Good point— Bjorn could very likely blame his sister's death on Ragnar's betrayal of Lagertha. 

NOOOO!!! I do NOT want to wait a whole year!

I never said I supported Tierney's claims. They were proven to be false. In fact, I don't remember any anthropologists with whom I was studying when this all went down believing that stuff about smallpox, and these were all critics of his methodology and theories. His claim about killers having higher reproductive…

@avclub-d980b15d49101608dc407770f35b1d75:disqus  Probably, but "madness" can be caused by so many things.

@avclub-f2b489efd726db529335e31c83509c73:disqus  "You're going to have to sacrifice something, slave!"

Ha ha! That's exactly why I keep watching it. And, yeah, I was about ready to chop Kenzi's arm off. Pretty dumb not to tell anyone. Also, I do want to commend the show for finding a way to keep Dyson shirtless for, like, 3 whole episodes or something like that.

Season 1 and 2 were big surprises for me: I loved them! Great writing, interesting characters, woman-centric story. Season 3 was a big disappointment. What happened? This is a show about a bisexual succubus and there was, like, practically NO sex all season? I feel so cheated.

Viking society was organized around patrilineal clans. Their economic system was primarily agricultural, with trading and raiding providing crucial supplements. Inheritance and descent was (obviously) through the father's line, and all important political power was with men.

Well, come on. How interesting would a scene be where the characters are talking to trees?  ;)  (or is that just my experience?)

I think the show does a pretty decent job making accurate material choices vs. artistic license, based on the relatively scanty evidence we have of Viking material culture. The literary descriptions of Vikings (both from Viking sagas and from older non-Viking sources) are far richer than actual archaeological…

He's definitely going to have a hard time one-upping this role in the future. First the poor guy has to live down the Calvin Klein model rep, now he has to live down an iconic portrayal of the most badass Viking on TV, ever. Kinda feel sorry for the guy if he isn't up to the task.

I know. We want Ragnar to act like a contemporary American or European man and comfort his wife and so forth. I think it's to the show's credit that they seem determined not to pander to us that way, and instead, further Ragnar's character as a man of his time and culture. As well as Lagertha. Women lost more children…

Actually, there is at least one contemporary account of male Vikings wearing eyeliner. And bleaching their hair (using lye) to a fashionable blond or red-gold shade.

Well, yeah, most of the "mad kings" came in the post-syphilis era, so it's possible. But both genomic studies of the syphilis spirochete and studies of skeletal populations in the New and Old worlds definitely are starting to add up to a post-Columbian introduction to Europe. So, the "mad" kings would have to be…

I totally agree with that. How could Ragnar even let that happen— his bosom buddy and one of his best warriors? I think it was intended to show us the the certainty all the Vikings had in the power of sacrifice, and I guess it did that. For Ragnar to sacrifice one of his best warriors was, indeed, a much bigger…

Glad you like it. You should check out all his posts. Jonathan Marks has a great blog.

Mead's work was of its time. Some of it is dated now, and nowadays anthropologists are more sensitive to how how they portray a culture. That being said, Mead's work in New Guinea shows she's no slouch and no sloppy fieldworker. She may have overemphasized the sexual permissiveness of Samoan society, but I bet she was…

I think what he's saying is pretty much spot-on. Except, even most biological anthropologists nowadays repudiate sociobiology. Yeah, there's a few holdouts, but for the most part, you won't find many anthropologists of any of the subfields who agree with sociobiology. In their investigation into Tierney's claims, the…

Chagnon got what he asked for. I don't think what happened to him was a "disgrace". He made outrageous claims that he couldn't support with facts, and this is what happens to people who claim to be doing science but aren't doing it right.

Actually, there's a recent article in American Anthropologist that totally debunks Freedman's claims about Mead. Here's a nice explanation of exactly why most anthropologists now regard Chagnon's work as dubious, at best, and probably very poor science at best: http://anthropomics.blogspo…