunate missionary. After his failure to perform his miracle, Aslaug orders his execution.
  • Harald has a Dying Dream that his brother returns from Valhalla to sing a last song with him. We then cut to Harald, alone, dying.
• Cynicism Catalyst: If you are in a position of leadership in Viking Scandinavia, this is almost given.
  • For Earl Haraldson it was the murder of his sons.
  • For Jarl Borg it was his brother trying to poison him and his wife dying in the process.
  • Ragnar suffers multiple minor one losing Kauko, Erik, Leif, Arne and his daughter Gyda in the first season and lashes out on Björn in a cynical but poignant rant about happiness not being guaranteed anyone. When Floki murders Athelstan he is finally pushed into an even deeper pit of cynicism. It did not help that it was partly his fault because Athelstan suggested that he should leave, having alienated all Kattegat when he finally converted back to Christianity and threw away his armring.
  • Harald hits this after Gunnhild choosing to drown herself to be with Björn rather than to marry him. Having nothing left to live for he decides to mount a suicidal expedition to England.
• Dark Age Europe: The series is set in the latter centuries of early medieval Europe.
• Darker and Edgier: The show gets slightly darker with each season. While the first seasons focus primarily on Ragnar's rise to power, his ascent is eventually tempered by increasing alienation from his allies and a slow physical decline. In Season 5, following Ragnar's death, the story is taken over by his sons, whose enmities quickly put them at war with each other.
• Death by Adaptation: In the sagas, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye was not killed by his brother, Ivar. He married one of Aelle's daughters and actually succeeded his father as king of Denmark as his brothers were too busy raiding and conquering elsewhere. Here, his life is cut short.
• Death of a Child: Children can be killed on this show just like everyone else, even by other children. In fact, children dying is presented pretty nonchalantly and pretty regularly (because of accidents, illness...).
• Death Seeker: Tostig is upset that all of his raiding friends have died in battle and left him behind. He wants to rejoin them in Valhalla.
• Defeat Means Friendship: After suffering a defeat at the hands of the Ecbert/Aelle coalition, some of the Vikings agree to sign on as mercenaries to aid in the conquest of Mercia.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Princess Gisla is horrified at her father's command to marry Rollo, and in spite of his many attempts to win her affection, publicly insults and demeans him at every turn (including at the wedding ceremony itself). It is only after his Anguished Declaration of Love that she starts to thaw and they enjoy a genuinely affectionate relationship.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • The Vikings treat rape and pillage like just another fact of life.
  • The finer points of Viking law:
    • If you kill someone in self-defense, you have to report the killing to the nearest household. You may walk past two houses if you think the families are kin of the dead and will try to attack you, but only two.
    • Thieves are made to run the gauntlet, with everyone required to pelt him with stuff.
    • Slaves have absolutely no rights or protection. Athelstan observes that a man can rape a slave without consequence, but not a free woman, and that Ragnar could legally kill him and suffer no consequence.
    • Every man sworn to a chief is required to attend an assembly (Thing) where cases are heard so they can expect jury duty. "Every man" includes what we'd call minors today.
  • The cultural divide between the English and the Norse.
  • The Vikings see being sacrificed to the gods as a great honor and a sacred duty.
  • The Vikings' casual attitude towards death may be unnerving to some modern viewers, but it was fairly natural given their religious and cultural outlook.
  • Ragnar suggests practicing polygamy, and he states that it's a common practice. According to the makers of the show, a Viking man could have multiple concubines, who are accepted by his wife because they represent no threat to her station. Ragnar, however, suggests taking Aslaug as an additional wife, which Lagertha cannot accept.
  • The blood eagle is a method of executing someone who you feel has severely wronged you and involves your back being cut open, your ribs being shattered, and your lungs being ripped out the back and placed on your shoulders. If you endure it without screaming, it's considered such a brave act that you go to Valhalla, even though you weren't killed in battle
• Designated Girl Fight: Lagertha is sent to fight Horik's wife, a fellow shieldmaiden.
• Did They or Didn't They?: It's never made clear if Thyri and Athelstan had sex at Uppsala. Although their interactions are quite suggestive, it's never made clear if they actually did anything except kiss and take their clothes off.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Earl Haraldson is the main villain of the first few episodes, but is defeated midway through the first season.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • When Aethelwulf massacres the pagan settlement and burns a cross, it will remind American viewers strongly of the brutality of the KKK.
  • Several of the main characters have pretty strong associations with specific religious figures:
    • Ragnar, to Odin Especially at the scene of his execution, where he hangs from a tree with one eye swollen shut.
    • Lagertha to Freya. She gains power comparable to Ragnar. Has her looks compared to Freya’s multiple times.
    • Rollo to Thor. Thor had to recover his hammer at one point, and does so dressed as a woman. Rollo, in parallel, becomes a Frankish lord. His fancier garb, looks jarringly like an ill-fitted dress, especially compared to the attire of other Franks.
    • Floki and Loki. He’s strongly associated in dialogue with Loki throughout the series. His punishment for killing Athelstane is also taken directly from Odin's punishment of Loki.
    • Björn Ironsides and Baldr. Baldr is notably immune to harm from everything except ivy, which was fashioned in the form of an arrow. Björn is called "Ironsides" because he was not cut once in his first battle, and there are many tales of his invulnerability thereafter. Björn's final fatal wounds also come from arrows, though admittedly he was already dying.
    • Athelstan and Jesus. Merciful, despite the horrors around him? Check. Crucified? Check. Second coming? Check. Killed at the hands of a pagan? Check.
• The Dog Bites Back: After most of two seasons' abuse at his hands, Torvi finally snaps and kills Erlendur with his own crossbow.
• Doomed Hometown: Athelstan was a monk in the monastery of Lindisfarne, and its destruction at the hands of the Northmen marks the beginning of his character arc.
• Doom Troops: Ivar's personal guard is compromised by mooks sporting creepy Gjermundbu-helmets which dehumanizes them compared to other Vikings or Christian mooks which wear open-faced helmets.
• The Dragon:
  • Svein to Haraldson.
  • Aethelwulf the older to Ecbert.
  • Erlendur to his father king Horik.
  • Halfdan to his older brother Harald, until Björn saves Halfdan's life and he defects.
  • Rollo becomes this to emperor Charles after count Odo proves disloyal and passes with flying colors.
  • Whitehair to Ivar the boneless.
• Dragon Their Feet: Svein can do nothing more than watch Earl Haraldson get killed in the duel. Rollo then buries an axe in his chest.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: King Aethelwulf suffers a fatal anaphylactic reaction to a bee sting.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Rollo is prone to fits of depression, during which he becomes a worthless drunk.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Floki gives Ragnar an earful of this after Ragnar dies. Since Ragnar was faking, he heard the whole thing.
• Duel to the Death: Ragnar challenges Earl Haraldson to a duel, which is held Viking-style.
• Due to the Dead:
  • Earl Haraldson orders that the body of an executed man be fed to the pigs. Ragnar disapproves since the condemned man did not deserve such a dishonor.
  • After some of his men are killed in battle, Ragnar and the other Vikings take the time to bury them properly and even have a Libation for the Dead over their graves.
  • Inverted with the murders of Earl Haraldson's sons. The killers dishonored them and their father by burying them with their severed heads kissing their buttocks. They were also buried in a shallow grave so animals could get to the bodies.
  • The funeral of Earl Haraldson is a major affair with a lot of drinking, fighting, and ends in a Viking Funeral and a Human Sacrifice of a female slave to join her master in the afterlife.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In the first two episodes of the show, the hair on the top of Ragnar's head is often worn loose, making it look a bit like he's got a mullet. From the third episode on, his hair is entirely tied back into his ponytail for as long as he has it.
  • In the second episode of the first season, Rollo rapes Floki's slave. Rollo never commits rape again, Floki's slave never appears again and he is never shown having any in any other episodes.
  • The pagan priests in season 1 and the first episode of season 2 have makeup similar to the Seer and ritual scarring. They are not present in most of season 2 and absent in season 3. When they reappear they have full face makeup and remain this way for the rest of the show.
  • Tattoos were rare in the first episodes. Their prominence increases steadily through out the series.
  • When Harald first appears, many of his men have the same face tattoos as he and Halfdan has. But from season 4B and onward it's very rare save for one one-off character. Notably, no one has them in Tamdrup at all.
• Elephant in the Living Room: After the Norse make a reference to Ragnarök, Athelstan asks what it is, resulting in awkward silence until he changes the subject. He eventually wears them down.
• End of an Era: The second half of season 6 is presented as that for the golden age of Viking raiders. Legends like Ragnar, Lagertha, Floki and Rollo are either dead or settled down. The time of the Ragnarssons is ending and the people replacing them as leaders are more politicians than war leaders. The Saxons and Franks have learned how to defend themselves and Viking raids are met by large organized armies led by skilled generals determined to defend their countries.
• Enfante Terrible:
  • Erlendur seems like he's trying to be this after the death of his entire family in the Season 2 finale.
  • Ivar is starting to show shades of this as well, after he fights over a toy with another kid who is murdered by Ivar with an axe. The shades has become ever darker since...
• Enemy Eats Your Lunch: One raid has the Vikings bursting into a chapel in the middle of mass. And Floki casual wanders up to the altar and takes a swig of the consecrated wine... and spits it out to the horror of the Christian congregation (by Catholic theology, Floki has just literally spat out the literal blood of Christ — an act that is about as sacrilegious of a thing as you can do in the Catholic faith).
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Ragnar and Rollo make short work of several hostile tribesmen in the Eastern Baltic.
  • Lagertha fights off two rapists single-handedly.
  • Floki is introduced jumping out of the bushes and scaring Björn.
  • Earl Haraldson arbitrates a dispute unjustly due to being personally invested in the case.
  • King Horik sneaks incognito into the Uppsala temple to play a prank.
  • King Ecbert is introduced floating in his Roman bath. When he learns that Northmen have invaded, he calmly ponders his move. This establishes his cold, calculating personality and interest in classical culture.
  • When Emperor Charles is introduced, he wants to flee Paris before the Vikings arrive, but is equally scared of what his lords will think. Princess Gisla is introduced informing him that leaving the city is unthinkable.
  • King Harald Finehair boasting in Ragnar's hall.
  • Bishop Heahmund is introduced performing a funeral, then banging the widow in his bed right beside his armor and sword, which are inscribed with a Latin ward against evil. Here's a man with feet both in earth and heaven.
  • King Olaf is first seen chilling in a sauna after having his stwart Canute troll Hvitserk.
• Everyone Calls Him Bar Keep: The seer in Kattegat is referred to only as "the seer."
