Transcript of 2. Ragnar Lothbrok and the Siege of Paris New

It's spring, 845 AD. We're on the River Seine, the broad waterway that winds through northern France. A fleet of 120 Viking longships moves majestically along it. They are manned by 5,000 warrior sailors. Although fitted with masts, for now the ships are powered by the muscle of their crews. Great oak oars pull against the current. A man stands at the prow of the leading vessel. His piercing blue eyes scan the terrain ahead. A sword hangs from his belt. His red woolen cloak is held by an ornate golden brooch, marking him out as a man of wealth and status. A jarl, an important chieftain. His name is Ragnar Lothbrok. Ragnar is flanked by his most loyal followers. They wear the gold arm rings he has given them to secure their allegiance and as a reward for their support in previous campaigns. Oaths sworn upon them are sacred. As the fleet rounds a long, slow bend, Ragnar sees what he is looking for: a huddle of honey-colored buildings that seem to emerge out of the river itself. As they draw closer, he can make out the uneven line of the old Roman walls, partially fallen into disrepair. Here and there, bell towers rise into the sky.

It is the object of Ragnar's expedition. The jewel in the crown of the West Frankish realm, a city ripe for plunder—Paris. But before Ragnar can lead his men through the city streets, he must confront the army of Charles the Bald, King of the West Franks. Charles has split his army into two divisions, one on each side of the Seine. The soldiers stand in disciplined ranks, waiting for their orders, the sun glinting on their armor. Ragnar weighs his options. If he sails his fleet through the middle of the enemy, Charles's archers can rain down flaming arrows upon him from both riverbanks. But Charles has made a huge tactical blunder. The force drawn up on the right bank is much larger than that on the opposite side. The Frankish king wants to protect the Abbey of Saint-Denis, an important Christian shrine, with its wealth of gold and silver. Naturally, he assumed Ragnar would target it. But Ragnar is not a man to be out-thought or out-fought. Instead, he decides to attack the smaller, weaker division on the left bank. With no bridge across the river here, the soldiers on the other side will be unable to come to their comrades' aid.

Instructions are issued. Ragnar's skippers expertly manipulate the tillers, which are mounted on the right-hand side of the boats' hulls— the stiornbordi, or steerboard. From which we get our word starboard. In silence, they drift into position. And then, as the Viking longboats are pulled ashore downriver, the Frankish archers unleash a blizzard of arrows. But this holds no threat now for Ragnar Lothbrok. He is out of range. With his acolytes around him, he throws himself into the midst of the fighting. His keen stare misses nothing. He identifies those in the opposing army who are fighting most skillfully and directs his men not to kill them, but to take them captive. The action is brief but intense. From the other side of the river, Charles the Bald and his men watch helplessly as the smaller division is routed. Many are slain, others flee into the countryside. By the end, Ragnar has taken 111 of the bravest Frankish warriors captive. For the Vikings, 111 is a magical number. But he has not spared them. He intends to turn them into another weapon to use against his enemy. A weapon of terror. Ragnar has the captives dragged to an island in the middle of the river.

He then calls upon his god Odin to receive the sacrifice he is about to offer. With their hands tied behind their backs, the men are hustled to a line of trees in full view of Charles's remaining army. A noose is placed around each man's neck, and one by one, they are strung up. King Charles and his soldiers can only look on as the men writhe and kick the air until all 111 of them are hanging lifeless. Utterly demoralized by the grim spectacle, many Frankish soldiers desert, leaving the great city of Paris practically undefended. And fully at the mercy of Ragnar's men. I'm Ian Glen. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Vikings Part 2. But let's go back. In the last episode, we heard how the Viking attack on Lindisfarne, the seizure of its religious treasures, had left Anglo-Saxon England reeling. The devastation visited upon a remote, unguarded monastery not to mention the slaughter of its inhabitants, is unprecedented. Dr. Pragya Vora. The Viking raid was a bolt from the blue. The idea that there could be a seaborne attack of the kind that happened in 793 is astonishing.

In general, in this period, when bad things happen, it's considered a punishment from God.

