Vikings (Season 1)

[selenak]

The dvds for the first season (consisting of nine episodes) just were released here in Germany, I heard some positive murmurings, and so I decided to go for it. Overall verdict, based on the first season? I liked it, and it improved my opinion of Michael Hirst's writing abilities for historical subjects, hitherto something of a mixed affair. (I

Comments

[vitruvian23]

There was some silliness in the first season about none of the Norsemen being sure that the British Isles or anything else existed to the West, when there'd been trade routes and invasions for centuries and millennia prior, and getting their form of government wrong in making it more 'divine right of kings' than the crude mix of democracy and semi-feudal aristocracy it really was. http://www.dailytargum.com/inside_beat/tv/historical-inaccuracies-in-vikings/article_fdfc4670-8c3d-11e2-93df-001a4bcf6878.html
Still a fun show for all that, though.

[selenak]

Re: the former, agreed, but I don't remember "divine right of kings" being used anywhere in the first season. In the pilot, Jarl Haraldson has to ask for hand signs of the men attending the Thing, and both he and later Ragnar make their way to the top by defeating the previous Jarl, not by inheriting the office. Haraldson only mentions Ragnar's supposed descent from Odin in a moking way, not as something that entitles Ragnar to any office.