2. Ragnar Lothbrok and the Siege of Paris

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It's spring 845 a.d. We're on the river Sen the broad waterway that winds through northern France

A fleet of 120 Viking longships moves majestically along it

They are manned by 5,000 warrior sailors

Although fitted with masts for now the ships are powered by the muscle of their crudes great oak oars pull against the current

A man stands at the prow of the leading vessel is piercing blue eyes scound the terrain ahead

A sword hangs from his belt

His red woolen cloak is held by an ornate golden brooch marking him out as a man of wealth and status a

YAH

an important chieftain

His name is Ragnar Lachbrock

Ragnar is flanked by his most loyal followers

They wear the gold arm rings he has given them to secure their allegiance and as a reward for their support in previous campaigns

Oats sworn upon them are sacred

As the fleet rounds along slow bend

Ragnar sees what he is looking for

A huddle of honey-coloured buildings that seem to emerge out of the river itself

As they draw closer he can make out the uneven line of the old Roman walls

partially fallen into disrepair

Here and there bell towers rise into the sky

It is the object of Ragnar's expedition the jewel in the crown of the West Frankish realm a city right for Punder

Paris

But before Ragnar can lead his men through the city's streets

He must confront the army of Charles the bold king of the West Franks

Charles has split his army into two divisions

One on each side of the set

The soldiers stand in disciplined ranks waiting for their orders the sun glinting on their armor

Ragnar waves his options

If he sells his fleet through the middle of the enemy Charles his archers can rain down flaming arrows upon him from both river banks

But Charles has made a huge tactical blunder

The force drawn up on the right bank is much larger than that on the opposite side

The Frankish king wants to protect the Abbey of Sandani an important Christian shrine with its wealth of gold and silver

Naturally he assumed Ragnar would target it

But Ragnar is not a man to be outthought or outthought

Instead he decides to attack the smaller weaker division on the left bank

With no bridge across the river here the soldiers on the other side will be unable to come to their comrades aid

Instructions are issued Ragnar skippers expertly manipulate the tillers which are mounted on the right hand side the boats harps

The steon boardy or steer board from which we get our words starboard

In silence they drift into position

And then as the Viking longboats are pulled ashore down river the Frankish archers unleashed a blizzard of arrows

But this holds no threat now for Ragnar Lothbrock

He is out of range with his acolytes around him. He throws himself into the midst of the fighting

His keen stare misses nothing he identifies those in the opposing army who are fighting most skillfully and

Direction's men not to kill them but to take them captive

The action is brief but intense

From the other side of the river Charles the bold and his men watch helplessly as the smaller division is routed

Many are slain others flee into the countryside

By the end Ragnar has taken

111 of the bravest Frankish warriors captive for the Vikings

111 is a magical number

But he has not spared them

He intends to turn them into another weapon to use against his enemy a weapon of terror

Ragnar has the captives dragged to an island in the middle of the river

He then calls upon his god Odin to receive the sacrifice he is about to offer

With a hands tie behind their backs the men are hustled to a line of trees and full view of Charles's remaining army

A new cis place to round each man's neck and

One by one they are strung up

King Charles and his soldiers can only look on as the men ride and kick the air until all 111 of them are hanging lifeless

Utterly demoralized by the Grimm spectacle many Frankish soldiers deserve

Leaving the great city of Paris practically undefended and fully at the mercy of Ragnar's men

I'm Ian Glenn from the Noiser podcast network. This is real Vikings part two

Oh

But let's go back in the last episode we heard had the Viking attack on Linda's fun

The seizure of its religious treasures had left Anglo-Saxon England reeling

The devastation visited upon a remote unguarded monastery not to mention the slaughter of its inhabitants is unprecedented

Dr. Prager Vora

The Viking raid was a

Bolt from the blue the idea that there could be a seaborn attack of the kind that happened in

793 is astonishing in general in this period when bad things happen. It's considered a punishment from God

The Linda's farm raid is followed by others

The Abbey at Montgomery Mouth Jarrow also in Northumbria is plundered in 796

While in Scotland Iona Abbey in the inner hebrides is repeatedly hit

Island 2 is the target of Viking aggression

Starting with the monastery at Wrathlin Island of Montenday County, Andrew

There are raids in Inishmari and Inish boffin with St Patrick's Isle County Dublin attacked in 798