The Lindisfarne raid is followed by others. The abbey at Monkwearmouth Jarrow, also in Northumbria, is plundered in 796, while in Scotland, Iona Abbey in the Inner Hebrides is repeatedly hit. Ireland, too, is the target of Viking aggression, starting with the monastery at Rathlin Island off modern-day County Antrim. There are raids in Innishmurry and Innishboffin, with St. Patrick's Isle, County Dublin, attacked in 798. The shockwaves reverberate throughout Europe. Dr. Eleanor Barraclough.

Never before has such a terror appeared, you know, these inroads from the sea.

Professor Elizabeth Rowe.

And so these Vikings are described as terrible, ferocious, They kill Christians, they desecrate monasteries. There is nothing good about them. They are entirely bad characters.

The Vikings are the ultimate disruptors. Their greatest weapon is the terror they inspire, even in those who have not yet suffered at their hands. Every day, monks and villagers in coastal communities scour the horizon for the sudden appearance of the distinctive dragon-prowed boats. And no matter how fervently they clutch at their prayer ropes, willing these bogeymen to keep away, there's no question the world has become a more frightening place. But it's not just the remote monasteries of the outlying British Isles that are under attack. Across the Channel, the very heart of Christendom is about to find itself plunged into a war against these marauding heathens. At the end of the 8th century, mainland Europe is dominated by the Kingdom of Francia, which broadly covers modern-day France, the Low Countries, Germany, and northern Italy. The King of the Franks, Charles I, sweeps all before him, conquering territory and converting pagan tribes to Christianity. We know him better as Charles the Great, or in French, Charles le Magne, Charlemagne. He's the grandfather of Charles the Bald from our opening Paris raid. With fair hair and a drooping mustache beneath a prominent nose, Charlemagne is a charismatic and physically imposing man, radiating strength than a serene confidence in the righteousness of his actions.

He sees himself as God's anointed ruler on Earth. His reign has been impressive. Under Charlemagne, Francia has developed into a sophisticated and cultured society, bastion of the faith and center of Western civilisation. Charlemagne oversees an era of prosperity, building towering cathedrals and establishing his royal capital at Aachen, a town which sits today on the German-Dutch-Belgian border intersection. Other Christian kings, such as the Anglo-Saxon ruler King Offa of Mercia, view him as the model to which they aspire. To his loyal subjects, he is both wise and just, and as far as the church is concerned, Charlemagne can do no wrong. He is the man. And so, in the year 800, on Christmas Day, Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne emperor. His Carolingian realms will be the basis of a new, revived, and Holy Roman Empire. He is the first emperor in the West for 300 years. Charlemagne's power and prestige are now absolute. Revenue from every corner of the expanding Carolingian domains swells his coffers. For Charlemagne, conquest and Christianity are inseparable. In converting the heathen masses and taking over their lands, he is carrying out God's will, after all. It follows that those who defy him are defying the Lord Almighty.

And it is a position that will bring him into direct conflict with those pagans that sit on the Empire's northern border—those Viking kingdoms of Scandinavia. It won't be long before the Vikings discover what Charlemagne's other enemies already know—that behind the Emperor's mask of Christian piety lies a ruthless tyrant capable of acts of barbarous cruelty. In 782, in a forest near Verden in what is now northern Germany, Charlemagne's men conduct an execution of noblemen from the province of Saxony. This is not a discreet killing, it's a mass murder. A slaughter on a biblical scale. 4,500 men led into the woods to be richly beheaded. And their crime? They are being sacrificed for clinging to the old ways, the old pagan gods. The emperor even chops down their most sacred shrine. It's called Irminsul. —a wooden pillar dedicated to Woden, the Germanic variant of the Norse god Odin. In the most emphatic terms, forged in blood, Charlemagne has lain down a marker, a warning to anyone who would resist both the loving embrace of Christendom and the beneficence of his rule.

With Charlemagne, it's not a question of gentle missionary work. It's a question of political conquest, and enforce Christianity and a strong state that needs to demonstrate its strength through violence.

News of the massacre of the Saxon nobles, the bloody verdict at Verden, as it becomes known, travels fast. It reaches the court of King Sigfred in Denmark. He's been sheltering the leaders of the Saxon resistance. Denmark as a unified country doesn't exist yet. Sigfred is just one of several chieftains competing for dominance, but their collective reaction is one of outrage at the brutality meted out to their fellow followers of Odin. It's also tinged with fear, the dread realization that the Danes may well be next in Charlemagne's sights. For the Danes, The Frankish king's ruthless crusade to conquer and convert represents an existential threat. Paganism is not just a matter of faith, it's the basis of the Viking chieftain's power.

