S01.E01: The Greenlanders

[nodorothyparker]

Streaming 02.24.22

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Plotting to avenge a massacre in England, Viking armies converge in Kattegat - but siblings Leif and Freydis exact a different kind of retribution.

 

[magdalene]

Promising start I thought. I like the three main characters.  Besides the name dropping of Ragnar, etc. and the location of the first episode being Kattegat I don't see much of Vikings in it.  Which is understandable, different writers and it's over a hundred years later and times have really changed.  If you know history and timelines Leif and Harald meeting doesn't work. So I am going to have to just see them as fictional characters. I had to do that in Vikings which gave us Ragnar and Rollo as brothers.

I had an odd sense with this first episode of something coming to an end which I always appreciated about the Vikings - the freedom Viking women had. You could see it so clearly with Freydis. There is rage and the thirst for revenge but no victim-hood, no shame and no cult of virginity.

Sigh. The coming 1066 doesn't just mean the end of the Viking Age it also means in a very real way the end of freedom European women had for a very long time.

[arachne]

On 2/25/2022 at 11:14 PM, magdalene said:

The coming 1066 doesn't just mean the end of the Viking Age it also means in a very real way the end of freedom European women had for a very long time.

Ironic, that. Didn't the Normans start out as Vikings themselves?

[magdalene]

15 minutes ago, arachne said:

Ironic, that. Didn't the Normans start out as Vikings themselves?

Indeed, they famously did.

[ChelleGame]

On 2/25/2022 at 10:14 PM, magdalene said:

Promising start I thought. I like the three main characters.  Besides the name dropping of Ragnar, etc. and the location of the first episode being Kattegat I don't see much of Vikings in it.  Which is understandable, different writers and it's over a hundred years later and times have really changed.  If you know history and timelines Leif and Harald meeting doesn't work. So I am going to have to just see them as fictional characters. I had to do that in Vikings which gave us Ragnar and Rollo as brothers.

I had an odd sense with this first episode of something coming to an end which I always appreciated about the Vikings - the freedom Viking women had. You could see it so clearly with Freydis. There is rage and the thirst for revenge but no victim-hood, no shame and no cult of virginity.

Sigh. The coming 1066 doesn't just mean the end of the Viking Age it also means in a very real way the end of freedom European women had for a very long time.

I love everything about this post. So on point.

[peridot]

I thought Freydis was after her hookup's brother, not his sidekick.  I hate to think that the introduction of Christianity caused all the schisms among the Vikings.  Even with the English, Christianity is used to feel superior to others, never as a positive thing.

The massacre was terrible.  Why wait one hundred years to do it?  As the guy said, some of the people don't even know their original language.

[iMonrey]

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The massacre was terrible.  Why wait one hundred years to do it?  As the guy said, some of the people don't even know their original language.

Aelthelred was told the Vikings were going to kill him, by some historical accounts. It's unlikely all the Danes in the Danelaw would have been killed however. More likely just the settlements closest to London. 

[nodorothyparker]

Revisiting this in anticipation of the second season since I've got the time this weekend.

Aethelred (known historically as "the Unready") did allegedly fear for his life. But the more likely reason even from a quick skim of the history of the time is that the Viking young had been increasingly raiding their Saxon neighbors for years at this point, not all of them happy to live as sedate Danelaw farmers on a tales of a more glorious past. This not surprisingly made Aethelred look weak. So it was a political move as much as anything to attack what historians agree were probably mostly border settlements that nevertheless got the attention of the leaders back in Scandinavia.

As for the story itself, there is a real sense through this episode of a civilization at a crossroads, that some have already fully embraced the Christian onslaught and some are still holding on to the old ways for dear life, understanding that has the potential to fracture their army and everything that makes their society Viking. Exhaustion over another heroine introduced mid rape revenge backstory aside, Freydis is easily the most developed of the three leads. Anachronistic Harald mostly seems like someone quick to recognize and jump on an opportunity, while there's very little sense of Leif beyond dude's clearly got some fighting skills.