• Evil Uncle:
  • King Horik's six uncles killed his father, mother, and siblings. He won his throne by challenging and then killing them one by one.
  • Rollo becomes one to Ragnar's sons, though their enmity waxes and wanes.
  • Downplayed, but Ivar certainly counts as one to Björn's children.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Hairstyles change to show the passage of time and changes in character:
  • Ragnar crops his hair short in Season 3 and has shaved his head in Season 4 to show the passage of time. In the mid-season finale of Season 4, his beard has grown longer to show his aging over about 10 years.
  • Björn gradually changes his hair and beard to match his father's, showing that he is slowly taking over his father's mantle. In Season 5, he crops off his hair, mirroring the progression of Ragnar's style.
  • In Season 4, Floki's hair has been trimmed around the sides and eventually shaved completely to show his age. His beard also eventually grows longer.
  • Rollo cuts his hair to shoulder length to match the Parisian style.
  • Erlendur grows a beard and long hair between Seasons 2 and 3, showing his age and unhinged nature.
  • Lagertha has her hair cropped short in season 5 to represent her "new life."
  • In the final episode, Hvitserk has grown out a full beard while in Christian captivity, possibly a Beard of Sorrow due to his forced conversion.
• Expy:
  • Floki to Loki. This is lampshaded from the moment he is mentioned.
  • Fittingly, Helga becomes an expy of Sigyn, Loki's wife.
• Eye Scream: Lagertha delivers a swift one to her abusive husband Sigvard with a carving knife. Without even looking.

F-K

• Face Death with Dignity:
  • Jarl Borg doesn't resist or make a scene when he's executed. He also doesn't cry out during the blood eagle, which ensures his place in Valhalla.
  • Athelstan anticipates his murder by Floki. He prays beforehand and is utterly serene when he's axed in the face.
  • Earl Siegfried exploits this trope by stating that he would accept his beheading peacefully if someone would hold his hair. He gets one last laugh on the Franks by pulling his head away just before the axe falls so that the man holding his hair gets his hands chopped off.
  • Ragnar does not utter a word when being tortured and goes out roaring a badass poem at the top of his lungs.
  • King Ecbert and his bishop both choose to sacrifice themselves to the invading army on principle and do so with dignity.
• Face–Heel Turn:
  • King Horik is initially an ally of Ragnar, than a teeth-clenched teammate, then an outright enemy.
  • Subverted by Floki, who pretends to betray Ragnar to Horik but is actually plotting with Ragnar against Horik.
• Fish out of Water: Athelstan, an English monk among pagan Vikings. He takes to their ways with slow, yet growing aplomb.
  • Later Rollo in Frankia.
  • Björn and Halfdan during their adventure in the Mediterranean. None of them are really sure what actually happened.
  • Heahmund after being taken by Ivar.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Early in Season 2, a throwaway has Floki admitting that he cannot keep a secret. We later see him plotting with Horik behind Ragnar's back, but later find out that he was reporting everything back to Ragnar.
  • In the Season 4 premiere, Erlendur shows Einar a Frankish crossbow and remarks how useful the weapon will be in the future. Near the end of the episode, Erlendur and Kalf's men use the crossbows to slaughter Einar and all his supporters.
  • As a little boy, Ivar impulsively murders another child over a toy, and plenty of his moments with Sigurd are antagonistic all the way up to Season 4, with the two of them coming to potentially-lethal violence a few times and being thankfully interrupted to the point of Running Gag. And then Ivar accidentally murders Sigurd, because this time, there's no one to catch his axe.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: The show is guilty of this on several occasions. Floki is the best one at remembering the friends (and foes) that are gone. Björn is particulary bad at this. Björn gets over Thorunn's disappearance rather quickly, and forgets Snaefrid existed after her death, not to mention how he never mentions the death of his daughter Siggy. It's particularly jarring since Aslaug's and Ivar's reaction to the latter is supposed to paint them in a bad light. Björn's apparent amnesia about the deaths of his love ones also becomes jarring when Harald regularly brings ups his fallen loved ones after their deaths.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: During the opening credits, when the thunder rolls you can briefly see a figure standing on a field. This is a single frame of Hel herself.
• Friendly Enemy: In Season 4, King Ecbert openly states that he loves Ragnar in spite of being his greatest enemy. He seems to feel that only Ragnar really understands him as a Worthy Opponent. Ragnar is friendly back to Ecbert, but would much rather defeat him than be his friend.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Happens so often its practically the theme of the show.
  • Ragnar starts the show as a humble farmer and raider, but rises to become king of Kattegut.
  • Rollo plays second fiddle to Ragnar until he rises to become a Frankish king.
  • While Ivar is born famous for his parentage, he starts out as The Load because of his physical challenges, but turns into the most terrifying character in the entire series, with a crown, cult, and long string of military victories.
• The Fundamentalist:
  • Floki is the most religious of Ragnar's group. He's the only one to criticize Rollo for going through a baptism and is the first to try to volunteer for human sacrifice. He often bullies Athelstan for his Christian background and is the most troubled by Ragnar's plan of Northman and Christian co-existence. It comes to a head in Season 3 when Floki has a religious vision that inspires him to murder Athelstan.
  • King Aelle is fervently and rigidly pious, to the point that he underestimates the heathen Vikings because they do not have God's favor.
  • Heahmund, big time.
• Generational Saga: The series follows the rise to prominence of Ragnar Lothbrok at first, then that of his sons after his death.
• Genius Bruiser: The Vikings as a whole. The Christians frequently dismiss them as pagan, savage barbarians. They are indeed pagan, they can certainly be savage, and barbarism is relative, but none of these things preclude the use of advanced warfare tactics.
• Glasgow Grin: Rollo gets one courtesy of Haraldson's torture. The scars all but completely fade over time.
• Glorious Mother Russia: How Kievan Rus is portrayed.
• God Is Good: Discussed between Athelstan and Ragnar. As a faithful priest, Athelstan believes He is good and Vikings are a punishment from Him for his people's sins. Ragnar says He is greedy (for stuffing the monastary with gold) and stupid (for not protecting that gold).
• God Was My Co-Pilot: Ambiguous. Ragnar prays to Odin at one point in the first season and is able to fight his way free of Earl Haraldson's men despite being heavily wounded.
  Haraldson: Do you deny you're a criminal? Worthy only of defeat? Worthy only of death?
  Ragnar: (kneeling, clutching at his wounds) I accept my fate. Let me speak to my god.
  Haraldson: (orders his men to turn away so that Ragnar can pray)
  Ragnar: Odin, Lord of Lords, Father, help me.
• Good Hair, Evil Hair:
  • Many Vikings, including our hero Ragnar, have elaborate hairstyles that make them look like bikers or heavy metal rock stars, reminding us that these are badass Vikings.
  • Halfdan, a creepy, villainous character, has floppy hair like a goth kid that generally covers one side of his face, making him look villainous.
• Good Shepherd: Athelstan takes his vocation seriously; his "greatest treasure" is an unadorned Bible, and he refuses to join a threesome with Ragnar and Lagertha because of his vow of celibacy. Ragnar is so impressed with his character he puts him in charge of the family farm while he's gone.
  Ragnar: I do not think of him as a slave. He is a responsible person.
• Going Native: Characters adopt the customs of their new surroundings, but never fully forget who they are.
  • Athelstan progressively becomes more Viking until he proves himself in battle and becomes Ragnar's thane, though he never gives up his faith.
  • Rollo becomes much more Frankish after joining them, but jumps aboard a viking raid again as soon as he gets the chance.
  • Ubbe and Magnus try to follow their new religion, but when faced with death, they still pray to the god they where raised with.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Floki kills Athelstan for being a heathen, but mostly because he's jealous of Ragnar's love for him. Ragnar states as much in Season 4.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality:
  • Ragnar is a murderous Viking raider, but he's protective of his people and family. His major enemies are equally ruthless, but are often shown to have deep care for their loved ones.
  • Athelstan, in turn, is conflicted in his belief about Ragnar and the other Vikings when Ragnar continuously shows him kindness, and thematically struggles with this trope throughout the series.
  • Harald is a violent warlord who hate Christians and fights rival kings regularly to claim their land in his quest to become king of all Norway. He is not above turning on his allies and even kills his brother without hesitation when he turns on him. However, the killing haunts him, he is well loved by the people he rules, is very carrying and protective of his loved ones, and when faced with the opportunity to allow his love-rival and rival to a coveted kingdom die in battle, he chooses to save him and gets wounded for it.
• Groin Attack: Before he dies, Lagertha castrates Einar.
• Handicapped Badass: Ivar the Boneless has deformed legs that cannot support his weight, but he's able to fight his brothers to a standstill while sitting on a log. He's also a better shot with arrow and throwing axe. Even when crawling on the ground, he's no one to be taken lightly.
• Happiness in Slavery: Athelstan's respect and affection for Ragnar's family grows over time in spite of the fact that Ragnar violently enslaved him. By Season 2, he feels like a part of the family, and Ragnar's family feels the same way. That said, it's also a Downplayed Trope. Athelstan is 'not interested' in escaping, but he'd rather be a free man. Part of the reason Athelstan sticks around is because Ragnar treats him well and he has nowhere else to go. He's well aware that he's incapable of fighting, and far away from home in a strange land. Even if he were to escape, he doesn't really stand a chance at getting home.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?: Ragnar asks this to the only survivor of the massacred Norse settlement in Wessex, then proceeds to strangle him to keep the massacre a secret.
• Headbutt of Love:
  • A standard move of Vikings to show their affection for one another. Ragnar, and later on his sons, seems especially fond of doing them.
  • A tender, unexpected one from Aethelwulf to Kwenthrith when he's bringing her and her son to Wessex for safety.
  • Harald and Halfdan does this a lot too.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door:
  • Rollo, who is constantly torn between loyalty to Ragnar and bitterness at living in his brother's shadow. He seems to have betrayed his brother for good after he becomes a vassal of the French, marries the Emperor's daughter, and fights off Ragnar's raid.
  • Jarl Borg also shifts between alliance and enmity with Ragnar more than once.
  • Athelstan is often accused of this. If not loyal to the Vikings or the Saxons, Athelstan is at the very least fiercely loyal to Ragnar.
  • King Harald has been on every viking-team in the show except Lagertha's. Not for lack of trying tho.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Main characters rarely don helmets, even when they are otherwise fully armored. Helmets are fairly rare among common soldiers as well, though when they are worn, they're by faceless mooks. A perfect example is Ivar's bodyguards. All of them wear face-covering helmets except Whitehair, making it clear he is their leader.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Rollo suffers these frequently, and often responds with excessive drinking. He notably has one after he returns to Kattegat to find that Siggy died while he was gone, leading to a massive drinking binge and picking a fight with his nephew Björn, who promptly trounces him in a street brawl in front of all his fellow warriors.