In the pagan belief system, the best afterlife goes to men who die in battle. These are the men who get to go to Valhalla. And so if the Danish kings want men to fight for them, the traditional Norse belief system is what's going to get those men to fight to the death rather than Christianity, which has a very different idea of the afterlife and who is going to go to it.

For the Vikings, their religion is a fundamental part of life. They experience the divine every day, wherever they go. Their gods are not abstract ideas. They are living beings who walk the earth alongside men and other supernatural supernatural entities.

Professor Stefan Brink: It was an animistic religion. The landscape was considered charged in different ways. Trees, wells, hills, mountains, groves, etc., could be sacred and worshiped. Offer water in the form of Wells, rapids, lakes, etc., were kind of interfaces in the landscape where people could communicate via offering rituals with the deities and also the ancestors.

Lars Brownworth.

There was no priesthood, there was no holy scriptures or anything. It was decentralized. There's a famous story of a Swedish Viking being asked, Who do you worship? Then he says, I worship my strength.

At the head of the Norse pantheon are two families of gods, the Aesir and the Vanir. Although they had once fought each other, the Aesir and the Vanir now live together in Asgard, the realm of the gods. Asgard exists in the sky above Midgard, Middle-earth, the home of men. A divine rainbow bridges the two worlds. Below the earth is Hel, where those who have not been fortunate enough to die a glorious death spend the afterlife. Spelled H-E single L, this is not the same sort of place as the Christian Hell. It's not known if the words are related, but there is no sense that Viking Hel is a place of punishment. The great Odin is the head of the Aesir family, husband of the goddess Frigg and father of Thor. According to the legend, Odin hangs himself on the sacred tree of Yggdrasil, equivalent to the Saxon monument which Charlemagne pointedly destroyed. Odin embraces death in return for the ability to read. He also sacrifices one of his eyes so that he might gain another kind of vision: the ability to see everything that happens in the world. Wisdom and knowledge are clearly important to the one-eyed Allfather.

But Odin, armed with his spear Gungnir, is also the god of of war. He rides an 8-legged stallion and is closely associated with the Valkyries. In keeping with their name, which means "choosers of the slain," these warrior handmaidens pick out those who will die a glorious death in battle. Clad in armor, the Valkyries ride across the sky towards the fray. They are demonic embodiments of carnage and mayhem. A Viking spirit given female form. Then there is Thor, the mightiest of the gods, who rules over the weather, summoning storms and dispensing thunder. His trusty weapon is the hammer Mjolnir, a popular symbol for amulets throughout the Viking era. If Odin is the god of wisdom and foresight, Thor represents the indomitable power of brute force. He is a formidable warrior. The shape-shifting trickster Loki seems the hardest to pin down. A spirit of mischief and chaos, he is promiscuously bisexual and can even switch genders, both fathering and giving birth to monstrous offspring. These children include Jörmungandr, the gigantic serpent encircling the earth. Loki will ultimately betray the gods and fight on the side of their enemies, the Jötnar, in Ragnarök, the battle at the end of the world.

It's the only religion I know of that has an ending, you know, like Ragnarok was the end, like the wolves chasing the sun and moon would one day catch it and then all the world would be plunged into eternal darkness and the gods would die.

And it's incredibly pessimistic. The Vanir branch of the gods, meanwhile, is headed by Njörd. Like Odin, Njörd is associated with wisdom, but also fertility. He is the father of Freyr and Freya. God of sun and rain, Freyr has dominion over the fields. His sister Freya is the goddess of women and childbirth. The roll call of Norse gods is almost endless.

And then there were minor deities and supernaturals such as alvar, elves, dwarves, giants, et cetera. And they were very important ingredients that we find in the mythological sagas.

Somewhere between gods and mortals exist the heroes of mythology whose stories are told in the sagas. Men like Ragnar Lothbrok, But if you cut through the bewildering multiplicity of gods, supernatural beings, and mythological heroes, you come to a very simple and powerful principle at the heart of the Norse religion: a good life is one which ends in a good death.

