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As you know, I\u2019m not exactly a fan<\/strong> of the \u201cHistory\u201d Channel\u2019s Vikings <\/em>series. However, this book, which seems to have been produced in order to capitalize on the show\u2019s popularity, was actually worth the money to me.<\/p>\n The Legend of Ragnar Lodbrok<\/a><\/em> is a compendium of sagas, poems, and ancient annals, providing pretty much all we know of Ragnar\u2019s legend out of the middle ages. The stories have very little credibility as historical sources \u2013 other than the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is sparse on details, and Saxo Grammaticus\u2019 Gesta Danorum<\/em>, which is a hopeless mess assembled with little historical or critical sense.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not often that I run into material on the Viking Age that I\u2019ve never read before, and most of this was new to me. The saga story of Ragnar \u201cHairy Breeches\u201d was written down long after the original events, and these sagas contradict one another in details and are generally unreliable. But they also contain many agreements, and the kernel of a true story seems to be here.<\/p>\n Only one section, the poem Kr\u00e1kum\u00e1l<\/em>, shows evidence of bad OCR reading, including a number of misprints. The rest of the book is well edited, and the scholarly notes are of high quality.<\/p>\n Worth reading, if you\u2019re interested in this sort of thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As you know, I\u2019m not exactly a fan of the \u201cHistory\u201d Channel\u2019s Vikings series. However, this book, which seems to have been produced in order to capitalize on the show\u2019s popularity, was actually worth the money to me. The Legend of Ragnar Lodbrok is a compendium of sagas, poems, and ancient annals, providing pretty much … Continue reading ‘The Legend of Ragnar Lodbrok’<\/span>