Some women do know they are pregnant within a few days. It feels different.

If a lot of refugees poured into Herman areas, some would also go to Denmark and Scandinavia. They would also displace some of the natives and the ripple would again go north. Populations did move about a lot, in big wagons like houses on wheels.

It's been explained lots of times on these comments that women in that period were very close to equal with men. They owned property, could divorce, kept their children, and could go to law to get redress if a man behaved badly.

Subtle? Seems like a pounding sledgehammer to me. Every week, sin, sin, sin, hell forever!
It is after all the _only_ religion in the world that teaches permanent hell. Everyone else has a boot camp where you pay off your debts and move on.

@avclub-61a248da6f2fe360248477e1dafcd44c:disqus "Like Athelstan, I cannot truly understand the motivations of these people"
Ah that explains why you keep pushing Athelstan as the point of view character for us all, and saying the Viking world is so alien. "these people" speaks volumes of you distancing yourself.

It's a hybrid of the two periods.

Yes Lagertha would have ruled in her husband's place in his absence. In societies where lords went away to fight - which was most of them before about 1500, wives or mothers were routinely regents. They judged court cases, collected taxes, and defended property.

It held n in the Welsh kingdoms too SAES = Saxon = English.
SAES still means English people today.

A neat simple way to make the villain more realistic and interesting would be to make him simply JEALOUS. Old bull young bull. Also economic rivalry which was dadly serious.

Not so different mate. Rich old men still marry hugely younger women - you think the new USA President's wife didn't get heavy pressure from her family to accept him? They'd want their girl to have money and comfort which would also leak to them.

I'm puzzled why Dennis Perkins the reviewer thinks that Athelstan's point of view is less alien than Ragnar's?

There's a whole lot of discussion here about rape and I agree it's a very difficult issue as Vikings (not the Norse, the ones who did viking) did rape.

Dennis you said "Obviously no one (meaning me) is suggesting that rape doesn't occur all too regularly in our society. I guess I just don't get your point there."
Trying to say this gently. I think that as you don't live with the standard risk of rape and sexual assault you don't feel the same way about seeing it on…

Am thinking that a long handled axe swung around gives much greater reach than a sword. So a Viking could smash several Saxons who couldn't reach him. He might be downed by a thrown weapon but Saxons didn't do spears much AFAIK.
Spears are also a further distance weapons thrown up and overhead. If an axe wielder is…

I don;t know how it applies to armour but Saxon England was wealthy - thus the rich stuff found in the churches, the leasure to support scribes (non productive work which didn't produce food or tools) and expensive materials like parchment and even vellum. The colours used in manuscripts were some of them expensive…

Quick correction " long bows, but they're not quite English longbows (which are over 6 ft., and weren't first attested to until the 15th century)."

Saxons were no better at fighting or organisation than Celts. They took over by force of numbers. There were some mega plagues which killed off a lot of native/ Celtic people, leaving land unoccipied or with too few to defend it.

Excellent analysis - it's ALFRED not Albert, mate.

That wasn't a "lady' but a slave. To be a slave meant your body was at the service of the owner family. There was nothing unusual about a slave girl being used by several men in the family. In their culture this was normal. Ragnar did the same with a Chinese slave.

A good episode and I liked it much more than last week. Last week was very much a frozen, holding op. This week we're moving on.
The brothers' connections are genuinely interesting. Good different characters coming out. Bjorn solid, sensible. Ubbe also strong, good at mediating Ivar. Hrovitske seems the weakest, least…