Vikings ran for six seasons and 89 episodes, from its premiere on the History Channel on March 3, 2013, to a finale that aired in Canada on March 3, 2021. Michael Hirst created and wrote it. That eight-year span is the first thing to understand about the show, because Vikings is not a story about one man. It is a story about a bloodline, and it keeps going long after the man you came for is gone.
Trailer, via HISTORY.
Ragnar Lothbrok of Kattegat
The series opens at the start of the Viking Age, marked by the raid on Lindisfarne in 793. Ragnar is a farmer from Kattegat when we meet him. He rises by raiding England, and with the support of his family and his crew he becomes a Scandinavian king. Travis Fimmel plays him, and the principal cast around him includes Katheryn Winnick, Clive Standen, Jessalyn Gilsig, Gustaf Skarsgård, Gabriel Byrne, George Blagden, Donal Logue, Alyssa Sutherland, Linus Roache and Alexander Ludwig.
Hirst did not invent his hero. Vikings is inspired by the sagas of Ragnar Lodbrok, one of the best-known legendary Norse heroes and notorious as the scourge of Anglo-Saxon England and West Francia. The show draws on Ragnars saga Loðbrókar and Ragnarssona þáttr, both from the 13th century, and on Saxo Grammaticus’ 12th-century Gesta Danorum.
That source material has a catch, and the show knows it. Norse legendary sagas were partly fictional tales built on oral tradition, written down roughly 200 to 400 years after the events they describe. Hirst fills the gap with other records: the Lindisfarne raid, shown in the second episode, and Ahmad ibn Fadlan’s 10th-century account of the Varangians.
The Sons Take the Story
The later seasons follow Ragnar’s sons through England, Scandinavia, Kievan Rus’, the Mediterranean and North America. That is a huge map for a show filmed entirely in Ireland, on location in County Wicklow and at Ashford Studios.
The cast turns over accordingly. Alex Høgh Andersen plays Ivar Lothbrok, called Ivar the Boneless. Jordan Patrick Smith plays Ubbe Lothbrok, Marco Ilsø plays Hvitserk Lothbrok, Peter Franzén plays King Harald Finehair, Georgia Hirst plays Torvi and Danila Kozlovsky plays Prince Oleg of Novgorod.
The adventures of Ragnar Lothbrok, the greatest hero of his age.
That synopsis is the pitch, and it is also the problem the back half of Vikings has to solve. Ragnar is the greatest hero of his age. An age ends. What Hirst built instead is a show about inheritance — who gets the name, who gets the ambition, who gets nothing.
What the Sagas Gave and What Hirst Added
| Element | Source |
|---|---|
| Ragnar Lodbrok’s rise and death | Ragnars saga Loðbrókar, Ragnarssona þáttr (13th century) |
| Broader Norse legendary material | Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus (12th century) |
| The Lindisfarne raid of 793 | Historical records of the period |
| The Varangians | Ahmad ibn Fadlan’s 10th-century account |
The table is the honest way to describe what Vikings is doing. It is not a dramatization of one text. It is a collage of a saga tradition, a Latin history and two eyewitness-adjacent documents, stitched into a single continuous narrative that runs from a farmer’s field to the Mediterranean.
Ivar, Ubbe, Hvitserk and the Weight of a Name
The sons are the show’s second act, and Andersen’s Ivar is the one that carries it. The nickname — Ivar the Boneless — arrives with the character. Smith’s Ubbe and Ilsø’s Hvitserk round out the brothers, and the series spreads its later seasons across all three.
Franzén’s King Harald Finehair and Georgia Hirst’s Torvi join Kozlovsky’s Prince Oleg of Novgorod in the later cast. Kozlovsky’s Oleg is the Kievan Rus’ thread, which is where the show’s geography reaches its widest.
A Sequel and a Second Life
Vikings: Valhalla, a sequel series, premiered on Netflix on February 25, 2022. In this paper’s view, that is the clearest sign of what the original left behind: enough world for someone else to pick up.
The ending itself was split. The series concluded with its broadcast on History in Canada from January 1 to March 3, 2021, after the second half of the sixth season was released in its entirety on Amazon Prime Video in Ireland on December 30, 2020. The final episodes reached Irish viewers on Prime Video two days before the Canadian broadcast run began.
Six Seasons, Two Networks, One Long Farewell
History aired Vikings, and Amazon Prime Video released the second half of the sixth season in Ireland. Six seasons and 89 episodes is a lot of television to hold together, and the sagas gave Hirst a cast of sons to carry the back half.
The result, in our reading, is uneven. The Mediterranean and North American settings sit oddly against a production shot entirely in Ireland. But the ambition is the point. Fimmel’s Ragnar is the hook, and the later cast carries the inheritance on its own terms.
What matters most is the source work. Hirst drew on sagas written down roughly 200 to 400 years after the events they describe, and he built a show that runs from a farmer’s field to the Mediterranean. That is a harder trick than it sounds.
The published critical score is 9.2/10, against a 92% Rotten Tomatoes rating. That is the right number. In this paper’s view, the final seasons wander, but Vikings is one of the few series of its era that treats a saga as something a culture tells about itself. It outlives the man at its center.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.