The shock waves reverberate throughout Europe

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough

Never before has such a terror appeared. You know these inroads from the sea

Professor Elizabeth Row

And so these Vikings are described as terrible ferocious. They kill Christians. They desecrate monasteries

There is nothing good about them. They are entirely bad characters

The Vikings are the ultimate disruptors

Their greatest weapon is the terror they inspire

Even in those who have not yet suffered at their hands

Every day monks and villagers in coastal communities scour the horizon for the sudden appearance of the distinctive dragon proud boats

And no matter how fervently they clutch at their prayer robes

Willing these bogements to keep away. There's no question. The world has become a more frightening place

But it's not just the remote monasteries of the outlying British Isles that are under attack

Across the channel the very heart of chrysanthem is about to find itself plunged into a war against these marauding heathens

Up the end of the eighth century

mainland Europe is dominated by the kingdom of franquia

Which broadly covers modern-day franse the low countries

Germany and northern Italy

The King of the Franks, Charles I, sweeps all before him

Conquering territory and converting pagan tribes to Christianity

We know in better as Charles the Great or in French

Charles Le Magne

Charles Le Magne

He's the grandfather of Charles the bold from our opening Paris raid

With fair hair and a drooping moustache beneath the prominent nose

Charlemagne is a charismatic and physically imposing man

Radiating strength and a serene confidence in the righteousness of his actions

He sees himself as God's anointed ruler on earth

His reign has been impressive

Under Charlemagne, franquia has developed into a sophisticated and cultured society

Bastion of the faith and center of western civilization

Charlemagne oversees an era of prosperity

Building towering cathedrals and establishing his royal capital at Arkham

A town which sits today on the German Dutch Belgian border intersection

Other Christian kings, such as the Anglo-Saxon ruler, King Offer of Mercia

view him as the model to which they aspire

To his loyal subjects, he is both wise and just

And as far as the church is concerned, Charlemagne can do no wrong

He is the man

And so, in the year 800 on Christmas Day

Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor

His Carolingian realms will be the basis of a new, revived, and holy Roman Empire

He is the first emperor in the west for 300 years

Charlemagne's power and prestige are now absolute

Revenue from every corner of the expanding Carolingian domains swells his coffers

For Charlemagne, conquest and Christianity are inseparable

In converting the heathen masses and taking over their lands, he is carrying out God's will after all

It follows that those who defy him are defying the Lord Almighty

And it is a position that will bring him into direct conflict with those pagans that sit on the empires northern border

Those Viking kingdoms of Scandinavia

It won't be long before the Vikings discover what Charlemagne's other enemies already know

But behind the emperor's mask of Christian piety lies a ruthless, tyrant capable of acts of barbarous cruelty

In 782 in a forest near Verden in what is now northern Germany

Charlemagne's men conduct an execution of nobleman from the province of Saxony

This is not a discrete killing

It's a mass murder, a slaughter on a biblical scale

Four and a half thousand men led into the woods to be richly beheaded

And they're crime

They are being sacrificed for clinging to the old ways the old pagan gods

The emperor even chops down their most sacred shrine

It's called Ehrmanzel

A wooden pillar dedicated to Woden, the Germanic variant of the Norse god Odin

In the most emphatic terms forged in blood

Charlemagne has lain down a marker

A warning to anyone who would resist both the loving embrace of chrysanthem

And the beneficence of his rule

With Charlemagne it's not a question of gentle missionary work

It's a question of political conquest and enforced Christianity

And a strong state that needs to demonstrate its strength through violence

News of the massacre of the Saxon nobles, the bloody verdict at Verden

As it becomes known travels fast

It reaches the court of King Ziegfred in Denmark

He's been sheltering the leaders of the Saxon resistance

Denmark as a unified country doesn't exist yet

Ziegfred is just one of several chieftains competing for dominance

But their collective reaction is one of outrage at the brutality

Meted out to their fellow followers of Odin

It's also tinged with fear

The dread realization that the Danes may well be next in Charlemagne's sites

For the Danes the Frankish King's ruthless crusade to conquer and convert

represents an existential threat

paganism is not just a matter of faith

It's the basis of the Viking chieftains power

In the pagan belief system the best afterlife goes to men who die in battle

These are the men who get to go to Valhalla

And so if the Danish kings want men to fight for them

Then traditional Norse belief system is what's going to get those men to fight to the death

