Vikings (TV series)

Judderman said:
Who is watching the Viking series? I'm somewhat surprised there is no thread on it here. It is very popular. It is not strictly fantasy.... but there is very little fact in it, and there is plenty of mythology referred to. I have just binged through the first four seasons and the first part of the fifth in the last month or so. It is overall a superb series!

It would be nice to know what of it is factual (or close to fact). It seems the main character and his family are .
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I watched the first season, I liked it a lot, for some reason it did not pull me it, tho, I am going to watch more of it , sometime up ahead. Maybe because, even with it's a totally different setting (alternate universe) Game of Thornes saturates my 'clashing swords bin'.
 
Al Jackson said:
I watched the first season, I liked it a lot, for some reason it did not pull me it, tho, I am going to watch more of it , sometime up ahead. Maybe because, even with it's a totally different setting (alternate universe) Game of Thornes saturates my 'clashing swords bin'.
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What? There's a saturation point for that?
 
REBerg said:
What? There's a saturation point for that?
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There certainly was for me. Vikings just got too over the top with violence. ---- As I mentioned up thread it was "The Eagle" episode that killed the series for me.
 
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I am also not a fan of that horrific form of execution, which seems to be reserved for top Viking enemies.
I am a fan of massive clashes of armies swinging swords, axes and any other conceivable instrument of mayhem. I keep wondering how anyone engaged in hand-to-hand combat like that, when a fatal blow can come from any direction, survives.
I watch these battles in much the same way as I watch the regulated, ritual violence of an NFL game. Minnesota's Vikings are a tad tamer, but they still have helmets. ;)
 
The Eagle episode was the end of a low period for the series. There was a few episodes that dragged, and that one was over the top. But it improved again after that.
 
REBerg said:
I am also not a fan of that horrific form of execution, which seems to be reserved for top Viking enemies.
I am a fan of massive clashes of armies swinging swords, axes and any other conceivable instrument of mayhem. I keep wondering how anyone engaged in hand-to-hand combat like that, when a fatal blow can come from any direction, survives.
I watch these battles in much the same way as I watch the regulated, ritual violence of an NFL game. Minnesota's Vikings are a tad tamer, but they still have helmets. ;)
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It is an interesting thing about warfare. When I looked back at WWII , made in WWII, movies I did not find a one that felt realistic. Not until 1949 and the movie Battle Ground did it feel right. Later years HBOs Band of Brothers and Pacific nailed it, Saving Private Ryan too, there may be some other recent ones too.
Going back in time, seems battles are hard to portray , the 1993 Gettysburg is good tho no cigar.
For swords and spears I thought Game of Thrones Battle of the Bastards is about the best I have ever seen.
We will never know what Kubrick had in mind. the big battle in Spartacus , 1960, has the best set up I know of , but Kubrick had plans for an elaboration that we never see, they just ran out of production time and budget.
I thought the big battle in the recent Outlaw King was good but a bit lackluster.
I think it is hard to make hand to hand combat look real enough to be engaging.
 
ctg said:
No. It's continuation of the last season. Check it out. Like REBerg said, it was a year long midseason break.
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It was so long since the last episode was aired that I thought we were on a new series. That and the elaborate Bjorn recap which seemed to be to make up for all the time in between for those of us with faulty memories.:ROFLMAO:
 
clovis-man said:
It was so long since the last episode was aired that I thought we were on a new series. That and the elaborate Bjorn recap which seemed to be to make up for all the time in between for those of us with faulty memories.:ROFLMAO:
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Yeah, it's not the first time they've done it either. Vikings is one of those series that just suddenly pops back into the schedule and before you realise, it's gone. :sneaky:
 
I knew that Catholic Church priest were blood thirsty but them slashing out on each other, I would have never guessed. Not in a million years. Maybe what the Vikings is showing us is something that they never wanted to reveal to the greater public. After all CC's image is painted in purity, but the acts that were committed in the name of Lord weren't.

Vikings continues to shock and entertain from a season to another. It doesn't care if it loses big names in the course of the series, because every episode brings new insights to the period that has been mystified for a long time. Maybe some of this has been dramatised, but it's doesn't take far stretch of imagination to realised that eleven hundred years ago times were very different.

It is also intriguing to watch Vikings breathing life in the Myths of England's first king, Arthur. Not the one that was born to rule Camelot, but the one that was raised up in swamp, but the one that united them all, and gave the birth to one of the greatest empires on Earth.

I also enjoyed Björn Ironside bonking the upcoming queen, just because he could. It makes all of this more believable. Not the opposite.
 
What was the late Bishop Cuthbert thinking? Threatening to expose Heahmund's seriously non-celibate ways and thinking that a small up-the-sleeve dagger was enough to protect him from an angry, battle-hardened swordsman? Cuthbert was certainly in a position to have a security squad of helmeted thugs at his disposal. His was a death well-deserved.
Perhaps less deserved was the death of Margrethe. Sure, she had asked Hvitserk to kill Ivar in the crazy belief that she would then become queen; but she was obviously mad as a hatter and could have been left in her isolated cabin with little fear of doing harm.
This episode was unusually sexcapade-centric -- Lagertha's trysts with Heahmund, Freydis' forceful acquisition of a sperm donation, and Bjorn breaking in King Arthur's bride-to-be. I hope they return to a little more action of the sword and ax variety as the season continues./SPOILER]
 
King Alfred not King Arthur :)

Having just finished The Last Kingdom series I am finding it hard to adjust to the more fantastical Vikings. I will give it another week or so and dive back in because I do so love this series.
 
Or spamalot?

Ivar was easily convinced about the pregnancy cause, but he is somewhat delusional.
Are Hegbert and the brothers going to save the throne?
 
Why is that there are either complete nuts or calm and collective, smart people in the English Royal families? It has gone like that forever and again. Why there are no middle ground?
 
5.13 A New God
I think I'm not going too far out on a limb by concluding that Ivar's new queen is a bad influence on the lad.
Freydis seems to easily convince Crazy Ivar that he is a god, which serves as a convenient explanation for how she has become pregnant -- immaculate conception.
Freydis' move to tie up the loose end to that story, having the guy who actually planted the seed strangled, was more than a little dumb. She should done the deed herself. All she did was create a new loose end.
Ivar's celebration of his divinity rivals the antics of Caligula. Will he dare sacrifice Hvitserk? Does a new god really need to sacrifice a brother to be initiated to the Norse God Club?
He's not Ivar the Boneless. He's Ivar the Bonehead.
I find the scenes set in England less interesting than events in Norway and the Iceland storyline to be of no interest at all.
 
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