  • Ragnar, after Athelstan's death.
  • Lagertha, first after killing Astrid and loosing to Ivar and then watching Heahmund die.
• Historical Domain Character:
  • Rollo, Björn, King Aelle, Aethelwulf, Horik I, King Ecbert of Wessex, Kwenthrith, Princess Judith, Ivar the Boneless, Alfred the Great, Harald Finehair, Euphimius, Kassia, Oleg the Prophet, Igor I, Thorkell the Tall, Ziyadat Allah, Elsewith, Aethelred, Ubbe/Ubba, Prudentius of Troyes, king Aella, Pope Leo IV, John Scotus Eriugena and bishop Heahmund. And that's not counting the semi-legendary figures.
  • Subverted on several occasions. For example, when a big deal is made of Harald meeting an ambitious warrior named Egil who fights like a berserker and has a disfigured face, one could be forgiven for thinking that the show is doing their version of Egil Skallagrimsson. Nope, just another guy named Egil with a somewhat appropriate appearance. And Torvi's son Guthrum is not the Guthrum who was one of the leaders of the Great Heathen Army alongside Ivar and Ubbe, and eventually became King Guthrum who ruled over the lands the Vikings conquered in England.
• Historical In-Joke:
  • When Ragnar is recruiting followers, the Viking who is most vocally opposed to the idea of going to England is named "Knut." Ironically, a Danish prince also named Cnut would invade England and become its second Viking King (the first being his father, Svein Forkbeard's, brief reign) toward the end of the Viking Era.
  • Floki, in the first episode, jokes about how Björn will surpass his famous father and Ragnar will hate him for it. In the Norse saga, this is exactly what happened, and much of Ragnar's later actions were motivated by his fear that his sons would eclipse him in fame. While Björn does go on to much fame, Ragnar never resents him or his other sons for their accomplishments.
  • Two of Ragnar's men, Eric and Leif, are father and son. They're named after the explorers Eric the Red and his more famous son Leif Ericsson who landed in North America. But they're not them since they live centuries too early and they both die in the first season.
  • Horik remarks on how he has heard of Christians in the eighth episode. Historically, Horik's predecessor had converted to Christianity, and Horik himself fiercely resisted attempts by Saint Ansgar of Hamburg-Bremen to proselytize the Danes.
  • Rollo's future glories are foreshadowed many times in early episodes. Not only did he establish Normandy, but almost every European ruler can trace their ancestry to him. To date, only a few other individuals have contributed more to Europe than he has.
  • Season One introduced King Aelle's Snake Pit, which is how Ragnar died in the sagas. In the fourth season, it's how Ragnar dies in the show too.
  • In one of the earliest episodes Ragnar likens himself to a boar and his son Björn to a piglet, which brings to mind his last words: "How the piglets would grunt if they knew how the old boar suffers!"
  • Aslaug prophesied her son Sigurd will have a snake in his eye, in homage to her father Sigurd, who fought and killed a giant snake and in punishment to Ragnar's arrogance. And then the baby's born with a deformed eyeball, that looks like a snake is piercing his Iris. In real life, historians are still theorizing why Sigurd was called "Sigurd Snake-In-The-Eye", as there is no concrete explanation for his nickname.
  • In Season 3, Ragnar pretends to convert to Christianity, then fakes his death, and requests to be given a Christian funeral/burial, which would require his body to be taken inside Paris. During the ceremony he leaps out of his coffin, tosses some weapons to his men, and together they manage to open the gates of the city to the other Norsemen. This is a tactic said to have been used by the real life Björn Ironside in order to sack an Italian city.
  • A really cruel one, where Astrid's rapist is called Hakon, this being the name of the historical Harald's son.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: The Queen of Mercia states that her brother Saint Kenelm raped her as a child. She killed him in revenge and became something of a sexual predator. According to legend, he was a holy boy killed by his sister for his inheritance. Historically, little is known of Kenelm, and his sister went into a nunnery.
• History Repeats:
  • Björn follows a similar path to Ragnar. He becomes a celebrated warrior, the King of Kattegat, and marries two women: first a shield maiden and then a sorceress. His hairstyle also goes through the same sequence as Ragnar's.
  • To a lesser extent, Ubbe is Ragnar's true successor of his children through Aslaug: he leads an expedition farther than other vikings before him and becomes a respected leader. In the final scene of the series, Floki notes that Ubbe looks like his father.
• Hollywood Genetics: Ragnar's son with the short-statured Lagetha is at least several inches taller than all of his sons by the Statuesque Stunner Aslaug.
• Hollywood Tactics:
  • In season 1, when encountering a numerically superior force, Ragnar's Vikings step out to face them on an open beach rather than stay in the narrow choke point they started at. It doesn't matter, however, because the Saxon soldiers never even try to flank them. The scene also functions as a massive aversion to the Call That a Formation? subtrope; the Saxons charge in as a disorganized mass, only to be utterly slaughtered by a disciplined shield wall.
  • While the series is generally good about showing shield wall tactics in battle, season 5 onward dispense with it and presents battles and disorderly melees with no established battle line, where soldiers are fighting solo duels surrounded by enemies.
• Honor Before Reason: After Ragnar's sword breaks, the Earl lets Ragnar smash their shields to bits and then tosses his own sword away so that they can pause to re-arm themselves with axes. This might be due to the duel's ritualistic nature.
• Hope Spot: During the battle for Vestfold, the Rus breach the first line of defense on one point and pour in against the second line. Björn & Erik the Red manage to halt the offensive, defeat the Rus and make a charge for the first line again. When Björn gets there he sees the first line is almost overwhelmed while even more Rus are rowing toward the beach. When he looks behind him he sees that the Rus flank has circumvented them and are about to crush them in a pincer movement.
• Hordes from the East: Yeah, yeah, the Rus are meant to be Horny Vikings crossed with Glorious Mother Russia, but seriously look at their armour, their helmets and the fact that they seem to be immensely skilled horsemen. That's basically the Turko-Mongol empire of the Golden Horde centuries too early. Also, Oleg's primary enforcer is a giant bearded guy with Mongol-style loop braids and a huge furry hat called Ganbaatar. While the Rus used Khazars as soldiers (when the two did not fight each other like angry cats), the Rus took most of their foreign inspiration from the Byzantine empire and the Norse. The bulk of their armies would have been made up by Slavs, boosted with vikings primarily from the Mälaren Valley and Gotland and warbands recruited from Finn and Baltic tribes.
• Horny Vikings: The main characters are Vikings, and their pillaging is largely influential to the plot. Horned helmets occur only twice: once in season 1 as a ceremonial helmet and the second time in season 6 worn by White Hair.
• Horns of Barbarism: While generally averted, we do see one horned helmet used for ceremonial purposes early in the series, and an outlaw wears a horned helmet in combat in season six.
• Human Sacrifice:
  • A slave girl is sacrificed as part of a Viking Funeral. This element is present in Ahmed Ibn Fadlan's account of the Rus.
  • Nine people are sacrificed by the Uppsala temple. The sacrifices must be willing and believers in the Norse gods.
  • After a battle, Björn sacrifices a POW to thank the Gods for the victory.
  • Earl Jorgensen volunteers as one.
  • Ivar sacrifices two boys to ensure victory at York. This furthers the divide between him and Ubbe.
  • In season six, a shieldmaiden offers herself as a sacrifice to join Lagertha in Valhalla.
• Human Shield: Ragnar uses himself as one of these to protect Athelstan from Horik's hidden archer in "The Choice". He knows that Horik will attempt to kill the priest as soon as he's out of sight, so Ragnar offers to escort Athelstan back to Ecbert's territory and physically shields him from any kind of attack.
• Hypocritical Humor: King Ecbert warns his daughter in-law about the dangers of becoming infatuated with "interesting" people... after spending the last two episodes all but openly courting Lagertha.
• I Am X, Son of Y: This is what Earl Haraldson's name is, but we never learn the X part of his name, so it's moot. The children are also referred to in this manner. For instance, lots of people call Björn, "son of Ragnar." This is Truth in Television as families didn't have a familial name — what we would think of a last name was simply the name of their father plus a suffix of son or daughter. Individuals might have last names that were basically titles, but they did not function as family names.
• Icy Blue Eyes:
  • As the show poster suggests, Ragnar's icy, blue-eyed gaze is frequently lingered upon, and he shows no hesitation in killing. They're even more impressive when his face and head is covered in red blood and the only thing you can see of his face is two brilliant blue eyes, staring.
  • Ivar has his father's eyes. Whenever his crazy starts flowing, he's prone to giving the camera a Kubrick Stare emphasizing his brilliantly blue eyes. In the final season, Hvitserk notes that Ivar's eyes always "go blue" when he's about to go crazy and hurt himself.
  • When Odin appears he also has one.
  • When Ubbe kills King Frodo they appear on him as well. In the final season, the Native Americans are spooked by Ubbe's brilliant blue eyes because they are a bad omen.
• I Have Your Wife: Erlendur tries to coerce Torvi into killing Björn by threatening her son, who is in the custody of his people. She kills Erlendur instead though.
• Impaled Palm: Athelstan has this done to his hands and feet during crucifixion. The scars still pain him several months later, although writing and painting seems to have helped his dominant hand a bit.
• Improbable Hairstyle: The show is famous for the various creative hairstyles. Ragnar's in particular has become (in)famous among Viking-enthusiast - both loved and loathed and copied by other Viking-related media.
• Important Haircut:
  • After Athelstan is tempted to go native with his new Viking owners, he shaves his stubbled tonsure to reaffirm his commitment to his monk lifestyle. As he becomes more invested in Norse culture, however, he gets increasingly hairy.
  • Ragnar completely shaves his head after Athelstan's death, complete with suffering similar bloody cuts that Athelstan suffered when he tried to retain his tonsure in the first season.
  • In the third season, Björn has changed his haircut to a shorter version of Ragnar's signature mohawk-braid, while Ragnar has shaved his hair down to stubble. This hints at Björn eventually supplanting his father. Eventually Björn begins shaving his head as well, completing the same cycle of hairstyles as his father.
• Incest Subtext: The four younger Ragnarssons have some scenes that portray them as being... unusually close.
  • They all sleep (or in Ivar's case, attempt to) with the same woman, Margrethe, despite there being tons of eligible girls in Kattegat who would want to sleep with the famed sons of Ragnar Lothbrok.
  • Ivar secretly watches his brothers have sex multiple times. It can't all be chalked up to mere curiosity about something he's never experienced.