Rather than Christianity which has a very different idea of the afterlife and who is going to go to it

For the Vikings their religion is a fundamental part of life

They experience the divine every day wherever they go

Their gods are not abstract ideas

They are living beings who walk the earth alongside men and other supernatural entities

Professor Stefanbrink

It was an animistic religion

The landscape was considered charged in different ways

trees, wells, hills, mountains, groves etc

Could be sacred and worshipped

Offer water in the form of wells, rapids, lakes etc

Were kind of interfaces in the landscape

Where people could communicate via offering rituals with the deities and also the ancestors

Lars Brownworth

There was no priesthood, there was no holy scriptures or anything who's decentralized

There was a famous story of a Swedish Viking being asked, who do you worship?

Then he says, I worship my strengths

At the head of the Norse pantheon are two families of gods

The Asa and the Varnier

Although they had once fought each other

The Asa and the Varnier now live together in Asgard the realm of the gods

Asgard exists in the sky above Midgard

Middle earth, the home of men

A divine rainbow bridges the two worlds

Below the earth is hell, where those who have not been fortunate enough to die a glorious death spend the afterlife

Spelled H-E single L

This is not the same sort of place as the Christian hell

It's not known if the words are related but there is no sense that Viking hell is a place of punishment

The great Odin is the head of the Asa family, husband of the goddess Frig and father of Thor

According to the legend, Odin hangs himself on the sacred tree of Eggedrasil

equivalent to the Saxon monument which Charlemagne pointedly destroyed

Odin embraces death and returns for the ability to read

He also sacrifices one of his eyes so that he might gain another kind of vision

The ability to see everything that happens in the world

Wisdom and knowledge are clearly important to the one-eyed or father

But Odin armed with his spear gun near is also the god of war

He rides an eight-legged stallion and is closely associated with the Valkyries

In keeping with their name which means choosers of the slain

These warrior handmaidens pick out those who will die a glorious death in battle

Gladden armor the Valkyries ride across the sky towards the fray

They are demonic embodiments of carnage and mayhem

The Viking spirit given female form

Then there is Thor the mightiest of the gods

Who rules over the weather summoning storms and dispensing thunder

His trusty weapon is the hammer Mjolnir

A popular symbol for armulets throughout the Viking era

If Odin is the god of wisdom and foresight

Thor represents the indomitable power of brute force

He is a formidable warrior

The shape-shifting trickster Loki seems the hardest to pin down

A spiritive mischief and chaos he is promiscuously bisexual

And could even switch genders both fathering and giving birth to monstrous offspring

These children include your manganda the gigantic serpent encircling the earth

Loki will ultimately betray the gods and fight on the side of their enemies

The Yutna in Ranyarok the battle at the end of the world

It's the only religion I know of that has an ending

You know like Ragnarok was the end like the wolves chasing the sun and moon would one day catch it

And then all the world would be plunged into eternal darkness

And the gods would die and it's incredibly pessimistic

The vanyar branch of the gods meanwhile is headed by Nyead

Like Odin Nyead is associated with wisdom but also fertility

He is the father of frayer and frayer

God of sun and rain frayer has dominion over the fuels

His sister frayer is the goddess of women and childbirth

The

The row call of Norse gods is almost endless

And then there were minor dates as supernatural such as Alvar, elves,

dwarves, giants etc. And they were very important ingredients that we find in the

mythological saga

Somewhere between gods and mortals exists the heroes of mythology whose stories are told in the

sagas men like Ragnar Lothbrok

But if you cut through the bewildering multiplicity of gods

supernatural beings and mythological heroes

You come to a very simple and powerful principle at the heart of the Norse religion

A good life is one which ends in a good death

To die in battle heroically would give you a fast ticket up to Odin and to Valhalla

And if they were a heroic warrior they could spend the afterlife having fun and by fun they meant

Fighting each other in the day and in the evening had a fantastic banquet in the Valhalla Hall

Eating the pig, swine, serimner, every evening and every morning he just resurrected and became alive again

