It's really hard to place this time period. The narrative opens with the sacking of Lindisfarne in 793, but then Ælla is king of Northumbria, which he shouldn't be for another 50ish years. I understand dramatic license, but it would be nice to have a clear indication of whether this is (primarily) the 790s or 840s.

The writers have been VERY loose with historical accuracy for people with their hands tied.

I'll add this to my ever growing file of people calling realistic things unrealistic because they've clearly watched too much other, unrealistic, TV…

And the Mongols were the only people attested to use flaming arrows with any sort of regularity. Flaming crossbow bolts were more common, but at the point in history of the show, the Church is still doing a pretty good job of keeping that technology out of everyone's hands. That'll last another couple centuries or so.

'Sassenach' hangs on in Scotland, too, where it tends to be applied to Lowlanders by Highlanders as well. Which makes considerable sense, since Fife and the rest of the southeast were ultimately conquered and settled by Saxons/Angles.

I read reviews months, sometimes years after they are put up and always read the comments, too. Sometimes I respond because I figure I can't be the only person who does that!

Sacred Band of Thebes, based on the premise that male lovers fighting together will fight harder to defend each other and won't break ranks. Worked great until they got surrounded and fought to the last against Philip of Macedon.

Wouldn't surprise me. Early Germanic tribes were as well, and before them the Celts were notorious for wife swapping as every man wanted the strongest sons and didn't particularly care if they were genetically his. At least so said the Romans, who were appalled and affronted.

It's best to think of a Jarl as equivalent to an Earl. The strongest Jarls would have been similar to Dukes (or Marquesses), but in the early days the hierarchies weren't so clear cut in Scandinavia - it wasn't really a feudal system at all.

Don't leave out extorting, terrorizing, and eventually settling, taxing, and trading.

No knights in Anglo-Saxon Britannia. That was just a guy on a horse. Well, Sheriff on a horse. If you somehow transported a knight several hundred years back in time and put him on that beach, you can be darn sure he wouldn't have dismounted to have a chat. He may have tried talking, but he'd have stayed on his mount.

As an English-speaker, Frisian makes my brain want to turn inside out trying to understand it. It's a very disconcerting sensation. It's not helped by the fact that if I see it written, it falls into that area of actually being able to understand 50-60% of it and therefore being able to muddle through.

I've always read that the closest 'living' relative of English is Frisian. I, and several other people I know, can't stand to listen to Frisian, because our brains insist it must be English and we should understand it, but we can't, and the effect is incredibly disorienting.

I haven't seen it, but I do want to point out (late to the party, I know) that a galleas is an actual type of ship - basically a smallish galleon fitted with oars, which may not be outboard at all times. They're bigger than and don't really look like galleys.

Aaron's body weight still isn't that odd if you realise that turning the lights out doesn't throw us back to the Dark Ages but rather to 1850ish. It'd be 1880ish but they don't really have the trains and steam-power infrastructure back up and running again. Give it another decade.

And his wife struck me as young. Not Charlie-young, but young enough that she may not have had to kill anyone right after the blackout. She may have had guardians to do that for her, while sheltering her from the reality.

I know I won't change your mind, but still… that 'militia' was about 20 guys, mostly barely older than kids. A few had muskets the rest just had swords. They probably had very basic training in the use of their arms and they were effectively ambushed by three fighters who truly were seasoned. They didn't have the…

It's been many years since the blackout and we were told in the beginning, if I remember correctly, that most of the city inhabitants either had to flee into the countryside or starved. It's made clear many times that most people died in the early days.

That and Southern Indiana is more or less a part of Appalachia. Unofficially. Especially the eastern side of the southern part of the state.

Not just to Detroit, though. During both World Wars, munitions plants located along the rail lines linking Chicago to South Bend, Indiana, and to Indianapolis hired tremendous numbers of workers out both Appalachia and the Ozarks. So many, in fact, that it fundamentally changed the culture in both Starke and Marshall…