  • Ubbe offers Hvitserk sex with his new wife Margrethe. On their wedding night, no less. This in itself would be strange, but the way the end of the scene is filmed makes it ambiguous as to whether or not they're going to take turns or whether they're going to sleep with her together in a threesome.
  • Some of the interactions Ivar has with Ubbe come off as a crush along the lines of Because You Were Nice to Me, since his older brother is one of the only people to respect him and defend him when the other Vikings mock him. Also compare how he rejects Ubbe at their negotiation meeting to how Harald rejects his brother Halfdan. Harald's reaction is reminiscent of Ragnar's, but Ivar comes off as an upset lover with an emphasis on intimacy.
• Instant Expert: Happens with regards to languages. At various times Ragnar, Lagertha, and Rollo ask to be taught foreign languages. All of them are fluent by the next episode.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence:
  • Lagertha attacks her husband Ragnar to convince him that he should take her on a Viking voyage. He tries to use it as foreplay.
  • Ragnar slashes his palm and smears blood everywhere while seeking out Aslaug's bedroom. His original intent was to kill her.
  • Once Thorunn is free, she insists that Björn fight her, after which they tumble into each other's arms.
• Ironic Echo: The Death Chant of the Vikings ("Up onto overturned keel...") makes a reappearance, this time recited by Rollo as he watches his brother's forces being slaughtered by the Franks he's allied with. Talk about salting the wounds, eh?
• Ironic Nickname: Halfdan the Black is blond.
• I Surrender, Suckers: When Jarl Borg invades Kattegat, the elder warrior uses this to give Rollo time to evade with his brother's wife and children.
• It's All About Me:
  • Aslaug, after Jarl Borg has taken over Kattegat, though she claims that it is about her children. Everyone in the village who could wield a weapon just died to secure her escape, but her main worry is that the hide-out Rollo finds for her is not up to her standards. The person who has to listen to her complains and reassure her is Siggy, who herself lost her sons, her first husband, her status, and finally her daughter. Later on Aslaug insists that Ragnar shouldn't ally himself with Jarl Borg again. Not because she considers it a bad move, or because of what he did to Kattegat, no, her main reason is that he insulted and humiliated her.
  • Despite the ferocity and numbers of the pagan Northmen, Emperor Charles is too proud to call his brothers for aid in defending Paris, even though this could potentially doom thousands to their deaths. For him his issues with his brothers take precedence over the lives of all his subjects. Then subverted in the season finale when he reveals, bitterly, the he had sent word to his brothers for aid and they refused.
• Jerkass:
  • Earl Haraldson is pompous, arrogant, and forces others to say what a great ruler he is.
  • Earl Bjarni casually threatens to beat his wife if she doesn't get him some herrings.
  • Erlendur treats his wife coldly, enjoys torturing people and is not above killing his own adopted son.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Though Ivar is evil from season 5B and onwards, his quest to avenge Aslaug is completely justified given Lagertha killed her after she surrendered with her only condition being that she would be let go unharmed and that she then would order her sons not to take revenge. Also, in Norse culture, they would have been bound by honor to take revenge, even if they did not want it. Willingly giving up on revenge, as some of them do, would make them lose a lot of respect. Lagertha also never makes any attempt to make peace by offering compensation. And at the end of the day, Aslaug was still Ivar's mother and one of the few persons who genuinely loved him in his whole life; Ivar's brothers weren't nowhere as doted on as he was (with Sigurd in particular being very resentful about this).
• Kangaroo Court: The first episode has the Earl hold court over a murder trial involving a land dispute. The Earl is obviously angry because he wanted the land for himself. Everyone votes against the man to placate the Earl. When Ragnar's son does not raise his hand, the Earl pointedly insists that the boy join with the rest. Later he tries to frame Ragnar for murdering Knut by having Rollo give false testimony. Rollo betrays him however, saving Ragnar.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Earl Haraldson curses a man who is about to be executed. Ragnar and his son disapprove.
  • Rollo rapes Floki's slave girl just before the voyage, foreshadowing him as being the least moral of the protagonists.
  • The Swedish Earl casually threatens to beat his new wife.
  • Ragnar tries to maneuver Athelstan into getting sacrificed. Due to Deliberate Values Dissonance, however, it's left unclear whether Ragnar intended to honor Athelstan with sacrifice or to avoid losing one of his prized fighters.
  • Count Odo seems like a pretty normal, dedicated guy. Then it's discovered that he's got a secret dungeon where he chains women up and whip them. He only does it to willing women, at least as far as we know, and he promises to stop when they ask, but the overall tone is creepy.
  • Harald and Halfdan show needless sadism and brutality in raping, mutilating and murdering a family of French farmers while the Norse forces move their ships. Björn doesn't protest against their actions for practical reasons, but doesn't share their obvious relish in the deed.
• Killed Offscreen: Subverted by Ragnar in the Season 3 finale. He's shown ailing in bed, and it's implied that he hasn't got much time left. Then after a commercial break, he's shown suddenly dead. It turns out that he was just faking his death, though he is legitimately ailing.
• King Incognito: King Horik sneaks into the Uppsala temple in peasant's garb to prank the priests there.
• Klingon Promotion: Ragnar kills Earl Harldson and becomes an earl, then kills King Horik and becomes a king. In the mid-Season 4 finale, he challenges his subjects to kill him and become king in his place.
• Kubrick Stare:
  • Ragnar's icy blue gaze is often coupled with a Kubrick Stare for extra intensity.
  • Ivar does this quite a lot in the second half of Season 4, with equal emphasis on his Icy Blue Eyes.

L-P

• Lady Macbeth:
  • Siggy serves this role for Earl Haraldson, though she doesn't support some of his more paranoid endeavors. When she shacks up with Rollo, it's not long before she's up to her old tricks.
  • In Season 5, Margrethe tries to be this for Ubbe.
  • Freydis becomes this to Ivar.
• Language Barrier:
  • There is a language barrier between Norsemen and Saxons, whose land Ragnar and co. mean to invade. Ragnar spares the life of a monk and scribe Athelstan when he realizes that Athelstan understands and speaks Old Norse. He feels it will be useful to learn the language and makes him a slave. Ragnar manages to defy the language barrier as he's able to learn Old English.
  • A language barrier stands between the Franks and Norsemen. Subverted when it turns out that one traveller speaks Old French and is able to interpret.
  • To save Paris, Princess Gisla of France is forced to marry Rollo, a Norseman and Ragnar's brother. They don't understand a word of each other's language. Rollo is shown being taught Old French by a clergyman at the court and he's having a terrible time. It involves tearing a book page in tiny pieces and crumpling it, being suddenly fluent in Angrish gibberish resembling Old French, flipping his own table, grabbing his teacher by the collar, flinging him across the room, knocking a chair down for good measure and storming out.
  • Ubbe's group of Norsemen and the historically early Native American's are able to fortunately start off with friendly relations with basic words and body language, despite the significant language barrier. It is lampshaded that the Miꞌkmaq already know some words of Old Norse, revealing that Floki managed to make his way to Vinland and is living nearby.
• Large Ham: Linus Roache as King Ecbert, particularly at the end of The Usurper, where he demonstrates actual mouth-frothing rage. "My name, and my word, as King of Wessex, will mean nothing to them! But it cannot be, cannot be. It cannot be. I cannot allow, and I cannot tolerate, treason. Guards!"
• Last-Name Basis: Earl Haraldson's first name is not revealed, which is strange considering that "Haraldson" is a patronymic, not a surname, so he should be called "Earl [First Name]."
• Left Hanging: One episode ends with Athelstan approaching Lagertha with the wounds of the stigmata on his hands. Oddly, it's never brought up again.
• A Lighter Shade of Grey:
  • Ragnar specifically is this compared to some of the other Vikings; he frequently shows mercy on enemies and the helpless. More than anything, the show presents his primary virtue as his forward-thinking attitude and thirst for knowledge.
  • Ubbe is even lighter and unlike Ragnar actually stops raiding completely (being disgusted by it after trying it out) and makes political moves to shift to an economic-based on trade and agriculture instead of warfare.
• Lost Lenore: Astrid to Harald. He carries her earring with him until the very last episodes only discarding it when hitting a depression and brokenly stating: "the woman I love is dead".
• Lousy Lovers Are Losers: In order to get Earl Bjarni as an ally, Earl Haraldson gets his young daughter Thyri into an Arranged Marriage with him. Since Bjarni is an old Fat Bastard, both Thyri and her mother Siggy are dissatisfied with this decision. Thyri is repulsed by him on their wedding night, and he's completely uncaring about her comfort and forces himself on her and ends up passing out drunk on top of her. In a later episode, we see him collapsing next to her after sex, with her still looking clearly revolved by him and he complains about her being frigid and unenthusiastic during sex, and threatens to beat her if she remains that way. Thankfully for her, the alliance is rendered moot when Haraldson is defeated, and her mother saves her from her Awful Wedded Life by personally killing Bjarni.
• Lovable Rogue: Ragnar is a plunderer but he knows limits and is an affable guy.
• The Low Middle Ages: The show spans over two centuries of early medieval European history.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Vikings are often seen with their circular wooden shields. They hammer on them with their axes before battle. Most battles involve shield wall tactics.
• Made a Slave: This happens to Athelstan and the monks of Lindisfarne that were spared during the raid.
• Made of Iron: Invoked when Ragnar gives Björn the nickname "Ironside" due to the fact that during a battle Björn was in the thick of the fighting and did not suffer any wounds.
• Magic Realism: The series as a whole makes a point of the fact that the characters subscribe to the notions of divine predetermination and fate, so the things that happen to them are to a certain extent preternatural to them. This adds to an epic, mystical feeling that calls back to the Eddas that inspired the show.
  • Ragnar has a vision of Odin and Valkyries after a battle in the first scene of the show and more throughout the series. Other religious characters have religious visions pertaining to their own faith. It's deliberately left unclear whether they are supernatural visions or if they're just hallucinating.
  • Aslaug's prophesies, such as about Sigurd's eye.
  • The seer as a whole. He makes a number of prophecies that are quite accurate, but also frequently refuses to answer some of the most pointed questions. It's also implied that he's several hundred years old.
  • Athelstan has several Christian-themed visions, such as bleeding stigmata, demons, and angelic light. He is momentarily blinded by one vision, which causes his final confirmation of his Christian faith.
  • Floki has a vision of one of his mastheads bleeding, which he takes as a sign from the gods.
  • Harbard the Wanderer. Aslaug, Helga, and Siggy all have the same dream of his arrival. He seems to have magical powers and may or may not be Odin or Loki.