To die in battle heroically would give you a fast ticket up to Odin, and to Valhalla. And if they were a heroic warrior, they could spend the afterlife having fun. And by fun they meant fighting each other in the day, and in the evening had a fantastic banquet in the Valhalla hall, eating the pig, swine, Sæhrímnir, every evening. And every morning he just resurrected and became became alive again. That was the ultimate fun life for a warrior.

This outlook, then, provides the basis for the Viking code of honor and places Viking paganism on a collision course with Christianity. From Charlemagne's point of view, the spread of Christianity is inextricably bound up with his political power.

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Once Charlemagne sets down the path of political conquest and forcible conversion, there's really no way to go back from that. There was widespread resistance to the conversion, and Charlemagne responded with equal or greater force, killing thousands of people, whatever the exact number was, or maiming them, having a hand cut off, something like that. And so it's necessary, in his view, to show the unbending power of Christian kingship.

Remember, there is no such country as Denmark, not yet. But the threat from Charlemagne prompts the rival chieftains across Jutland and the islands to lay aside their differences. By the year 804, they unite under one king, Godfred, proving that there is nothing like a common enemy to bring people together.

And Godfred turned out to be a really effective military leader against the Frankish threat.

Godfred is credited with rebuilding the Danewerk, or Dane Work, a 20-mile protective earthwork stretching across the Jutland Peninsula, along the border between Denmark and Old Saxony. We often think of Vikings as the aggressors, the violent marauders who conduct lightning strikes against defenseless victims. In some ways, it seems the Vikings are no different to other people. They value peace and security at home just as much as anyone else. But Gudfred knows that the best form of defense is attack. Being a shrewd general, he doesn't challenge Charlemagne directly. He will instead hit him in his pocket. Before Charlemagne redrew the map of Europe, Denmark has been part of a trading network extending across the North Sea and the Baltic. It stood at the crossroads of lucrative trade routes passing from both east to west and north to south. The enforced Christianization of Saxony and neighboring areas has disrupted that flow. What's more, the pagan Danes have found themselves excluded from many important trading hubs. Not part of the cozy Christian club, which has led to a significant loss of income. In response, Gudfred plans a brilliant counterstrike. The year is 808. The place is Reyrik, a major trading settlement or emporium on the southern edge of the Baltic Sea.

It's a natural harbor in the north of present-day Germany, near what is nowadays the port of Rostock. Reyrik is one of those lucrative markets from which Danish traders have been squeezed. Like many emporia, Reyrik is laid out in a regular grid, with streets running parallel to the waterfront, where traders' boats are moored and business is conducted. Today is a day like any other. Goods are being traded: raw materials, textiles, foodstuffs, metalwork, beads, and human beings. Silver changes hands. Fortunes are made. Suddenly, the peaceful bustle is disrupted. A fleet of longships crashes into the merchant vessels in the port. Viking warriors wearing battle armor and wielding axes clamber across the quayside. They run at the waterfront stores, smashing up the tables and goods, slicing down awnings and terrifying the traders. The intruders rip through the market like a hurricane obliterating a shantytown. Eventually, the havoc and destruction settles. The merchants cower as an army of thugs looms threateningly over them. The mob of Northmen divides. A man whose clothes and bearing mark him out as a chieftain, a royal even, makes his way to the front. At his side is a herald who announces in the local Slavic language that this eminent personage is none other than Godfred, King of Denmark himself.

With his rugged features and shrewd gaze, Godfred cuts an impressive figure. His expression is businesslike, one of resignation rather than cruelty, as if to say he didn't want to do this, but he had no choice. Through his herald, Gudfred points out that the mighty Emperor Charlemagne is incapable of protecting them. Take a look around. Gudfred's men have just destroyed Reyrik with ease and taken away the traders' livelihoods. This should not have been allowed to happen. And if the merchants do what Gudfred proposes, it never will again. His herald conveys the gist. "Come with me to a place within my kingdom where I will protect you so that you can trade in peace and prosper." The merchants' faces register their astonishment. Is this some kind of joke? Seeing their uncertainty, Goodfred expands on his offer. "This is a great opportunity," he says. With his protection, they will do bigger and better business than before. Besides, as they can see, Their current premises are no longer fit for purpose. Like a classic mob boss, Goodfred has made the traders an offer they can't refuse. As the sun sets, a convoy of merchantmen, escorted by Viking longships, begins the voyage north to the port of Hjedeby, on the Danish side of the Great Dannevik.

