Vikings 1x4 Reaction Early Access!

Earl and Jarl are different pronunciations of the same title

:) So glad you guys are getting into Vikings :) We knew you would! :)

Kristy

Hey guys, make sure you are watching the extended version of the episodes on blu-ray. They add a lot more extra scenes with dialogue and story.

Lord_EAA

Earl is Anglo Saxon and Jarl is old norse. Means pretty much the same thing

Shane King

Eric finally taking away that toy was the victory we all needed to see. About your conversation in the beginning, I think it's heavily implied that Lagertha and Ragnar was inviting Athelstan to sleep with BOTH of them. From what little we know (and it is very little), Vikings didn't really condemn men having sex with other men - at least as long as they were the 'active' participant it was no problem at all. A man acting effeminate, etc, was scorned and seen as unmanly (and they had specific words for it as well), but for a thrall (slave) like Athelstan, that's hardly a problem, since he's already seen as a second class citizen. There's even some evidence that Vikings had male prostitutes (though they were of course then of a very low class in society, usually slaves), and there are records of rape being used in pillaging against both men and women to humiliate the enemy. Not really progressive, as some would like to put it, but they certainly had an awareness of homosexuality, words for it (for example ergi), a mentality about it, and it wasn't taboo or condemn in the same regards that Christianity later did. Some of the mythic (male) heroes in their lore as well as the gods had stories where they had sex with other men, and the gods in general kind of fuck around with gender roles quite often (most notably Loki, but occasionally also Odin). History ramblings over (I wrote essays on this. I can't help myself!) As for the rest of this episode - fuck yes Knut is dead, and fuck no Eric is dead, basically. :( Though the battle scene was pretty awesome, Lagertha got to be a badass and Rollo wasn't a complete asshole, I guess. Poor Athelstan stuck with babysitting duty with grumpy kids. I know the feeling, I've just been at a summer camp taking care of 40 kids. The Seer is an interesting character. Whatever his look is and what he's doing has basically no historic basis, but he seems to perform some sort of Seiðr or Sejd, which is an old norse type of sorcery which involved falling into trances and contacting the spiritual world and such. It was mostly performed by women, and considered women's magic. There were male performers of Seiðr, but they were seen as unmanly (ergi). Funnily enough though, the greatest performer of Seiðr was Odin, who learnt it from the goddess Freyja (who was a great sorceress as well). Loki calls him unmanly because of this in one of the old poems (to which Odin basically goes "Look who's talking". Lokasenna is a FANTASTIC poem). About how tall the Vikings were. It is actually true that most medieval scholars wrote about how scary and tall the Vikings were, so they're definitely basing that on actual sources. Now, whether that's true or not or just used, as you discussed, to emphasize how scary they were, I don't know. Some of the skeletons found are on average taller than your average British skeleton from the same time (which make them a bit shorter than the average person today). This goes into more detail. <a href="http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/vikheight.shtml" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/vikheight.shtml</a> Really enjoying revisiting this series with you guys. I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to the history stuff, so I do end up pointing out small things they get wrong, but they do get a LOT of things right as well, which is amazing.

JojoInSpace

You guys gotta keep in mind this is BEFORE the medieval age, by about 100 years or so, therefore weapons like Longbows are not in use, as with most Medieval warfare which you guys know (an awful lot) about

I knew these guys would like this show. I told them as much in my letter to them in mailbag 46. The one where they started eating Joy's kitkats lol

Jon Dub

All these comments have been made previously but because I am a nerd I will comment them again. This takes place about 400 years after the fall of the Western Roman empire and English Longbows were not invented for about another 500 years. Great reaction though guys, I love how into this you are getting. Guys please be really careful when researching the actual history of this time period. Its very easy to run into show spoilers.

Drew