Chapter 3
Ragnar Lothbrok
“A cleaved head no longer plots”
- Edda of Sæmund the Wise
Ragnar Lothbrok was undoubtedly the most colorful member of Horik’s court. His surname Lothbrok means ‘hairy breeches’, a reference to a curious pair of hide leggings that he wore into battle and which, he claimed, offered him some sort of magical protection. According to one legend, he made them to win his first wife, who was being held prisoner by a dragon-like serpent. To save himself from its venomous bite he boiled a pair of leather pants in pitch, and rolled them in sand. This unorthodox garment protected him long enough to dispatch the beast and claim his bride.
Ragnar’s actual origins are unknown.42 He became the hero of so many later Viking sagas that his historical accomplishments have become obscured. Stories were told to fill in the gaps, most of them charming, and almost all certainly false. His second wife Aslaug – a woman so beautiful that bakers would let their bread burn while staring at her – was, according to these stories, his equal in cunning. Ragnar, still grieving the death of his first wife, agreed to marry her if she could visit him ‘neither dressed nor undressed, neither fasting nor satisfied, and neither in company nor alone’. She won his heart by appearing naked, but covered by her long hair, having eaten an onion the previous night, and with a sheepdog for company.
These stories would undoubtedly have pleased Ragnar. He claimed to be a direct descendant of the god Odin, which – since Horik claimed the same – was an oblique way of asserting his fitness for the throne. Rule in the Viking world, however, was a question of prowess more than ancestry, so in 845 Ragnar led a force of Vikings in an attack on Paris.
Ragnar was not a simple pirate. He was one of the first ‘sea-kings’; a Viking who gained enough wealth and power through raiding to be recognized as a virtual king. A measure of the respect in which he was held was the size of his force. In a time when ‘armies’ were numbered in hundreds of men, Ragnar commanded over five thousand warriors in a fleet of a hundred and twenty longships.
Sailing south from Denmark, it took the sea wolves just over a week to reach the Seine river estuary. From there, they rowed upstream and pillaged Rouen and Carolivenna (modern Chaussy), roughly nine miles from the wealthy Abbey of St. Denis. His men helped themselves to whatever riches they could find and systematically plundered the fertile districts within easy reach of the river. Rumors of each fresh attack panicked the locals, and they and the monks of St. Denis fled, carrying their relics and valuables with them. However, they were met by the Frankish king Charles the Bald, who tried to stem the flood of refugees by ordering them back to their homes and churches. He had raised an army to confront the raiders, and advanced cautiously.43
Ragnar presented the king with a difficult choice. The Viking was well known for his blitzkrieg-like tactics to keep his enemies off balance, and only fought when the odds favored him. If Charles approached on one bank of the river, Ragnar and his men could just slip to the other side and avoid a battle. Since he wanted to force a showdown, the king split his forces and advanced along both banks.
Unfortunately for the Franks, Charles’ army was not the premiere fighting force it had been in Charlemagne’s day. Standards had fallen to such a degree that it now regularly fell into confusion, and was well known for its carelessness and inefficiency. Ragnar attacked the smaller section of the Frankish forces with his entire army, easily slaughtering it as the horrified Charles watched impotently from the other side of the river. Worse was to come. The captured Frankish soldiers – a hundred and eleven of them – were transported to an island in the Seine and hung in full view of Charles’ army as a sacrifice to Odin.
This was equal part religious observation and equal part calculated strategy of psychological terror. To modern eyes, the Vikings appear appallingly brutal, but there were limits to their violence. They seldom willingly destroyed harvests and despite routine plundering never disturbed the vineyards of Aquitaine. There was much more money to be had in extortion. As far as the execution of prisoners, Charlemagne had done far worse with his Saxon captives at Verdun, where he had beheaded forty-five hundred of them as punishment for a revolt.
