Ragnar Lodbrok

Ragnar Lodbrok ("Hairy-Breeches", Old Norse: Ragnarr Loðbrók) was a semi-legendary king of Sweden and Denmark who reigned sometime in the eighth or ninth centuries. According to the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus, Ragnar belonged to the Swedish Yngling Dynasty. Both Saxo and Icelandic sources describe him as the son of Sigurd Ring, a king of Sweden who conquered Denmark, but they are divided on whether Ragnar mainly resided in Sweden or in Denmark.

Although he is something of a hero in his native Scandinavia, reliable accounts of his life are very sketchy and heavily based on ancient Viking sagas. Even the dating of his reign is not certain; there are sources that date it from 750–794, and others from 860–865. Neither matches with what we know of him, and he probably held power as a warlord from approximately 835 to his death in 865, perhaps only being recognized as king in the last five years of his life.

Life

Ragnar was a pagan who claimed to be a direct descendant of the god Odin. One of his favorite strategies was to attack Christian cities on holy feast days, knowing that many soldiers would be in church.

Raids

He spent most of his life as a pirate and raider, invading one country after another. He would generally accept a huge payment to leave his victims alone, only to come back later and demand more riches in exchange for leaving. But as the extent of his realm shows, he was also a gifted military leader.

France

By 845, he was a powerful ruler and most likely a contemporary of the first ruler of Russia, the Viking Rurik. It is said he was always seeking new adventures because he was worried that his freebooting sons would do things that outshone his own achievements.

In that year, he sailed southward, looking for new worlds to conquer. With 120 ships and 5,000 Viking warriors, he landed in modern France, probably at the Seine estuary, and ravaged West Francia, as the westernmost part of the Frankish empire as it was then known.

Also in 845, Paris was captured and held ransom by a Viking raider, whom the sagas say was Ragnar Lodbrok. The traditional date for this is March 28, which is today referred to as Ragnar Lodbrok Day by certain followers of the Asatru religion. The King of West Francia, Charlemagne’s grandson Charles II "The Bald", paid him a fantastic amount of money not to destroy the city. Ragnar Lodbrok, according to Viking sources, was satisfied with no less than 7,000 pounds of silver in exchange for sparing the city. However, that did not stop Ragnar from attacking other parts of France, and it took a long time for the Franks to drive him out.

England

After he was done with France, he turned his attention to England. In 865, he landed in Northumbria on the northeast coast of England. It is claimed that here he was defeated in battle for the only time, by King Aelle II of Northumbria. Aelle's men captured Ragnar, and the King ordered him thrown into a pit filled with poisonous snakes. As he was slowly being bitten to death, he was alleged to have exclaimed "How the little pigs would grunt if they knew the situation of the old boar!"

Legacy

One Viking saga states that when his four sons heard the manner of his death, they all reacted in great sorrow. Hvitserk, who was playing tafl, gripped the piece so hard that he bled from his fingernails. Björn Ironside grabbed a spear so tightly that he left an impression in it, and Sigurd Snake-Eye, who was trimming his nails, cut straight through to the bone.

Ragnar’s fourth son, Ivar the Boneless soon learned the details of his father’s death and swore that he would avenge his father’s killing, in time-honored Viking tradition. In 866, Ivar crossed the North Sea with a large army, met King Aelle in battle, and captured him. He sentenced him to die according to the custom of Rista Blodörn, an exceedingly painful death.

Also directing his attacks against England, Ubbe, another of Ragnar's sons, accompanied by his brother Hingua, led an attack on the monasteries of Bardonnay and Croyland, and in the Monastery of Medeshampstede his army slew 80 monks, according to tradition. It is also held that Ubbe sacked York at one point, and eventually captured Edmund, King of Mercia, and was granted the lands south of the Tyne and north of Nottingham. There is also a belief that some Ubbe's descendants were among the Vikings who eventually settled in Normandy.

Although this story may not be accurate, like virtually all tales concerning Ragnar Lodbrok, his death had serious consequences. Ivar was the mastermind behind the attacks on the English mainland in the final quarter of the ninth century. He invaded East Anglia, and the following year attacked York. He was aided by the internal struggle for power in Northumbria—which he was of course responsible for by killing Aelle. These wars were a prelude to the long struggle of the Saxons of Alfred the Great against the Danes a generation later.

Meanwhile, in France, the Vikings kept coming back for more booty. Among their feats was destroying the city of Rouen several times. Ultimately, many of them settled there permanently, in a land that became known as Normandy (for "Northmen", as the Franks called the Scandinavians).

Mythology

Bragi Boddason is said to have composed the Ragnarsdrápa for the Swedish king Björn at Hauge. However, this does not correspond to what we know about the historical Ragnar. It is consequently said that in the Norse sagas, he was identified with a Swedish king Ragnar (770-785), the son of Sigurd Ring. According to legend, he married Aslaug and became the son-in-law of Sigurd the Völsung.

External links

Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda and Ragnars saga loðbrókar in Old Norse from «Kulturformidlingen norrøne tekster og kvad» Norway.

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