  • Just when a Berserker is hired to kill Björn he suffers an attack from a bear. A coincidence, or did the Berserker send his spirit animal after him?
  • After Ragnar dies, flocks of ravens circle the skies much like with Ragnar's religious experience in S 1 E 1 and all of his sons are visited by a one-eyed figure in a black cloak and know at once that Ragnar is dead.
  • When Ivar dies halfway across the world, Floki reacts as if to a sudden chill or pain.
  • Ingrid's curse of blindness apparently works.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Princess Kwenthrith claims that the father of her son is Ragnar. This claim is put into question by almost every single character that hears it for the first time. It's eventually revealed in Season 4 that they never had sex, so such a claim would be impossible.
• Mama Bear: Lagertha threatens to rip out Athelstan's lungs if harm comes to her children while he looks after them. And then, after being informed of Horik's intent to kill Björn and his young brothers in the Season 2 finale, she is absolutely vicious in her attack against Horik's wife and his soldiers, killing anyone connected to the king or who may have been involved in the plot.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • Earl Haraldson tries, though he is often stymied by his pessimistic assumptions that all men are as greedy and underhanded as he is.
  • King Horik and Jarl Borg both far outclass him in Seasons 1 and 2, although Ragnar manages to outsmart both of them.
  • And in Season 3 Ecbert and Ragnar leave them all in the dust.
• Mask of Sanity: Kjetill Flatnose wears it quite well until he lets a Slasher Smile crack it open in episode 5.17 and proceeds to murder Eyvind's family in cold blood.
• Mauve Shirt: Erik Marteinn, who looked set to be The Big Guy in Ragnar's team, gets killed in Episode 4.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's not entirely clear where the Magic Realism ends and real realism begins. Many characters have experiences they believe are supernatural, but it's never confirmed to what extent those experiences are real. Of particular note is the Seer, whose prophecies all come true, but are often vague enough that many outcomes would fit the wording of his predictions. People call him out on this, but the Seer refuses to say more when people press him for details. When flat-out asked whether the gods actually exist, the Seer responds only with laughter. Ragnar seems to put the issue to bed near the end of Season 4, where he gives a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to religion in general and denounces the gods and religion as dangerous fantasies, except that that scene itself has supernatural elements.
• Meaningful Name: It is noted by Björn that Floki has a name that sounds like Loki. He resembles the trickster god's role in many ways: a close ally to the hero on his travels, as Loki is to Thor (Ragnar, in this case); not a muscular warrior, but his intelligence is of great help (Floki is an engineer and imparts important advice to Ragnar); frequently causes mischief and trouble (needlessly burning down the monastery, causing a battle by ripping a crucifix off a soldier). In Season 2, he openly associates himself with Loki and names his daughter after Loki's first wife. In Season 4, his punishment for killing Athelstan is pulled straight from what happened to Loki for killing Baldur — caught in a river, chained up in a cave to be tormented by dripping with only their loyal wives to avert their torment.
• Men Get Old, Women Get Replaced: Over the course of the first four seasons, about 20 years pass. Main male characters such as Ragnar, Floki, Rollo and King Ecbert all visibly age over this time, while female characters such as Lagetha, Aslaug, Helga and Judith show no signs of aging.
• Mercy Kill: Athelstan mercifully slits the throat of a bishop who the Vikings had tied up and are firing arrows into.
• The Millstone: Horik becomes this to Ragnar. He goes back on a deal with Jarl Borg, which jeopardizes their upcoming raid and involves Ragnar in a pointless and costly feud with Borg. He sabotages Ragnar's negotiations with King Ecbert and then leads the Viking force into a trap. At first he is motivated by Revenge Before Reason but by the end of Season 2 he is actively conspiring against Ragnar.
• Million Mook March: Oleg parades what he calls a "small part" of his army outside his palace, which is an exceptionally well drilled and well equipped. They just keep marching and marching until they are seen starting to leave Kiev to join with the main force which is then revealed to be an army number in at least ten thousand.
• Mushroom Samba:
  • Athelstan seems to hallucinate when the details of Ragnarök are told to him. It might have something to do with what they put in the fire to make it smoke.
  • Ragnar's group eats mushrooms at the Uppsala temple. We see some of Athelstan's trip from his perspective. Humrously enough, the mushrooms themself look suspiciously like chanterelles, and not psylocybe semilanceata.
  • Ragnar eats "Chinese medicine" (probably opium) and has a surreal, hallucinatory experience.
  • While suffering from a fever, Lagertha hallucinates Ragnar's execution in which she stands in for multiple bystanders.
  • Hvitserk goes into a near permanent state of delirium due to excessive drinking and eating of mushrooms.
• Never Learned to Read: All of the Vikings (except Floki who knows runes), which is Truth in Television since Real Life Vikings were illiterate and unable to record their own history, especially in the earlier years of paganism. The only main character who can read or write is the Anglo-Saxon monk Athelstan.
• New Era Speech: Oleg gives one in season 6 which is extremely reminiscent to the one given by Saruman in the film adaptation of the Two Towers. It even has Ivar standing in for Grima Wormtounge feeling despair over the realization that he has condemned his people to genocide.
• Noble Savage: The show had this tendency towards the Norsemen, especially in season 1 and 2. While the show makes little attempts to whitewash that vikings lived on Rape, Pillage, and Burn, their society is shown to be more free and enjoying life more than the Christians'. As the more "civilized" people they encountered are being shown as engaged in incest and SM (the Franks), cannibalism (the Muslims) and genocide (the English and the Rus) while the Norse have free love and equal rights for women, it's not hard to realize which culture we are supposed to identify with. In season 6 when the Norse encounter an even less "civilized" people, Native Americans, the latter are shown as the most friendly and peaceful people in the show by far (with Floki Going Native happily among them).
• No Kill like Overkill:
  • Ragnar has Horik stabbed repeatedly before delivering a deathblow himself and then pummeling his corpse with head-butts and nearby objects.
  • A random soldier gets impaled with two swords and runs around for some time before he dies.
• Non-Action Guy: In spite of being Ragnar's wife and the descendant of heroes, Aslaug is one of the few adult female characters who is not a shield maiden and has no skill in fighting.
• Not Allowed to Grow Old: Applied to some characters but not others, which grows more noticeable as the series progresses:
  • Other than changes in wardrobe and makeup, both Lagertha and Aslaug look exactly the same by the time of the timeskip midway through Season 4, even though by that point both have sons who are grown men. Lagertha's hair finally goes grey (all at once) in season 5.
  • Rollo remains exactly the same through season 4. By season 5, however, he's finally gone grey and is looking rather older, on top of suffering the pains of age.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • "Sometimes your God sounds like one of our gods." The similarities between Norse, Anglo-Saxon and Frankish cultures are occasionally remarked upon.
  • Ragnar establishes in the beginning of "Yol" that despite having an opposite social standing with Yidu, they are both entrapped by their positions.
    Ragnar: In my world, I am constantly torn between killing myself or everyone around me.
    Yidu: I am a slave. So I have the same feelings.
    Ragnar: [chuckles] A king and a slave. It is both our duties to serve others, whether we like it or not.
• Off Screen Moment Of Awesome: The Great Heathen Army's defeat of the Northumbrians.
• Oh, My Gods!: We been to Hel and back!
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Norse chanting, in this case. During the second Viking raid, a song by Wardruna is played using authentic Viking-age instruments. It features men and women chanting quotes from the rune poems in Old Norse about how wealth is the joy and source of discord among men and the path of the serpent. This chanting becomes more and more common as Season 2 progresses.
• Omniglot:
  • One of Athelstan's most valuable traits, both to the Vikings and King Ecbert. Thus far, it's been shown that he's either fluent or semi-fluent in reading, writing, and speaking Old English, Old Norse, Latin, Greek, High German, and possibly several other dialects and languages native to the main continent.
  • Rollo receives the translation services of a wanderer who knows the Frankish and Norse languages. He's implied to know a wide range of other languages as the result of his travels.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • King Aelle's brother and King Ecbert son are both named Aethelwulf. However the former only appears briefly in Season 1, whereas the latter appears throughout Season 2.
  • There are two Eriks and one Eirik in the show, but all appear in seasons apart from each other.
• One-Woman Wail: The sacrifices at Uppsala are scored by a single girl singing meaningless syllables. Later in the series it's inverted with Einar Selvik providing several emotional wails.
  • The fight over the beached whale on Greenland is scored by a single man throat singing and then breaking into an ominous humming.
• Only a Flesh Wound: The main characters receive quite a few grievous wounds, but always bounce back to fighting shape.
• Outliving One's Offspring
  • Earl Haraldson's backstory. His sons were brutally murdered, leaving him a shell of a man.
  • Lagertha's, Siggy's, and Helga's daughters sicken and die of a fever.
  • Ragnar comes back to Kattegat to find his daughter and several of his friends dead, rumors of his infidelity have already spread from Götaland causing his marriage to slowly fray apart, and his wife leaving him and taking their son.
• Paper Destruction of Anger: Rollo has a lesson of Old French at court in Paris. The lesson doesn't go well at all. Rollo gets increasingly fluent in Angrish resembling Old French, and then it just escalates to tearing a book page in tiny pieces and crumpling it, flipping his own table, grabbing his teacher by the collar, flinging him across the room, knocking down a chair and storming out of the room.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Rollo. After all his previous Kick the Dog moments, in the fourth episode Rollo is seen giving a sick, old Englishman water instead of killing him (he then steals the cup and pitcher, however) and testifying on behalf of his brother in court, when he could have betrayed him for treasure and a good marriage.
  • Ragnar hides a child from his own men during a raid.
  • Aslaug frees one of her slaves so that her step-son Björn can woo her. It's one of the rare times that Aslaug has an opportunity to do something selfless.
  • Aethelwulf threatens to torture an enemy soldier, but as soon as he's got the information he needs, he lets the man go and even offers him a drink. It's his attempt to distance himself from his Viking allies (whom he has pegged as total savages). In Season 4, he's revealed to be a loving father to his wife's bastard, Alfred.
  • Ecbert's final scenes include him bidding warm and fond farewells to his family.
• Pregnant Badass:
  • Thorunn, in an irresponsible way. If you're pregnant, then going into battle is a bad idea. Ragnar tells her boyfriend just how easily this can go wrong in real life.
  • Lagertha has this in Season 4. It results in her having yet another miscarriage.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: John Kavanagh who plays the blind seer is promoted to the opening credits in Season 4. Same with Moe Dunford.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: All of the Vikings. Their idea of paradise is fighting all day and feasting all night.
• Public Domain Artifact:
  • The Oriflamme. It’s first recorded historical appearance is in the 12th century, but legends place it as far back as Charlemagne’s reign.