That was the ultimate fun life or a warrior

This outlook then provides the basis for the Viking code of honor and places Viking paganism on a collision course with Christianity

From Charlemagne's point of view the spread of Christianity is inextricably bound up with his political power

Once Charlemagne shuts down the path of political conquest and forcible conversion

There's really no way to go back from that

There was widespread resistance to the conversion and Charlemagne responded with equal or greater force

Killing thousands of people whatever the exact number was or may mean them having a hand cut off something like that

And so it's necessary in his view to show the unbending power of Christian kingship

Remember there is no such country as Denmark not yet

But the threat from Charlemagne prompts the rival chieftains across Jutland and the islands to lay aside their differences

By the year 804 the unite under one king

Goodfred

proving that there is nothing like a common enemy to bring people together

And Godfred turned out to be a really effective military leader against the Frankish threat

Goodfred is credited with rebuilding the d'Arnavac or Dane work a 20 mile protective earthwork stretching across the Jutland peninsula

Along the border between Denmark and old Saxony

We often think of Vikings as the aggressors the violent marauders who conduct lightning strikes against defenseless victims

In some ways it seems the Vikings are no different to other people

They value peace and security at home just as much as anyone else

But goodfred knows that the best form of defense is attack

Being a true general he doesn't challenge Charlemagne directly

He will instead hit him in his pocket

Before Charlemagne rejrew the map of Europe

Denmark has been part of a trading network extending across the North Sea and the Baltic

It stood at the crossroads of lucrative trade routes passing from both east to west and north to south

The enforced christianization of Saxony and neighboring areas has disrupted that flow

What's more, the pagan Danes have found themselves excluded from many important trading hubs

Not part of the cosy christian club which has led to a significant loss of income

In response goodfred plans a brilliant counter strike

The year is 808

The place is Reyrik a major trading settlement or imporium on the southern edge of the Baltic Sea

It's a natural harbor in the north of present-day Germany

Near what is nowadays the port of Rostov

Reyrik is one of those lucrative markets from which Danish traders have been squeezed

Like many imporia

Reyrik is laid out in a regular grid with streets running parallel to the waterfront

Where traders vote some word and business is conducted

Today is a day like any other

Goods have been traded raw materials, textiles, foodstuffs, metalwork, beads

And human beings

Silber changes hands

Fortunes are made

Suddenly the peaceful bustle is disrupted

A fleet of longships crashes into the merchant vessels in the port

Viking warriors wearing battle armor and wielding axes clamber across the key side

They run at the waterfront stalls smashing up the tables and goods

Slicing down awnings and terrifying the traders

The intruders rip through the market like a hurricane of literating a shanty town

Eventually the havoc and destruction settles

The merchants' kaura has an army of thugs looms threateningly over them

The mob of north men devise

A man whose clothes and bearing mark him out as a chieftain

A royal even makes his way to the front

At his side is a herald who announces in the local Slavic language that this eminent

personage is none other than Goodfred, King of Denmark himself

With his rugged features and true gaze, Goodfred cuts an impressive figure

His expression is business like one of resignation rather than cruelty

As if to say he didn't want to do this but he had no choice

Through his herald, Goodfred points out that the mighty emperor Charlemagne is incapable of

protecting them take a look around Goodfred's men have just destroyed Reyric with ease

And taken away the traders' livelihoods

This should not have been allowed to happen

And if the merchants do what Goodfred proposes, it never will again

As herald conveys the gist, come with me to a place within my kingdom

where I will protect you so that you can trade in peace and prosper

The merchants' faces register their astonishment

Is this some kind of joke?

Seeing their uncertainty, Goodfred expands on his offer

This is a great opportunity, he says

With his protection they will do bigger and better business than before

Besides, as they can see, their current premises are no longer fit for purpose

Like a classic mob boss, Goodfred has made the traders an offer they can't refuse

As the sun sets, a convoy of merchant men escorted by Viking longships

Begins the voyage north to the port of Jäderby

On the Danish side of the great Danavik

Like a restless sports franchise owner, Goodfred is relocating their entire enterprise

lock, stock and barrel, the very definition of a hostile takeover

This was an attack on Charlemagne's allies, so it's indirectly an attack on Charlemagne