Ragnar’s display had the desired effect. The Franks were unnerved, and easily routed when Ragnar charged at them. Charles was forced to withdraw with what was left of his army to the abbey of St. Dennis, which he vowed to defend at all costs. The presence of an army at his rear would normally have been worrying, but Ragnar had measured its quality and tellingly saw no reason to delay his approach to the now relatively undefended Paris.
In many ways, medieval Paris was the ideal Viking target. Not only was it rich, but it was largely confined to the Ile de la Cité, an island in the middle of the Seine. The first sight of the city, however, must have been momentarily disappointing. Despite Ragnar’s strategy of attacking on a holy day when churches would be full of potential victims, news of their approach had preceded his army, and most of the population had already fled. The Vikings flooded in, spreading out through the streets in search of plunder. They had been raiding Europe for the better part of five decades, but never had they looted such a prize.
Thanks to advance warning, which enabled the monks to remove most of the valuables, the Abbey of St. Germain managed to escape most of the destruction. When they returned six weeks later, they found several of the outbuildings burned and superficial damage to the abbey church. The only real casualty was the wine-cellar, which the Vikings had managed to break into and empty.
The city itself proved to be as frustrating for the Vikings as the Abbey of St. Germain. Much of the expected treasure had been carried away into the surrounding countryside by the frightened inhabitants. They could send out raiding parties in search of it, but that opened them to the possibility of ambush or an assault by Charles’ army.
In fact, every moment Ragnar spent in Paris, his situation worsened. The Frankish king had been collecting reinforcements, and was now at the head of a considerable army in a position to block the Viking escape. Even more worryingly was the fact that the Vikings were beginning to show signs of dysentery, which further reduced their fighting ability. From the deserted monastery of St. Germain-des-Prés, Ragnar reached out to Charles, hinting that he was willing to leave if offered a suitable tribute.
The Frankish king was in the mood to negotiate. Despite the size of his army, he had no confidence in its quality or in the loyalty of its commanders. He also had the headache of rebellious vassals, ambitious family members and chronic revolts. Ambassadors for both sides met in the monastery of St. Denis, and the Franks offered extraordinary terms. Not only could the Vikings keep their plunder and depart unmolested, but they would be paid nearly six thousand pounds of gold and silver for their trouble.
This is the first recorded example of what the English called Danegeld – literally ‘Danish Money’ – a series of increasingly ineffective bribes by desperate monarchs to get the Vikings to go away. Most of the money to pay for it would be commandeered from the church and then later from the people by means of a special tax. The very people who were bearing the brunt of the Viking attacks were now called upon to pay their tormentor’s bribes. To add insult to injury, the Danegeld tended to increase rather than prevent Viking raids, since the offer of protection money simply attracted other Vikings. No matter how expedient his reasons, Charles was unwisely trusting gold to do the work of steel.
The only silver lining for the Parisians – although it must not have seemed so at the time – was that it took Charles nearly two months to raise the necessary money. During that time, dysentery took a serious toll on Ragnar’s army. So many Vikings died, that the Parisians viewed it as a miracle, claiming that saint Germain was (belatedly) punishing the Norsemen for defiling his abbey.
As soon as Ragnar was paid, the spoils were loaded onto the ships, along with a heavy iron bar from the city gate to prove that he had taken the city. He proceeded in easy stages down the Seine, taking the time to plunder the trading and fishing ports along the coastline. He and his men arrived in Denmark fantastically wealthy, and with reputations to match. Ragnar himself presented the loot to king Horik, boasting about how easy it was to obtain. The only resistance he met, he reportedly said, was from the long-dead saint Germain. The implication was clear. The days of Charlemagne were gone. There was nothing now to fear from the Franks.
Ragnar may have been right about Charles the Bald, but not every Frankish ruler was weak. Charles’ powerful half-brother, Louis the German, the immediate southern neighbor of Horik, was not amused by Viking raids, and had immediately sent a delegation to the Danish king to demand the return of all Frankish goods. This was no idle request. A word from Louis would send an imperial army flooding into Denmark, in numbers and quality that Horik couldn’t hope to resist. Embarrassingly for the Viking king, these east Frankish delegates had been present for Ragnar’s little speech, and they made it clear that if Horik wanted to prevent a war he would have to accept Louis the German as his overlord.