  • The mook to the left of Rollo in the opening battle of Season 2,◊ wears what looks like a crude replica of the Swedish Ultuna Helmet.◊
  • The soldiers of Earl Bjarni carries faithful replications of Coppergate helmet. Which is neighter the right place, time or culture.

Q-S

• Rape as Backstory: Kwenthrith was raped by her uncle and older brother, along with numerous men the former brought. This is why she despises her uncle so much.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Rape is always used as a Kick the Dog moment for characters, but Norse culture is ambivalent about it. Rollo rapes a slave girl and is teased as a villain. Knut's attempted rape of a free Norse woman is played as a clear indication of villainy. Our hero Ragnar's only mention of rape is to condemn its use against his wife.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: The Vikings' original intention in England is to simply loot it for wealth before returning home. The more broad-minded Ragnar realizes there's more wealth in its fertile soil and wants to colonize it instead.
• Rated M for Manly: It's a show about Vikings based off Old Norse poetry and legendary sagas.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: The common characteristic of every non-Viking princess on the show. Kwenthrith, Judith, Gisla and Katia are all very pale, dark-haired beauties.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Some viewers complained about Danila Kozlovsky's accent playing Oleg the Prophet, calling it "fake-sounding" and like an American trying too hard to sound Russian. Apparently, they were unaware that Danila actually is Russian and his English is a product of learning his lines phonetically since he's not a fluent speaker.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Floki, the Seer and the shamans of Uppsala wears Kohl eye makeup, as do a number of other characters throughout the series.
• Red Herring: Floki griping about Ragnar to Helga gives credence to his apparent betrayal of Ragnar, but his betrayal was a ruse.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: A defining theme in the series is the contrast between pagan Viking traditions and Christian traditions. Viking customs tend to be more raucous, bloody and aggressive, while Christian customs are more somber, ethereal and reserved.
• Religion is Magic: Ingrid casts spells by invoking the Norse gods along with mixing plants and other things.
• Remember the New Guy?:
  • In season 4, Rollo greets a character called Erik like he is an old friend. Erik only appeared in that episode.
  • In season 6, King Hakon asks Björn if he remembers him from the raid on Paris.
• Rite of Passage:
  • In the first episode, Ragnar's son has become old enough to attend and vote in a Thing. He also pledges fealty to the Earl and receives ceremonial rings. In Season 4, Ragnar repeats the ritual with Sigurd and Ubbe.
  • Athelstan earns the right to call himself a thane after displaying bravery in battle.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Ragnar's death at the hands of the English sets this off for almost all of Scandinavia, with warriors coming from all over to avenge him.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something:
  • Basically any Norse king that has appeared in the show or been mentioned is personally leading his men in the field. If they don't, it's because they are busy fighting elsewhere.
  • King Aelle and King Ecbert are both active in the defense of their realms.
• Rousing Speech: Princess Gisla gives an impressive one that rallies the defenders of Paris during the Norsemen's attank on the walls:
  Princess Gisla: Soldiers! Citizens of Paris! Behold the Oriflamme. Behold the sacred flag of Saint-Denis. Behold the sacred flag of Frankia. Behold, soldiers of Christ. That wherever the Oriflamme is, no quarter is to be given to our enemies. Soldiers, show no mercy. Fight on! (Soldiers screaming) Fight to the death!
• Rule of Symbolism: See that funny V symbol? It incorporates the Valknut, the stripes on a longship's sail and the symbol of Yggdrasil and the blade of a sword to fully encompass the beliefs and traditions of the Norse as a people.
• Russia Takes Over the World: The plot of season 6 involved the Rus' launching a completely ahistorical invasion on Norway.
• Say Your Prayers:
  • King Aelle's brother does this while Ragnar and his men attack his camp, rather than try to rally his soldiers or resist the massacre.
  • Also done by the priests of Lindisfarne when the Vikings invade. This leads to their undoing, as the sound of their prayers causes the Vikings to find their hiding place.
  • In the Season 2 finale, the waterfall scene of Ragnar and Athelstan praying together foreshadows and intermeshes with Horik's invasion of Kattegat. In this particular case, the prayer works.
• Scenery Porn: Viking Age Scandinavia is so pretty...
  • There are those sweeping scenery shots in Episode 8, and also the shot of the temple of Uppsala sitting majestically on a hill. Inaccurate in that Uppsala is flat-land, but damn, it looks gorgeous.
  • The shot of the mountains when Athelstan is first brought to Kattegat. So feral, so untamed, so glorious.
  • Each of the waterfall backdrops in the Season 2 finale are absolutely beautiful.
  • The scenes where Floki discovers Iceland.
• Scylla and Charybdis: Astrid is the lover of Lagertha. Astrid is kidnapped by Harald who then proposes to her. Astrid accepts. When she realizes that Harald and Ivar are going to invade Kattegat and kill Lagertha she tried to warn her-the men she recruits end up gang raping her. Astrid is shown to be pregnant soon afterwards, and thus as a possible result of the rape. Astrid is left with the choice of defecting to Lagertha again and face the wrath of Harald, or risk him finding out of the rape and thus of her secret betrayal and face his wrath.
• Secret Test of Character: Earl Haraldson offers his wife to one of his spies. The man accepts, so the Earl has him executed.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Seer told Lagertha that she would never give birth to another child. Because of this, come the time for the second raid on Paris Lagertha does not take any precautions to safeguard her pregnancy, participating in all the fighting and in the extremely demanding physical exertion of helping move the boats across the hills, resulting in another miscarriage.
• Sensual Slavs: Katia. It's heavily implied that Oleg and Katia are manipulating him to find out what has become of Dir.
• Sexual Extortion: Astrid is coerced into sex with a group of men as she's been threatened by having her plot against Harald revealed if she doesn't submit.
• Sexual Karma: Ragnar and Lagertha, while being firm antiheroes, have a passionate and satisfying sex life. Meanwhile, it's implied that Earl Haraldson has grown impotent in his old age. In Season 2, Siggy rewards Rollo for being a better, more responsible person with sex.
• Sexy Priest:
  • Athelstan has quite a few admirers in the fanbase. And some on the show now, too.
  • Heahmund.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Halfdan is eventually revealed to be this and Lagertha has become one towards the middle of season 5.
• Shown Their Work: One of the problems the show's creators faced when making this was that there are just so few sources that accurately represent the Norse. After all, like the Mongols, their history was written primarily by the people they beat the shit out of. So, the showrunners had to rely primarily on Scandinavian sagas to paint a somewhat factual representation of them. Even so, this show has gotten a lot of things right in regards to history:
  • Ragnar is shown waiting until villagers are at Mass before raiding a Christian settlement. This was indeed the favorite tactic of Ragnar Lodbrok, according to the sagas.
  • The duel between Haraldson and Ragnar, a holmgang, is very accurately represented. Down to Svein's formal recitation of the rules of the duel, and the two parties meeting on a pre-specified plot of land. Even the shields are right, with both men having helpers who give them their shield replacements. The back-up weapon rule is also historically accurate. Historically, early holmgangs did indeed end with death. Though later on, first blood and other such measures were implemented to curb that. The only thing that seems to be missing is that a sheet was supposed to be placed on the ground to mark the area, and four posts were to be placed at each corner of the sheet.
  • Floki's shipbuilding lecture in the first episode is legit.
  • The description of the Uppsala temple is taken directly from Adam of Bremen, althrough that source has been questioned as Adam of Bremen never went there himself. The temple, or a building used for religious cermonies, was probably real but we will probably never know if it look like that. However, it makes nods to reconstructions of the Uppåkra-temple.
  • Way back in the first episode, Ragnar tells Björn the story of how he won Lagertha's hand in marriage — by killing an enormous bear with his spear and strangling a giant hound, the animals who guarded her home. This is taken word for word from the Gesta Danorum as penned by Saxo Grammaticus.
  • In one episode, the Vikings land in England and are mistaken as traders by an official, who they then murder when he attempts to lead them to the Royal Villa of the King so that they may pay a trading tax upon their goods. This entire sequence actually happened according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
  • The practice of a heathen converting to Christianity in order to seal a deal when the Vikings dealt with the Saxons is one that appears in many historical instances. For instance, to seal the Peace of Wedmore, the Viking Guthrum was baptized into Christianity with the Anglo-Saxon name of Athelstan and accepted King Alfred the Great as his adoptive father. The Vikings treating the baptism in a non-serious manner as seen in the show also has some basis in historical fact; the conversions were commonly seen as merely a legal binding, and often did little to reduce the Viking's hold on the areas they conquered in England.
  • Ragnar accurately and beautifully quotes the Runatal, the story of how Odin found the runes by sacrificing himself with his own spear on Yggdrasil.
  • Rollo's tattoos seem to be representations of Sköll and Hati, the sons of Fenrir Hrodvitnir.
  • Rollo's war chant in one of the first battles against the English is closely based on a death poem by Þórir Jökull Steinfinnsson (though he lived some centuries after the events of the show.)
  • Ecbert's desire to become ruler of all England is grounded in reality, as Ecbert made numerous overtures to conquer neighbouring Saxon kingdoms, and actually succeeded in adding Mercia and other places to his domain.
  • There are frequently scenes in which characters are quoting Scandinavian lore. For example, when Lagertha or Aslaug tell bedtime stories, or the seer is trying to make a point clear.
  • The runes Floki carves are accurately depicted.
  • Floki retrieving a sword from his deceased forebear (his father, in this case) for use in his wedding ceremony is true to history.
  • The blót that Ragnar and company attend in 1x08 is portrayed accurately, almost adapted word-for-word from blóts described as taking place in Sweden, like in the Gutasaga or Adam of Bremen's account of Uppsala.
  • The ritualistic washing and nose-blowing in the same bowl that Ragnar's crew participates in before setting sail is adapted from one of the most famous contemporary depictions of Vikings, that of the Arab traveler Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who encountered a group of Rus (Vikings) in the the Volga area in the 10th century and, among many other observations on their looks and customs, describes just such a scene (which he finds quite disgusting).
  • The king or community leader performing the sacrifice. That is as far as we know how it really would have happened.
  • The massacre of the Norse settlers by Christian Saxons depicted in Usurper was likely inspired by the infamous Saint Brice Day massacre where Aethelred the Unready had every Danish settler in England slaughtered, many of whom who were pagans.^note Scandinavia was not fully Christianised at the time, and among those who carried out retribution beside Knut Seweynsson were the infamous Jomsvikings, who were known for being fiercely pagan.