As a result of Goodfred's initiative, Charlemagne appears weak

And the mighty empire of the Franks is shown to be vulnerable

Not only that, but by relocating the traders of Reyrik to his own territory

Goodfred receives a huge financial boost from the taxes they pay

Taxes that would have gone to Charlemagne

This period, early Viking age, as most of the early periods were very violent times

Constant wars and fighting

How was it possible to have a secure trading place

Where traders could trade without being attacked by raiding parties

The king guaranteed the traders a peaceful trade

Under Goodfred's protection, the town of Heideby thrives

It's sort of a proto-urban site that is a place for international trading and for

Crafts work and all sorts of interesting things are going on in a place like Heideby

The 10th century Arabic traveller Ibrahim Ibn Yakuob

A keen chronicler of Viking life

Provides us with a fascinating portrait of the busy settlement

Ibrahim Ibn Yakuob tells us, for example, that women are able to divorce their husbands in this place

And I think he describes it as this town, the edge of the world or the ocean

It's a beautiful way of thinking about it because from his point of view

With geographically and culturally it really is

He also describes things like how both the women and the men wear eye makeup

Sort of cool makeup on their eyes

And he describes their singing he says it's absolutely awful

They sound like dogs howling but worse

Rebriak isn't the only Frankish asset that Goodfred targets

In 810 he sends a fleet of 200 ships to raid the coast of Frisia

Part of the Carolingian Empire which roughly equates to today's Netherlands

He is again showing up Charlemagne's weakness by targeting one of his vassal states

The growing impression is that the Danish force can now strike with impunity

Whenever they like

The Franks don't have ships

Understandably they're a land-based empire

Their armies are foot soldiers and cavalry

And so the Vikings can come and go a lot faster in their attacks

Then Charlemagne can pull his forces together

And move them across the countryside

So we see from all of these actions said

Godfred is really extremely effective and more than a match for Charlemagne

In the end Goodfred becomes a victim of his own success

Emboldened by his power he plans a whole scale invasion of the Frankish lands

It's a step too far for the Danish nobles on whose support he depends

Soon after Goodfred is assassinated according to one version of the story during the dark hunt

But then plot twist four years later in 814

Charlemagne dies too

The twin bonds that held the Danish territories together

The external threat to its existence and the strong unifying leadership of Goodfred are dissolved

Once again the country is divided

After a period of turmoil in 827

Goodfred's son Horig emerges as king of Denmark

Meanwhile in reversal of fortune it is now frankier that is fast ascending into chaos

It is a situation ripe for exploitation

The Vikings are attracted essentially to places that are wealthy and that show weakness

So they see some increased opportunities here as opposed to when Charlemagne was in control

And he was building fortresses along the coast and keeping it in that bay

And so Horig resumes his father's policy of harrying the Franks

In 834 Horig's Viking army attacks the trading settlement of Doorsstad on the river Rhine

Located in the present day province of Utrecht it's a major source of revenue for the Carolingian Empire

Compared to Lindersvarn and the other soft targets

Doorsstad represents an escalation in Viking raiding strategy

The psychological impact on the Franks is devastating

Doorsstad is the equivalent of a terrorist attack on a western financial center today

With Horig's encouragement Viking raiders plunder the region every year for the next fall

slaughtering terrorizing and enslaving the inhabitants

Again without a navy the new Carolingian emperor Louis the pious is unable to defend his territory against these incursions

He hits upon a unique solution

He turns to Viking mercenaries to police his vulnerable coastline

But hiring professional Vikings as coast guards as little like allowing a pack of wolves to look after your sheep

Between 834 and 836 the island monastery of Noir Mutye at the mouth of the Loire is repeatedly targeted

The attacks are so intense that the monks abandon it the Vikings move in and establish a permanent base there

From Noir Mutye they can now control the coast of Brittany and carry out further raids along the Noir

And there is nothing Louis the pious can do about it

When Louis dies in 840

Civil war flares up once more as his three sons fight for control of the Frankish Empire

The Danes once again are poised to take advantage

With their new base of Brittany their actions are no longer limited to coastal raids now

And the amazing versatility of their shallow keeled longships enables them to penetrate deep within Frankish territory

The major rivers of the empire the Senn the psalm and the Loire become conduits of mayhem and destruction

