Vikings - Season 2 (spoilers)

This is one of the top three shows being produced currently. Anyone who hasn't seen it... this is a must watch!

Loved in the last episode when they asked that nutty ship builder if he could be trusted with a secret and in his usual creepy way he answered, "no."

 

It blows my mind that he's the brother of Eric on True Blood.

In his own way, he's as good, however. Daddy must be so proud!

I do love this show. Speaking as a medieval historian, it has the most bizarre mix of Getting Things Right and Getting Things Terribly Wrong I've ever seen, which is entertaining in its own right. And the stories are extremely compelling.

And it looks like we get the Blood Eagle, which should be fun! (It is generally considered to be a myth, but at least it is a myth from the Middle Ages and not a modern myth...)

 

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I love this show... but I haven't started watching season two yet. I've got them all saved on my Tivo. I think I will probably wait and binge-watch all of season two some rainy weekend day. The thing is, I can't remember a bit about what happened in season one, other than that I loved it.

Season one was a show I watched same day... usually with just an hour delay.

 

I'm much more into season 2 than season one. I love the new sub-plot with the King and Ath delving into the mysteries of the ancient Romans in Britain. It must have been intriguingly mind blowing for the curious to see the remains of an ancient greater civilization's art by-products.

Remind me to ask nicely before attempting to unlace Lagertha's bodice.

 

Siggy set the standard to which today's schoolteachers aspire

 

What are some of the things they are getting wrong? Certainly not challenging you, just genuinely curious.

 

Well, the huge one is nobody knowing about England. When they were talking about some fabled land in the west, I assumed they meant Iceland/Greenland/Newfoundland. England was always known in Scandinavia, and you don't need the kind of special boats to get there that you need to get across the ocean (and which they built in the first season). And getting from Scandinavia to England isn't a major challenge (at least not in the summer, when the waters are generally good; winter is another matter). In fact, if you look at a map of the North Sea, it would be almost impossible to miss...just go southwest until you hit land.

Roman culture was also never forgotten in England. They got right, however, the fact that it was much more a living thing in Charlemagne's France than in England, where it was more the exclusive realm of churchmen and educated noblemen.

 

Love these posts on actual history even as I enjoy the alt-universe TV show

 

Yeah, I've come to the conclusion that they know the history quite well, but aren't gonna let it get in the way of a good story.

E.g., the story of the troubles the Vikings went through to get to the New World is exciting, but what happened when they got there was pretty boring. The story of how they got to England is boring, but what happened when they got there was exciting. So...mix-n-match! Wall-to-wall exciting!

And that's OK. It's a bit startling at times when you know the history, but they're certainly telling a good story. And a lot of what they're doing is pretty accurate (I like, overall, their portrayal of Norse society, although I think they need to make it clear that King Horik isn't THE king, he's just A king, and probably not a very important one).

 

This sentence actually tells me quite a bit. I was having trouble figuring out his place in things. He certainly isn't being treated like I would expect a king to be.

 

Did anyone else think that Bjorn was in the barn when it went up in flames? Since they made a point of where the slave girl was sleeping, I thought he may have gone in the barn for some horseplay.

 

Generally, Jarls/Earls are local leaders who rule because they're able to protect their followers and give them loot, and Kings are Jarls/Earls who are able to exert authority over other Jarls/Earls. Horik doesn't seem to have anything to bring to the table, which is strange. I hope where they're going with it is he's a guy who used to have real power, but no longer does and is getting by solely on reputation; sooner or later, probably sooner, everybody will realize the emperor no longer has any clothes and all hell will break loose.

Eventually, Scandinavia developed more European ideas of rule, with lordship based on heredity and kings who actually ruled nations. But that was long in the future of this show's period, after (and largely inspired by) Christianization.

 

Well, I didn't even know that Jarl was a title. Ragnar isn't referred to as an Earl nearly as much as Jarl Borg is. I have always assumed that was his name.

 

"Jarl" is the Norse word for "Earl." It seems a little odd to me that they use both in the show for Vikings, but they might want to avoid confusion when English Earls enter the mix. Although an English Earl is a much, much more powerful man than a Norse Jarl, so...

Medieval titles are confusing anyway. My biggest academic paper back in my professional historian days argued that when medieval writers used "earl," "duke," etc. to refer to the early Viking rulers of Normandy, it meant a lot less than what modern people tend to think.

 

Count Jarl, Duke of Earl.

(Count is another word for earl/jarl.)

(I knew a guy named Jarl once.)