  • In "Breaking Point," a Christian missionary arrogantly declares the Norse gods false and accepts a test involving the handling of red-hot iron bars set by Aslaug to prove the power of his god. This is derived from chronicles of the Christianisation of the Norse, which lionize the missionaries. These chronicles assert that the missionaries were easily able to handle the iron due to the blessings of God and thus easily convinced Norsemen to become baptized. This is referenced in an Imagine Spot contrasting how the missionary thinks the ordeal will go (without him getting burned) and then showing the reality (his hands getting burnt to a crisp).
  • The Anglo-Saxons' belief that the Romans were a race of giants is based on real medieval reactions to the massive and mysterious Roman ruins.
  • Rollo's dismemberment of a captured Mercian soldier's leg and later explanation, "it was the angle of the leg, I couldn't help myself." is taken wholesale from a scene in Fóstbrœðra saga, where Torgeir cuts off the head of a shepherd with almost the exact same justification.
  “He had not done me any wrong, but the truth is that I could not resist when he stood so convenient for hewing.”
  • Ragnar Lothbrok never converted to Christianity in any of the sagas he appears in, even as a ploy, yet the baptism in S 3 EP 09 may contain a kernal of truth as it may be inspired by an instance during Ragnar's siege of Paris. In a nutshell, there was a plague that was ravaging the Vikings' side, and when sacrifices to Odin and Thor proved ineffective in alleviating it Ragnar "questioned" a Frankish captive who suggested that they should try fasting (it was Easter). By sheer coincidence, the plague began to lift as they did so.
  • In the Season 3 finale, the warriors in Ragnar's funeral procession sing the famous 77th stanza from Hávamál's Gestaþáttr.
  • Arabs traveling on trade journeys to Scandinavia? While it was rare and they only got as far as Hedeby, yes that happened.
  • The song Harald and Halfdan sing after slaughtering the farmers is a real Skaldic verse composed by Egil Skallagrimsson when he was six years old.
  • The smith in Season 1 has a replica of a Viking-age cooling stone bearing the image of Loki.
  • Ivar's murder of another boy over a game brings to mind a similar incident from the life of the legendary Icelandic Skald, Egil Skallagrimsson.
  • Ecbert's story of Charlamange weeping when imagening the coming viking age is taken almost word for word from Gesta Karoli.
  • Ivar and Whitehair have each earl under their thumb provide taxes and 60 soldiers for Ivar's army, just like Harald Finehair did.
• The Scourge of God: The Church and some nobles of the kingdom of Northumbria believe the Vikings have been sent by God to punish the Saxons for their sins. Other nobles, however, believe that they might have been instead sent by Satan. And yet others have this crazy notion that they're just savage men come to plunder on their own whims, with no supernatural origin. Ragnar is personally dubbed as this after his conquest of Paris.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: In the second season, Jarl Borg tries again to seduce Rollo into treachery, but Rollo simply punches him in the face.
• Sibling Rivalry: Ragnar and Rollo.
  • Oleg with Askold and Dir.
• Slasher Smile: Ragnar and Ivar often sports these, but the most creepy example is when Kjetill does this to Floki.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Ragnar's favourite type of sex with Lagertha seems to be make-up sex.
• Slobs Versus Snobs: A particularly bloody example. The conflicts between Vikings and Christian Europeans are depicted this way, with Vikings as the earthy, wild slobs and the Christians as the stiff, refined snobs.
• Sliding Down The Slippery Slope: Ivar, though its more like gleefully hopping a sled, and cackling maniacally as he goes faster. Fratricide. Immolation. Force-feeding molten metal. A God Am I. Random, baseless executions. Helping his enemy kill his own men/women, because “he does it well.” Its incredibly difficult to be anywhere near this guy, and not have your life threatened. He even causes Anyone Can Die for characters around since season one.
• The Smart Guy:
  • Floki, the shipbuilder, who designs a state-of-the-art boat that can make the trip to England. He also turns out to have a fair bit of medical knowledge. He's still a Viking, however, so he's more interested in seeing how parchment burns than studying its detailed drawings.
  • Athelstan is probably the most well-educated character on the show. Unlike the Vikings, he can read and write multiple languages as well as speak them, spent time in Charlemagne's court, and displays a great deal of knowledge on cultures and religions outside of his own. By the time of Athelstan's capture in Wessex, he has also become the foremost expert of Saxon blood on the Norsemen, their culture, and paganism in general. And while living there, he also acquires knowledge of Roman battle tactics for good measures.
  • Ivar the Boneless's characterization as being intelligent starts in Season 4, when he is apprenticed to Floki and is shown winning Hnefatafl games at a very young age. He's also later shown playing a game of chess with Alfred, who was renowned in real life for being The Chessmaster.
• Smart People Play Chess:
  • King Horik and Ragnar play Hnefatafl while discussing future plans.
  • Ivar is shown winning Hnefatafl games as a young child to start establishing him as a Genius Cripple.
  • Alfred, the future Alfred the Great, plays chess with Ivar, showing his future as a capable ruler.
• Snake Pit: King Aelle uses a pit of venomous snakes to execute capital punishment.
• Snow Means Death: Siggy drowns in the winter, with snow falling all around her.
• Soap Opera Disease: In Season 3, Ragnar's health starts gradually failing, either as the result of an illness, the accumulation of battle wounds, or a combination of the two. He's in such bad shape that his death is faked and all his family and friends believe it. In the beginning of the fourth season, he's bedridden at home. The "medicine" he takes briefly helps him, but also acts as a halluginagen and is very addictive. After the time skip in Season 4, most of these have healed, but he still seems have a weak back.
• Somewhere, a Herpetologist Is Crying: King Aelle's pit of venomous snakes is actually filled with non-venomous and non-indigenous pythons.
• Standard Hero Reward: Even though she had already refused his proposal, Count Odo clearly hopes to win Princess Gisla's hand after successfully repealing the Viking attack on Paris. When he personally asks her about this, Gisla refuses to give a clear answer and only ensures him that she will be deeply grateful if he indeed manages to defend the city from invaders. Subverted as she ends up marrying Rollo instead, in a reverse of the standard: Rollo gets the princess, then saves the kingdom.
• Stealth Pun: Given how many people wouldn't recognize it. When Ragnar says "when the little pig teaches the boar how to listen," he wasn't calling himself a pervert. The boar is the symbol of the fertility God Frey. Given the scene right before the quote is said, he's saying he's still horny, thus why Lagertha shoves him.
• A Storm Is Coming:
  • Invoked heavily in the promotion for Season 1. In Season 2, before the climactic battle, Aslaug and Lagertha notice storm clouds gathering over Kattegat and state, "The gods are coming."^note The Æsir are also known as the gods of the slain
  • The Seer practically crosses the Despair Event Horizon at the passing of Ragnar, because he foresees the horrors to come. Eventually, the worst of the horrors comes for him.
• Suicide by Cop:
  • Torstein essentially does this after losing his arm, approaching the Mercians alone. He manages to take one of them along with him before being cut down. This insures he'll go to Valhalla under Norse belief, since he died in a battle.
  • It can be argued this is what Ragnar did as well.
  • Happens to Floki and by extension Helgi. Floki takes a bunch a vikings previously entangled in a blood feud to and island at the end of the known world with few resources and attempts to make them an egalitarian society. It does not take long for the old tension to come to life again and Floki is eventually forced to exile at least a half of the entire community. As the exiles are ravaged by disease and hunger, Helgi goes back to find help. He and Floki believe that Kjetill will help Eyvind and the other exiles despite them having antagonized him and killed two of his children. True to Norse culture's demand for revenge Kjetill murders all of the exiles, including Helgi.
• Symbolic Serene Submersion: How Lagertha's transition to Valhalla is visualized.

T-Z

• Television Geography:
  • The animated Scenery Porn Establishing Shot of Uppsala displays the settlement on a mountain. Real Life Uppsala is located on a plain, the only nearby elevations being some burial mounds; appropriately from the Viking Age.
  • Hedeby is located in some sort of valley, not in a danish swamp as in real life.
  • Oleg wants to reclaim the Rus ancestral lands in Scandinavia, which for some reason involves invading Norway. Nevermind the Rus came from Roslagen, a region in Sweden that is even the origin of the name for Sweden in several languages: Ruotsi (Finland), Rootsi (Estonian) and Rusĭ (East Slavic).
• Thanatos Gambit: Ragnar's final raid of England as he wants to die, but wants it to be on his own terms. To wit, he embarks in an ill-prepared expedition he knows is doomed to fail, and then he turns himself in to King Ecbert and convinces him to hand him over to Aella. Ragnar knows that his death at Aella's hands will galvanize his sons into revenge and trigger a Norse invasion of England.
• A Threesome Is Hot:
  • Norsemen seem curiously fond of double-teaming their women.
    • Ragnar and Lagertha invite Athelstan to join them in bed.
    • Floki invites another of Ragnar's raiders to bed with him and Helga.
    • Jarl Borg recalls sharing women with his brother.
    • Ubbe shares his new wife with Hvitserk, even on his wedding night.
  • Ragnar tries to get Lagertha to agree to a three-way marriage arrangement with Aslaug, but gets soundly rejected before he can even hint at a threesome. A scene in Season 2 showing Ragnar waking up next to a naked Aslaug and Lagertha would have implied some Three-Way Sex, but it was deleted from the US airing of the episode.
• Timeshifted Actor:
  • In Season 1, Ragnar's son Björn was played by Nathan O'Toole but is swapped out for Alexander Ludwig after a time skip in Season 2.
  • Ragnar's other sons are all swapped out for older actors in the mid-season finale of Season 4.
• Time Skip: Four years passes between Episodes 1 and 2 of the second season. There are also shorter time skips several times throughout the series, so each season spans about a year or two. The mid-season finale of Season 4 has the largest timeskip to date, with somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to ten years passing.
• To Be Lawful or Good; By law, Ragnar must obey Earl Haraldson and sail east to Rape, Pillage, and Burn. However, he believes that he should do the right thing and sail west to Rape, Pillage, and Burn. He goes to a seer for advice on what to do and the seer tells him that if he can gain the favour of the gods, they will override the laws for him. Ragnar seems to interpret this to mean that if he is highly successful in his endeavor, the Earl will not be able to successfully punish him for disobedience.
• Token Good Teammate: Athelstan is the only completely moral, kind, and non-murderous hero, though he's also the most naïve. He even shows respect and great interest in the Norsemen's religion despite being a devout Catholic priest. As he immerses himself in their way of living however, his virtue begins to dim as he finds himself torn between the humble Christian scholar and the savage Viking raider.
  Lagertha: Then you are still innocent. It does not seem to matter how many experiences you have, Athelstan. In the end, you are still like the young monk I first met.