The Viking spirit thrives on chaos and the particular chaos of the Frank's internal conflict draws them like blood in the water attracting sharks

As the sons of Louis the pious deplete their resources fighting each other

Viking bans identify an attack weak spots

Some of them even profit by serving not just as coast guards but as full blown mercenaries for one side of the other

Stoking the conflict extending the bloodshed feeding the disorder

In 843 the Treaty of Adon settles the issue by dividing the Carolingian Empire into three parts

With each of Louis three sons taking a share

Before in the time of Charlemagne and the time of Louis the pious those rulers could command the entire resources

They had the entire empire to draw on to counter Viking attacks

When the empire was divided into three pieces each piece was a much weaker than the empire that had preceded it

It's peace of a kind for the empire

But it's an invitation to create more mayhem for the Vikings

And one of the men to take up that invitation a man whose name will enter the pages of legend

Is Ragnar Ragnar Lothbrok

When talking about Ragnar we have to be careful to separate the historical from the legendary

Ragnar was Danish we don't know much about him personally on the basis of his name

It's possible that he was a member of the royal dynasty of Denmark

But in any case because he was a war leader of a large Viking force

It seems very likely that he was an aristocrat

Possibly a chieftain maybe more likely a yaro the highest level of aristocracy

He appears in several Scandinavian saga sources which are legendary and mythic and have things like dragons and valkarees

And ties to Sigurd the dragon slayer

Ragnar is a king in Denmark and he has these famous sons

Ivar the boneless and Sigurd snake in the eye and Bjorn ironside great names all of them for sure

In Ragnar those things like he kills a dragon and wins a princess

But then he also appears in some other sources from continental Europe and in Britain

Maybe

Perhaps it's a different person or perhaps it's the same

There's a lot when we're talking about Viking history that is sort of on that hazy cusp

Between what we would think of as history something that is historically verifiable

You know with proper dates and evidence versus the more story telling aspect of these legends and myths

So Ragnar well we know if anyone's a fan of the tv series Vikings Ragnar of course is the chief protagonist

But at the siege of Paris in 845 it's said that the Vikings are led by someone called like Reagan Harris

And he's been linked to that legendary character Ragnar Lothbrok

Howdy howdy ho and welcome to fantasy fanfellas

I'm Hayden producer of the fantasy fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things sanderson and i'm steven your bookish internet

Goofball, but you can call me the smash daddy and we are currently deep diving Brandon sanderson's fantasy epic

misborn

But here's the catch

Steven here has not read misborn before that's right hey hey so each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single

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Back on the left bank of the river Sen where we began this episode

Having executed 111 of the bravest Frankish warriors

Ragnar's army sweeps on

Charles the bold watches powerless

Ragnar leads his men towards the ill-deless city

The island in the same where the city of Paris is concentrated

On the way they come across the undefended abbey of surja manda pray

It's too big a temptation to resist

The Danes don't just loot the abbey they take it over and use it as the base for which to launch their Parisian siege

On Easter Sunday March the 29th they enter the city over the pitipan

Conveniently it takes them close to the cathedral of Notre Dame

Another soft target with easy pickings

If Ragnar chose the date of his attack deliberately

He couldn't have picked one more likely to shock the Christian defenders

Their god cannot protect them even on this holy day

The Danes go on the rampage destroying buildings and setting fires

Anyone unlucky enough to get in their ways either killed or taken into slavery

But

But perhaps the Christian god has not turned his back on Paris after all

And the days that follow the Vikings are struck down by a mysterious illness

The symptoms described are similar to dysentery

Many men die and Ragnar can do nothing but watch as his forces dwindle

The pagan warlord doesn't know much about Christianity

But he understands the principle of revenge

Could it be that his blasphemous occupation of the abbey of Sahaja Ma

As aroused the wrath of the holy saint who protects Paris

Is the sickness punishment

Ragnar summons Odin once again

But to no avail his men continue to die

Finally he orders one of the Christian prisoners to be brought before him

And

In desperation he demands the man tell him what he should do to save his army

The prisoner instructs Ragnar in the ways of Christian penance

Advising him and his men to fast

Whether it is spiritual intervention or simply the effect of abstaining from possibly contaminated food