Horik had no choice but to give in. As galling as it might have been for him to submit, there was at least one upside. He now had an official excuse to confiscate the spoils that had made Ragnar dangerously popular in Denmark. The Parisian loot was soon on its way to Louis the German along with all of the Dane’s Christian prisoners, and although Horik had no control over individual Viking raiders – most of Ragnar’s men seem to have left his territory – he did withdraw his official support for their attacks to mollify Louis the German. This submission seems to have been serious on Horik’s part. Not only did he send regular gifts and embassies for the duration of his reign, but in a clever political move to get rid of potential rivals, he allegedly rounded up the few of Ragnar’s men that had stayed in Denmark and had them executed.
Ragnar himself seems to have survived the purge, although accounts differ as to what exactly happened to him. The Franks claimed that he died of dysentery, but this is probably wishful thinking since he is mentioned by later English and Irish chroniclers as successfully raiding the shores of the Irish Sea as well as northern Scotland and the Western Isles.44
His exile, whether self-imposed or as a result of official banishment, provided fodder for his myth to grow; a legendary warrior haunting the shores of the Atlantic seaboard like an early Francis Drake. His wealth must have been the stuff of Viking dreams. In the twelfth century an inscription to him was carved into the wall of an ancient tomb in the Orkneys, an archipelago in northern Scotland by a traveling scholar: “This mound was raised before Ragnar Lothbrok’s (tomb)… His sons were brave, smooth hide men though they were… It was long ago that a great treasure was hidden here. Happy is he that might find it.”
That reference to his sons, four boys who would follow in their father’s footsteps, do not seem to have brought Ragnar much comfort. According to a thirteenth century Icelandic Saga, he admitted that his desire for fame and fortune was partly out of fear that his sons – especially his oldest, Ivar the Boneless – would eclipse him. Perhaps it was this that drove him relentlessly on.
In any event, the family was soon allowed to return to Denmark. In 854, Horik and most of the royal household were slaughtered by a disgruntled nephew, and the exiles were welcomed home. Ragnar may or may not have made the trip; his end is as obscure as his beginning. Almost all the stories, however, agree that he died as a proper Viking should: while raiding. Several stories are told of his demise, from being killed by a botched attack on the Isle of Anglesey, to dying in turf war with other Vikings off the coast of Ireland.
The most famous story, however, is that he was shipwrecked off the English coast in a freak storm. The Anglian king Aella of Northumbria, who’s lands had been a favorite target of Viking raids, overwhelmed the survivors as they scrambled up the beach, and seized Ragnar. Relishing the opportunity to dispatch his tormentor, the king came up with a unique form of execution. Ragnar was thrown into a pit of vipers and left to die.45 When his famous breeches protected him from the bites, Aella hauled him out, had him stripped, and threw him back in again. The old fox, now lying naked and mortally wounded, looked up at Aella unbowed, and sang a Viking battle hymn:
“It gladdens me to know that Odin makes ready the benches for a banquet. Soon we shall be drinking ale from the curved horns. The champion who comes into Valhalla does not lament his death. I shall not enter his hall with words of fear upon my lips. The Æsir will welcome me. Death comes without lamenting. Eager am I to depart. The Valkyries summon me home. I laugh as I die.”
The Thirteenth century Icelandic Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok
His final words, gasped out as he was dying, were a warning to Aella. “When the boar bleats, the piglets come.”
The story is undoubtedly apocryphal, but it is true in at least one respect. Lindisfarne and Iona had only been a taste of the Viking storm that was about to break on England. When Ragnar’s son Bjorn Ironside heard of his father’s death, he supposedly gripped his spear so tightly that it left an impression in the wood; his younger brother Halfdan crushed a chess piece so forcefully that it made his fingers bleed. If the Northumbrian king did indeed kill Ragnar, then hopefully he enjoyed his triumph while it lasted. The piglets were on their way.