Ten inches of snow or so (I suspect it was a little less right here, but what we got was plenty). Fortunately I recently got my snow blower fixed, and it handled the stuff better than I’d remembered it was able to. But I hope we get a March melt now, because I’m running out of places to put the snow.

Since I don’t have cable, I figured I’d be excused from discussing the new History Channel series, Vikings. But people kept asking me about it, and I discovered I could view episodes at the show’s site. So I’ll tell you what I think.

Actually, I’m planning to take a two-pronged approach. Here at Brandywine Books I’ll discuss technical authenticity. But I’m also planning an article for The American Spectator (which pays money) to talk about the political and philosophical implications (trust me, there are some).

So as a Viking reenactor, what do I think of the Vikings series?

Frankly, not much.

Where shall I begin? Perhaps with the fundamental falsehood that forms the basis for the whole drama – the laughable contention that Scandinavians knew nothing of the British Isles before the time of the hero of this series, the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok.

Listen – around 300 years before, the British Isles were overrun by tribes we usually call the Ango-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxons are traditionally described as consisting of “Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.”

Who were the Jutes? They came from part of today’s Denmark. Which you probably know is part of Scandinavia.

There’s also good evidence that there were Swedish elements in that confederation.

So much for that.

Something else that jumps out at anybody who knows anything about Vikings is that Ragnar’s ship, newly built in the first episode, has its steering oar on the wrong side.

Our word “starboard,” meaning the right-hand side of the ship, comes from a Viking term meaning “steering board.” The steering oars on Viking ships were always on the right-hand side. That the people who made this series, living in a world where dozens of accurate Viking ship replicas exist and are available for rent, chose to make their own – and to do it wrong, is a telling fact. It seems to me it would take actual effort to make such an essential mistake.

Oh, there are so many errors, errors that could have easily been avoided by consulting any of the numerous Viking reenactment groups, if the producers didn’t want to spend money on an actual historian. Dull brown clothing, with too much leather, and belts too wide. Funny haircuts (I think Ragnar’s pigtail mohawk may have been inspired by a rather crude wood carving I saw somewhere, but I don’t think that carving was intended to be very accurate. His son’s reverse mullet seems to anticipate the Norman hairstyle by about three centuries; in Ragnar’s time it would have marked him as a slave). A chieftain is called “Jarl Haraldson” (the equivalent of calling the queen of England “Queen Windsor”). A Thing levies the death penalty and beheads a man (this did not happen – such a man would be outlawed and the killing left to the victim’s family).

Those are the things that come to mind right now. After I post this I’ll probably think of others.

Some of my Facebook friends were pleased with the writing and the acting (which were admittedly not bad). Others were repelled by the soap opera elements.

I expect I’ll watch the next episode at least. I think I’ve lowered my expectations enough to handle that.