Ragnar's men begin to get better

But the sickness has taken its toll on his army

Fortunately for Ragnar

Charles has had enough of the fighting

He simply wants the pagans out of the abbey and his city back

And we have our first mention of what will later be called Dane Guild

Which is essentially tribute the kings of western Europe start to pay off the Vikings to lead them alone

At least for a season so Charles the bald coughs up 7,000 pounds of silver to get Ragnar and his band

Of Vikings to leave that's a substantial amount of wealth and it turns out not to be a winning strategy

Because this is not you know modern diplomacy

You can't really hold them to their agreement. So buying them off you might get a year, but they'll be back

The problem is and this is something that's monarchs on both side of the channel will realize quite quickly

Paying off the Vikings is essentially like trying to get a stray cat to leave

By feeding it. It's just going to keep coming back and this is very much the Viking tactic

Basically, okay, we'll go away now, but once we've spent all that money

Then well now we know that that's what you'll do

We'll come back and scare you again and take some more. Thank you very much

The concept of Dane Guild

Literally Dane Yield or Danish payment is going to add a whole new dimension to the Viking Age

Not surprisingly Ragnar accepts the offer of good hard cash his army is weakened by war and disease

He was ready to leave anyway

So why does Ragnar lead a Viking fleet 200 miles up the river sand to attack Paris

Of course the need to acquire wealth is a constant in all Viking operations

But there are surely sources of silver and slaves closer to home and less fraught with risk

Paris is an extremely significant choice a major center of both religious and political power deep in the heart of the Frankish empire

The very hazard of the undertaking is the point

Paris wouldn't be a very

symbolic

symbolically important target to choose

Some historians suggest that Ragnar may have believed he was a distant relative of King Horic

And thus had acclaimed to the Danish throne

The scale and ambition of his baritian expedition can be read as a power play a bid for the crown

Alternatively, Horic himself may have encouraged Ragnar's activities

Either way, after the raid on Paris, Ragnar presents himself at Horic's court

Here he boasts of how he defeated the cowardly Franks

He even has a piece of the abbey of Sarjama to back up his claims

But then it seems as though in front of all this boasting before the king

Ragnar himself is finally struck down with disease

And he suffers a terrible and it must have been just horribly embarrassing attack of

Distantry in front of everybody in front of the court and he dies three days later

Not surprisingly this ignominious end is not the one recorded in the saga

According to legend

Ragnar then leads an expedition to England where he is defeated and battled by King Eilah of Northumbria

The proud Viking is captured and as a punishment for his attack is thrown into a deep pit

As his eyes adjust to the gloom Ragnar realizes that he is not alone in there

In the flickering torchlight he sees that the ground is seeding with movement

Snakes

I don't know if he had this pit prepared before or if you can get enough snakes and

Britain to fill a pit of venomous snakes

But the story says that Ragnar is thrown by Eilah into his snake pit

And he's wearing a magical shirt in the saga legend which Eilah has to remove

After the shirt is removed the snake's bite him and he's going to die

His death speech is famous and the sentence that he says

Resonates across the northern world is something along the lines of

The piglets would grunt if they heard about the suffering of the boar

Now Ragnar in that analogy is the boar the dead pig

And the piglets are the vicious sons of Ragnar

His final words are according to the poets

The gods will invite me in

In death there is no sighing the hours of life have passed

Laughing shall I die

Unlike in real life in the great Norse myths

Ragnar achieves an ending worthy of a great Viking hero

Guaranteeing him a place in Valhalla

And it is a death that is going to be avenged

You

In the next episode

Emboldened by their forays the Vikings escalate their raiding

Under the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok a massive invasion force the great heathen army

Overwhelms England

The only holdout is the kingdom of Wessex whose ruler Alfred

Must reconcile with this unstoppable foe

That's next time

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Howdy howdy ho and welcome to fantasy fanfellas

I'm Hayden producer of the fantasy fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson

And I'm Stephen your bookish internet goofball, but you can call me the smash daddy

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic misborn

But here's the catch

Stephen here has not read misborn before that's right. Hey, hey

So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chip and along the way

We'll do character deep dives magic explainers and Stephen will even try to guess what's next spoiler alert

He'll be wrong news flash. I'm never wrong episodes come out every Wednesday

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