Like a restless sports franchise owner, Godefroy is relocating their entire enterprise lock, stock, and barrel—the very definition of a hostile takeover.

This was an attack on Charlemagne's allies, so it's indirectly an attack on Charlemagne.

As a result of Godefroy's initiative, Charlemagne appears weak, and the mighty empire of the Franks is shown to be vulnerable. Not only that, but by relocating the traders of Reyrik to his own territory, Gudfred receives a huge financial boost from the taxes they pay—taxes that would have gone to Charlemagne.

This period, Early Viking Age, as most of the early periods, were very violent times, constant wars and fighting. How was it possible to have a secure trading place where traders could trade without being attacked by raiding parties? The king guaranteed the traders a peaceful trade.

Under Gudfred's protection, the town of Hedeby thrives.

It's sort of a proto-urban site that is a place for international trading and for crafts work and all sorts of interesting things are going on in a place like Hedeby.

The 10th century Arabic traveler, Ibrahim ibn Ya'qub, a keen chronicler of Viking life, provides us with a fascinating portrait of the busy settlement.

Ibrahim ibn Ya'qub tells us, for example, that women are able to divorce their husbands in this place. And I think he describes it as, you know, this little town the edge of the world or the ocean. It's a beautiful way of thinking about it because from his point of view, both geographically and culturally, it really is. He also describes things like how both the women and the men wear eye makeup, sort of coal makeup on their eyes. And he describes their singing. He says it's absolutely awful. They sound like dogs howling, but worse.

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Rhaeryc isn't the only Frankish asset that gets Guthfred targets. In 810, he sends a fleet of 200 ships to raid the coast of Frisia, part of the Carolingian Empire, which roughly equates to today's Netherlands. He is again showing up Charlemagne's weakness by targeting one of his vassal states. The growing impression is that the Danish force can now strike with impunity whenever they like. The Franks don't have ships.

Understandably, they're a land-based empire. Higher. Their armies are foot soldiers and cavalry, and so the Vikings can come and go a lot faster in their attacks than Charlemagne can pull his forces together and move them across the countryside. So we see from all of these actions that Godfred is really extremely effective and more than a match for Charlemagne.

In the end, Gudfred becomes a victim of his own success. Emboldened by his power, he plans a whole-scale invasion of the Frankish lands. It's a step too far for the Danish nobles on whose support he depends. Soon after, Gudfred is assassinated, according to one version of the story, during a duck hunt. But then, Plot twist: 4 years later, in 814, Charlemagne dies too. The twin bonds that held the Danish territories together—the external threat to its existence and the strong unifying leadership of Gudfred—are dissolved. Once again, the country is divided. After a period of turmoil, In 827, Gudfred's son Horik emerges as King of Denmark. Meanwhile, in a reversal of fortune, it is now Francia that is fast descending into chaos. It is a situation ripe for exploitation. Professor David A. Zori.

The Vikings are attracted essentially to places that are are wealthy and that show weakness. So they see some increased opportunities here as opposed to when Charlemagne was in control and he was building fortresses along the coast and keeping them at bay.

And so Horik resumes his father's policy of harrying the Franks. In 834, Horik's Viking army attacks the trading settlement of Durstad. On the River Rhine. Located in the present-day province of Utrecht, it's a major source of revenue for the Carolingian Empire. Compared to Lindisfarne and the other soft targets, Dorstad represents an escalation in Viking raiding strategy. The psychological impact on the Franks is devastating. Dorstad is the equivalent of a terrorist attack on a Western financial center today. With Horik's encouragement, Viking raiders plunder the region every year for the next 4, slaughtering, terrorizing, and enslaving the inhabitants. Again, without a navy, the new Carolingian emperor, Louis the Pious, is unable to defend his territory against these incursions. He hits upon a unique solution. He turns to Viking mercenaries to police his vulnerable coastline. But hiring professional Vikings as coastguards is a little like allowing a pack of wolves to look after your sheep. Between 834 and 836, the island monastery of Noirmoutier, at the mouth of the Loire, is repeatedly targeted. The attacks are so intense Intense that the monks abandon it, the Vikings move in and establish a permanent base there. From Noirmoutier, they can now control the coast of Brittany and carry out further raids along the Loire.