  • When Ubbe grows up, he becomes this to the sons of Ragnar, being the only son who's morality can be argued is white.
• Together in Death: When Lagertha's funeral barge sinks beneath the waves, she floats down to the sea floor and lays beside the stone figure of Ragnar, then turns to stone along with him.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • King Aelle's brother. At first he seems competent enough, refusing to fight the norsemen where they have the advantage, but then he fails to put sentries around his camp; when the Vikings attack that night, Aelle's brother starts praying instead of going out to fight, and by the time he's done his entire force has been defeated.
  • Yidu threatens to expose Ragnar's dark secret and tries to run off, causing Ragnar to drag her to the water and drown her.
  • Magnus believing that he's invincible and having a casual conversation on the battlefield while his army is retreating. He's shot with an arrow.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth:
  • Gyda, Ragnar's only daughter, dies when the plague hit Kattegat.
  • Athelstan arguably qualifies as this, having been reborn into Christianity before his death in "Born Again". Since he's by far the most morally good character in the series, it's rather fitting.
  • Angrboda as well.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Athelstan in the second season is brave and combat-trained enough to prove himself in battle and is accepted as a thane.
  • Björn ages from a spirited boy to a hardened veteran warrior over the course of the show.
  • Torvi matures from battered wife to shieldmaiden.
• Torture Cellar: Count Odo has one, where he likes to chain and whip women. The women are so eager for his favor, however, that they endure it willingly.
• Tranquil Fury: Ragnar often couples this with Dissonant Serenity when pushed far enough — the situations in which he is personally involved with killing any major character serve to be a reminder that even though he doesn't resort to violence to solve his problems right away, he can be twenty times more merciless than everyone around him when he wants to be.
• Translation Convention: The show will present whatever characters have the emphasis in the scene as speaking English. If there are other characters who speak a different language, it will not be translated. The language that is English can sometimes switch back and forth in a single scene.
• Trappedby Mountain Lions: The Icelandic Arc.
• Trojan Horse: How the third raid on Paris is successful, with Ragnar using himself as the Trojan Horse.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Haraldson's beautiful young daughter is married to an old and ugly Swedish Earl. Until she annuls it with a stabbing.
• Undignified Death: Earl Haraldson's sons are brutally murdered, their heads cut off and set against their backside, and left in a shallow grave as a sign of disrespect for their father.
• The Unfavorite: Sigurd speaks against avenging Aslaug because for as long as he can remember, she treated him coldly while pampering Ivar.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Ragnar tends to keep his plans from others and the viewer, and most of his plans succeed.
  • His plan to betray Jarl Borg goes off without a hitch. Up until the betrayal springs, it's not clear what Ragnar is plotting.
  • Averted with his plan to have Athelstan sacrificed. Athelstan proclaims his Christianity at the last moment, precluding him from sacrifice. One of Ragnar's strongest warriors volunteers instead.
  • His plans to betray Jarl Borg and King Horik are both sprung before the viewer becomes aware of them.
  • In Season 3, he plan to fake his death and use his funeral to kidnap a member of the royal family to open Paris's gates is kept from the audience as well as all of his closest confidants except his son.
  • And earlier, the very detailed and explained-to-the-audience plan to assault Paris fails spectacularly.
  • Rollo's first plan to defend Paris is explained in detail and goes off without a hitch. However, when Ragnar conceives of a plan to move his ships by land and attack in the other direction, he discovers to the audience's surprise that Rollo has also planned for this tactic, and Rollo wins this battle as well.
  • Emperor Charles' plan to cleanse the court of potential traitors is not revealed to the audience. He leads Roland, Therese and the viewers to believe that he is giving Roland the same favor he gave Odo and then some. Then when Rollo is out defending Paris he has the siblings for dinner where they are both promptly murdered.
  • Harald's and Ketill's plan to manipulate the election to make Harald king of Norway.
• Urine Trouble: Kwenthrith micturates on Ragnar, ostensibly to treat a wound.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: The second teaser trailer places the characters under the world tree Yggdrasil and is so full of references to Norse Mythology that one could make a competition out of naming the most. Ragnar is Odin, Aslaug is Freyja, Lagertha is a valkyrie, Athelstan is Tyr, King Ecbert is Fenrir, King Horik is Jörmungandr, Floki is Heimdal, Siggy is Sigyn, and Rollo is Loki. The red rooster is Fjalar and the deer is Dain. The tattoo on Rollo's left arm is of Sköll, the son of Fenrir that chases the sun. Sköll means "Treachery".
• Viking Funeral: Episode 6 has an example, taken almost entirely out of Ahmed Ibn Fadlan's account of the Rus.
• Villain Protagonist:
  • From a modern perspective, the protagonists are Viking raiders who have no problems pillaging, raping and murdering their enemies. In short, they are the aggressors for pretty much 99% of the series.
  • Gets amped up significantly during and after the hand-off from Ragnar to Ivar.
• Wall Bang Her: Astrid has sex with Bjorn up against a wall, with him behind her.
• Warrior Poet: Rollo chants a poem on the inevitability of death to lend courage and resolve to his shield-brothers during a battle with the Saxons. Ragnar quotes the Rúnatal — the story of how Odin won the runes as given in the Hávamál. Historically, the Norse viewed poems and sagas to be very manly.
• The Watson: As an outsider, Athelstan receives a lot of exposition about Norse society and culture.
• We ARE Struggling Together: In Season 4, Ragnar's sons are united in their desire to avenge Ragnar's death but there are clear divisions among them. Björn is the oldest and most respected but he is Lagartha's son and makes no secret of the fact that he will side with his mother over his brothers. Ivar and Sigurd despise each other and their arguments tend to end just short of one killing the other. Ubbe and Ivar are both adamant in their desire to kill Lagertha — with Ubbe being more cautious of it, especially given Björn's position — but both Sigurd and Hvitserk are more aware of their mother's flaws, with Sigurd being out and out resentful towards her, and don't believe that avenging her is worth it at all. In addition, Ivar believes that Ragnar meant for him to be the leader but Björn, an experienced warleader, finds the idea preposterous and is backed by the other brothers.
• We Can Rule Together: The Earl offers to make Rollo his son-in-law and thus presumed heir in exchange for Rollo testifying against Ragnar at trial. Rollo is certainly tempted to take the offer, but in the end supports Ragnar.
• Wham Episode:
  • The show was going fairly smoothly with the tension slowly rising... until "Raid": Earl Haraldson burns down Ragnar's farm and drives him into hiding, captures and tortures Rollo, and marries his daughter off to a Swedish Earl. A good five or six months go by while the characters heal from the damage.
  • Season 3's Born Again has the reveal that Ecbert isn't as friendly as he's presenting himself to be, with him ordering Aethelwulf to kill everyone at the Viking settlement. In Kattegat, Athelstan dies at Floki's hands.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: Ragnar's Icy Blue Eyes.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Floki criticizes Rollo for allowing himself to be baptized by Christians, regardless of the fact that Rollo does it only as a ruse.
  • Lots of people give Ragnar grief for his controversial decisions, including marrying Aslaug and keeping Athelstan around. In particular, no one likes how he appears to convert to Christianity and fakes his own death. It gets even worse in Season 4 when word of the massacre of the Norse settlers get out and that Ragnar knew about this and said nothing.
• Women Are Delicate: Of those attending the blood eagle of Jarl Borg, all of the women except Lagertha, the shieldmaiden, either turn away or faint.
• World of Action Girls:
  • Ragnar's wife Lagertha is a shieldmaiden who occasionally accompanies men on their raids. She's saved Ragnar's life in the past, but he's still protective of her.
  • Horik's wife, Gunnhild, is a shieldmaiden as well.
  • After gaining her freedom, Thorunn trains as a shieldmaiden and fights in raids beside Björn.
  • Torvi grows into becoming a shieldmaiden as the series progresses.
  • Any army involving the Norse will have about 10% of its number made up of unnamed shieldmaidens.
• World of Badass: It's a show about Vikings!
• Worthy Opponent:
  • Earl Haraldson reveals that he likes Ragnar and that Ragnar is not much different from how the Earl was in his youth. However, due to Viking politics, the Earl cannot allow Ragnar to succeed since it would erode the Earl's power base, and he cannot trust Ragnar not to try to usurp him.
  • Ragnar also sees Haraldson in a similar way, in spite of all the grief and destruction wrought upon him by the Earl. After killing Haraldson, Ragnar throws a glorious, bombastic funeral and wake in his honour.
  Athelstan: Why have you agreed to grant Earl Haraldson such a big funeral? Was he not your enemy?
  Ragnar: He was also a great man, and a warrior. He earned his renown in this life. And now, in death, he deserves such a funeral.
  • King Ecbert and Ragnar seem to feel this way about each other, although there is something else going on between them as well.
• Would Hit a Girl: Most Viking raiders rape whatever Englishwomen they can find. Lagertha's second husband abuses her, to his peril.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: We never see Ragnar personally abuse any women, in contrast to many other Vikings. He spares Siggy's life and says nothing when Rollo marries her and Lagertha allows her into his household. When he discovers an English girl hiding from his raiders, he helps conceal her from them. In the finale of Season 1, he seems to consider it briefly when he goes to Aslaug's sleeping quarter with a knife, but leaves her unharmed in the end. He does, however, have Horik's daughters killed by proxy, and in Season 4, he slaps Aslaug when she pushes his Berserk Button by belittling Athelstan's murder.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Earl Haraldson has Svein kill a 13-year-old boy so as to protect the Earl's treasures in the afterlife.
  Haraldson: You've seen enough of this life, boy.
  • Ragnar has Horik's entire family killed, including his many young daughters. Fair is fair, Horik was going to kill Ragnar's young sons.
  • Aethelwulf and his men slaughter everyone at the Viking settlement in Wessex, and there are semi-graphic deaths of a girl being trampled by horses and a boy seeming to escape the raid only to be shot by an archer.
  • Erlendur threatens to murder Torvi's and Jarl Borg's son (which is his adopted son by default) if she does not do his bidding.
• Your Makeup Is Running: Floki's kohl eyeliner runs while he sits with Torstein's body and questions Ragnar about his continued loyalty to the Norse gods.
• Zerg Rush: The Rus foot soldiers are almost as tough as the Norsemen, but not quite. However, there are just so damn many of them. In the Battle for Vestfold they win partly because the forces mustered by Björn, Harald, Thorkell and Olaf are far too stretched out to effectively man the defenses.
• Zip Me Up: The necklace variation of this trope plays out between King Ecbert and Lagertha, in which the former gifts a necklace to the latter and carefully fastens it around her neck (taking the opportunity to touch her hair while he's at it).

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"Each must die someday."

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