We can only hope! She totally needs to open Jarl Lagertha's Finishing School for Shield Maidens and train up some sword-wielding Viking women to replace some of the men Ragnar and Horik have lost. and I would pay extra to listen to the dialog they come up with for blustering grease-ball (and Dark Ages Ron Jeremy…

I'm not totally sold on the Stockholm Syndrome explanation, although Athelstan's very deep internal conflict is making for a great character arc. We're assuming Athelstan WANTED to be a monk when that's not necessarily the case. Sons of noblemen tended to get told what their future would be by their fathers. The…

And the award for Worst Viking Step-dad Ever goes to…[insert name of Lagertha's new husband, I'm going with "Jarl Duffusson"]
You win this lovely certificate, a pair of baggy, stripey pants from furthest Byzantium and, as special bonus — this axe to the head.
No one hits Lagertha and lives, asshole.

He's just Floki. (OK, there's really no such thing as *just* being Floki, but you get my drift.) In the season opener Borg and Rollo were doing the full-on berserker thing — getting hopped up on magic mushrooms and working up a battle frenzy so that they happily waded into battle half naked, didn't feel much when they…

Well most entertainment-based depictions of archery have a built in "post-English longbow" slant. The 6-foot war bow that helped tear the French to pieces during the 100 Years War is still several hundred years away from the period Vikings portrays. That bow had amazing stopping power and could drop a man with one…

OK, ladies and gents, the betting pool is open. Lagertha's new husband is an idiot and clearly will not survive the season. I just can't figure out who is more likely to kill him first Bjorn or Lagertha herself. So, like Viking Clue, pick your assailant, pick your weapon and pick by which episode he'll be worm food.
I'm…

Ragnar's Native American name is apparently "Hides Behind Goats"

So the click bait title for this episode would be "Ragnar Puts a Ring on It" I guess…

They would have had a fairly hard time understanding each other, although not impossible. Ragnar's folks would have been speaking Old Norse, which is a North German dialect that developed somewhat in isolation in Scandinavia. Anglo-Saxon as spoken in England at the time was a West German dialect (Netherlands and…

They were aiming for Northumbria (essentially Yorkshire) but got blown south. Ecbert/Egbert had been pushing the boundaries of the Kingdom of Wessex steadily eastward prior to the arrival of the Danes so it's not unreasonable for them to arrive in territory under his control, even though Essex or East Anglia would…

I think Athelstan's pending internal conflict is going to be one of the most interesting things to watch play out this season. 'Am I a Christian or am I truly an Odinist now?' 'Am I Saxon monk or a Viking warrior?' 'Which vow shall I honor, the one to the church of a God that appears to have abandoned me or the one to…

Best image of the episode, and a blink-or-you'll-miss-it one at that, was Ragnar on the ship with giant freakin' raven perched comfortably on this shoulder like that sort of thing just happens every day. Talk about being an avatar of the All Father! And, yes, Athelstan covered in blood accepting his arm ring from…

The "turtle formation" is a pretty universal and common sense response throughout history of guys with shields to an enemy using missile weapons. Not nearly as organized or drilled to perfection as the Roman testudo formation, but effective none the less. The Anglo-Saxons are not being portrayed as the world's…

I'll be interested to see just how many of Ragnar's sons they eventually work into the story line. In both the historic record and the heroic sagas there a good many. Hopefully that means we get at least a third season of Vikings because otherwise they're going to have to do some TARDIS-grade time leaps to age them…

Well, Rollo and Jarl Borg were both hopped up on magic mushrooms and doing the whole berserker thing, so I think we can allow for a bit of artistic license on that one. (I'll need to check some non-Wikipedia sources to confirm if it is reliably believed to be 'shrooms or spiked liquid that the berserkers consumed…

I can totally see Ragnar pulling another "Sacrifice" choice on Athelstan — asking him to decide who he would go with, and then telling him with his trademark mix of impishness and menace that he would have made him stay anyway. Obviously from a screenwriting perspective that's going to that well one too many times.…

Ragnar's farewell to Gyda broke my freakin' heart. I thought it was a lovely and very raw personal moment in the midst of Vikings' well orchestrated blood-letting and political scheming.The weird camera work blurring everything around Ragnar had me waiting for Gyta's ghost to appear—and I would have been fine with…