And there is nothing Louis the Pious can do about it. When Louis dies in 840, Civil war flares up once more as his three sons fight for control of the Frankish Empire. The Danes once again are poised to take advantage. With their new base off Brittany, their actions are no longer limited to coastal raids now, and the amazing versatility of their shallow-keeled longships enables them to penetrate deep within Frankish territory. The major rivers of The Seine, the Somme, and the Loire become conduits of mayhem and destruction. The Viking spirit thrives on chaos, and the particular chaos of the Franks' internal conflict draws them like blood in the water attracting sharks. As the sons of Louis the Pious deplete their resources fighting each other, Viking bands identify and attack weak spots. Some of them even profit by serving not just as coastguards, but as full-blown mercenaries for one side or the other, stoking the conflict, extending the bloodshed, feeding the disorder. In 843, the Treaty of Verdun settles the issue by dividing the Carolingian Empire into 3 parts. With each of Louis' 3 sons taking a share.

Before, in the time of Charlemagne, in the time of Louis the Pious, those rulers could command the entire resources. They had the entire empire to draw on to counter Viking attacks. When the empire was divided into 3 pieces, each piece was much weaker than the empire that had preceded it.

It's peace of a kind for the Empire, but it's an invitation to create more mayhem for the Vikings. And one of the men to take up that invitation, a man whose name will enter the pages of legend, is Ragnar. Ragnar Lothbrok. When talking about Ragnar, we have to be careful to separate the historical from the legendary.

Ragnar was Danish. We don't know much about him personally. On the basis of his name, it's possible that he was a member of the royal dynasty of Denmark. But in any case, because he was a war leader of a large Viking force, it seems very likely that he was an aristocrat, possibly a chieftain, maybe more likely a jarl, the highest level of aristocracy.

He appears in several Scandinavian saga sources, which are legendary and mythic and have things like dragons and Valkyries and ties to Sigurd the Dragonslayer. Ragnar is a king in Denmark, and he has these famous sons: Ivar the Boneless and Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye and Bjorn Ironside. Great names, all of them, for sure. And Ragnar does things like he kills a dragon and wins a princess. But then he also appears in some other sources from continental Europe and in Britain. Maybe. Perhaps it's a different person, or perhaps it's the same.

There's a lot when we're talking about Viking history that is sort of on that hazy cusp between what we would think of as history, something that is historically verifiable, you know, with proper dates and evidence, versus the more storytelling aspect of these legends and myths. So Ragnar, well, we know if anyone's a fan of the TV series Vikings, Ragnar, of course, is the chief protagonist. But at the siege of Paris in 845, it's said that the Vikings are led by someone one called, like, Reginherus, and he's been linked to that legendary character Ragnar Lothbrok.

Back on the left bank of the River Seine, where we began this episode. Having executed 111 of the bravest Frankish warriors, Ragnar's army sweeps on. Charles the Bald watches, powerless. Ragnar leads his men towards the Île de la Cité, the island in the Seine where the city of Paris is concentrated. On the way, On their way, they come across the undefended Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It's too big a temptation to resist. The Danes don't just loot the abbey, they take it over and use it as the base from which to launch their Parisian siege. On Easter Sunday, March 29th, they enter the city over the Petit Pont. Conveniently, it takes them close to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, another soft target with easy pickings. If Ragnar chose the date of his attack deliberately, he couldn't have picked one more likely to shock the Christian defenders. Their god cannot protect them even on this holy day. They go on the rampage, destroying buildings and setting fires. Anyone unlucky enough to get in their way is either killed or taken into slavery. But perhaps the Christian God has not turned his back on Paris after all. In the days that follow, the Vikings are struck down by a mysterious illness.

The symptoms described are similar to dysentery. Many men die, and Ragnar can do nothing but watch as his forces dwindle. The pagan warlord doesn't know much about Christianity, but he understands the principle of revenge. Could it be that his blasphemous occupation of the Abbey of Saint-Germain has aroused the wrath of the holy saint who protects Paris? Is the sickness punishment? Ragnar summons Odin once again, but to no avail. His men continue to die. Finally, he orders one of the Christian prisoners to be brought before him. In desperation, he demands the man tell him what he should do to save his army. The prisoner instructs Ragnar in the ways of Christian penance, advising him and his men to fast. Whether it is spiritual intervention or simply the effect of abstaining from possibly contaminated food, Ragnar's men begin to get better. But the sickness has taken its toll on his army. Fortunately for Ragnar, Charles has had enough of the fighting. He simply wants the pagans out of the abbey and his city back.

