3.2 Wanderer And that lull is productive narratively, as we see much on the horizon. Ragnar and his men (and women) are giving their weary limbs a rest—those limbs (and other body parts) that are not being removed, that is. The first to be freed from its trunk is the head of the fallen Brihtwulf, when his niece demands it of Ragnar. We can hardly blame her as she finally reveals not only the reason for that desire but also for her consistently bizarre behavior. Her uncle sexually abused her starting at age six and invited his men (including her eldest brother) to do so as well. As she hacks at his head with a dagger, we are horrified, Floki is amused, and Ragnar seems only a little satisfied to finally have some understanding of the woman he has promised to fight for. One wonders what treatment her younger brother has to look forward to, despite her insistence that she loves him. And Torstein’s limb too is hacked off, though this time at the request of its owner. Sensing that he is dying as a result of the wounded arm, Torstein asks Floki to cut it off. The incident is used with varying degrees of subtlety to portray Viking fierceness, priorities, and relationships when Bjorn offers to do it himself but Torstein insists that Floki do so since, as Floki points out, were the situation reversed, Torstein would do the same for Floki. The scene in which director Ken Girotti shows the ship builder removing the arm and cauterizing the limb is well executed, not only conveying the feeling of “there-but-for-the-grace-of-Odin-go-I” among the other Vikings, but the grim and ruthless determination of both patient and physician. There’s little doubt that Torstein will continue to harry the Mercians, even down one arm. But it is back at the court of Ecbert that we are shown the greatest potential storms forming. Canny Lagertha questions the king about the origin of the lands he has given the Vikings, and he reveals that some of his own subjects were evicted from the farms she now overseas. While he informs her that he has every intention of defending her claim to them, we have to wonder how he intends to do so when he is in need of their foreign forces in order to do the same with Princess Kwenthrith’s to Mercia. So Ecbert may unintentionally be blithely walking into an explosive situation. Ragnar has obviously accepted that his ex-wife is only a political ally to him now, but it is difficult to imagine that he will be as understanding if he returns to Wessex to find Ecbert in bed with her. And on the subject of returning warriors and strange bedfellows, there’s the budding interest between Princess Judith and Athelstan. Thus far, Hirst has used Athelstan to explore the difference in the religious beliefs of the English and the Vikings. But he’s gone a bit further in also looking at how those beliefs then affect the lifestyles of each. Athelstan, despite having been a monk, has learned to fight, without fear of death, like a Viking. However, we have yet to see if he has come to share their more open sexual ethics as well. Certainly, he was chaste enough when Ragnar and Lagertha invited him into their bed in the first season. But after years of living with the Vikings, he may very well have abandoned Christianity to the extent of giving in to Judith’s advances. But while Ragnar might be kept at bay (at least on the surface) by his lack of official claim on Lagertha, Judith has no much legal protection. And Lord Edgar seems, based on last week’s episode, particularly keen on Christianity-underlined marital fidelity. One senses that these two sexual triangles will be the primary reason for an eventual breakdown of the Viking/Saxon alliance. We have been seeing the way these two belief system are at odds. But we saw something new this week in Wanderer referred to in the episode’s title. Until now, religious beliefs on the series have been seen as nothing more than that: what people believe to be true. But back in Kattgart, Siggy, Helga, and Ragnar’s actual wife, Aslaug, have been having not just visions and prophetic dreams but the same visions and dreams, taking the series just over the edge into the paranormal (and quietly suggesting there may be more legitimacy to Odin’s cosmology than Christ’s. It is unclear that the arrival of the man from their dreams means to the story, but we are set up to sense that things back home (especially with the public acceptance of Kalf’s usurpation of Jarl-ship of the community Lagertha left in trust with him) are about to heat up. The coming weeks should be particularly good. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