And we have our first mention of what will later be called Danegeld, which is essentially tribute. The kings of Western Europe start to pay off the Vikings to leave them alone, at least for a season. So Charles the Bald coughs up 7,000 pounds of silver to get Ragnar and his band of Vikings to leave. That's a substantial amount of wealth, and it turns out not to be a winning strategy because this is not you know, modern diplomacy, you can't really hold them to their agreement. So buying them off, you might get a year, but they'll be back.

The problem is, and this is something that monarchs on both sides of the Channel will realize quite quickly, paying off the Vikings is essentially like trying to get a stray cat to leave by feeding it. It's just going to keep coming back. And this is very much the Viking tactic, basically. Okay, we'll go away now, but once we've spent all that money, then, well, now we know that that's what you'll do. We'll come back and scare you again and take some more. Thank you very much.

The concept of Danegeld, literally Dane yield or Danish payment, is going to add a whole new dimension the Viking Age. Not surprisingly, Ragnar accepts the offer of good hard cash. His army is weakened by war and disease. He was ready to leave anyway. So why does Ragnar lead a Viking fleet 200 miles up the River Seine to attack Paris? Of course, the need to acquire wealth is a constant in all Viking operations. But there are surely sources of silver and slaves closer to home and less fraught with risk. Paris is an extremely significant choice, a major center of both religious and political power deep in the heart of the Frankish Empire. The very hazard of the undertaking is the point.

Paris would be a very symbolic—

symbolically important target to choose. Some historians suggest that Ragnar may have believed he was a distant relative of King Horik and thus had a claim to the Danish throne. The scale and ambition of his Parisian expedition can be read as a power play, a bid for the crown. Alternatively, Horik himself may have encouraged Ragnar's activities. Either way, After the raid on Paris, Ragnar presents himself at Horik's court. Here he boasts of how he defeated the cowardly Franks. He even has a piece of the Abbey of Saint-Germain to back up his claims.

But then it seems as though, in front of all this boasting before the king, Ragnar himself is finally struck down with disease, and he suffers a terrible illness and it must have been just a horribly embarrassing attack of dysentery in front of everybody, in front of the court, and he dies 3 days later.

Not surprisingly, this ignominious end is not the one recorded in the sagas. According to legend, Ragnar then leads an expedition to England, where he is defeated in battle by King Aella. Of Northumbria. The proud Viking is captured, and as a punishment for his attack, is thrown into a deep pit. As his eyes adjust to the gloom, Ragnar realizes that he is not alone in there. In the flickering torchlight, he sees that the ground is seething with movement.

Snakes. I don't know if he had this pit prepared before, or if you can get enough snakes in Britain to fill a pit of venomous snakes, but the story says that Ragnar is thrown by Ella into a snake pit, and he's wearing a magical shirt in the saga legend, which Ella has to remove. After the shirt is removed, the snakes bite him, and he's he's going to die. His death speech is famous, and the sentence that he says, which resonates across the northern world, is something along the lines of, "The piglets would grunt if they heard about the suffering of the boar." Now Ragnar, in that analogy, is the boar, the dad pig, and the piglets are the vicious sons of Ragnar.

His final words are, according to the poets: "The gods will invite me in. In death there is no sighing. The hours of life have passed. Laughing shall I die." Unlike in real life, in the great Norse myths, Ragnar achieves an ending worthy of a great Viking hero. Guaranteeing him a place in Valhalla. And it is a death that is going to be avenged. In the next episode, emboldened by their forays, the Vikings escalate their raiding under the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok. A massive invasion force, the Great Heathen Army, overwhelms England. The only holdout is the Kingdom of Wessex, whose ruler Alfred must reconcile with this unstoppable foe. That's next time. You can listen to the next 2 episodes of Real Vikings right now, without waiting and without ads, by joining Noiser Plus. Click the banner at the top of the feed or head to noiser.com/subscriptions to find out more.