3.6 Born Again The Vikings have been the victims (if it’s possible to think of that culture as victims) of an unusual historical phenomenon. We frequently say that the history is written by the victors. But despite the fact that the Vikings were, largely, the victors wherever they went, most of their history (as we laypeople understand that term) was written not by them—since they were an oral culture—but by those they triumphed over. So it’s hardly surprising that our view of them is that of savage marauders, hell-bent on destruction and completely without mercy for the defenceless. Which is fine. Because virtually all narratives work by making us identify with the protagonist(s) even when we would normally think of them as alien to ourselves. And so we have come, if anything, to perceive the Vikings as more civilized than their Christian counterparts on the show, despite what our history books have suggested. We have seen this in previous weeks, and there’s still some of that in Born Again. And certainly what follows the birth of Judith’s child is about as foreign—thankfully—from our experience as we can imagine. The sheer barbarism not just of the Christian punishment for adultery but of the public way it’s done largely make us echo Judith’s feelings on the subject: how is this anything Christ would condone? But that barbarism pales when we see the hand behind it all. The wisdom of waiting to see if Judith’s child was male was wise, of course. And once Ecbert ascertained that he had the heir that it seemed his son was not going to produce on his own (which explains the king’s almost-encouragement of Judith’s crush on Aethelstan), he needed to goad his son and his people into accepting the child as legitimate despite Alfred’s obvious status as a bastard. But if Ecbert could trust his half-witted son to pull off the subterfuge of the Viking colony massacre, there was no reason to think he could not have included Judith in his plans for the child and spared her ear. I suppose one could argue that she might not have seemed authentic in her screams if she knew she’d be saved the moment she said Aethelstan’s name. But it was a rather large (and utterly heartless) risk for Ecbert to take. After all, what if she had decided to accept her martyrdom, believing that confessing her adultery would mean death for her child? The Viking way of dealing with adultery seems so much more elevated by comparison. In another parallel, Aslaug is confronted by her own husband with her dalliance with Harbard, Ragnar telling her that he doesn’t really care who she screws so long as she keeps his children safe. Like Aethelwulf, he’s not in love with his wife, that lack of love reducing Aslaug to the role of breeding stock she’d be as a woman of noble Saxon birth. And when she takes the realization of the meaning behind Ragnar’s word’s out on him, beating uselessly at his chest, it’s hard not to be reminded that his true love, Lagertha, would have done him serious damage in Aslaug’s place. But if all of this has worked to hold the Vikings up as superior, cracks are showing in the veneer. One of the things that has elevated the Vikings in this narrative is the say that each person has in choosing his or her own path. We have seen this again and again: people are not compelled to sail west or compelled to fight—no Viking’s life is seen as being at the behest of another unless he first places it there. People are not, as Ecbert sees them, disposable. And he’s not the only one who is acting more like a Saxon than a Viking. Floki’s hatred of Aethelstan is longstanding, and I’m sure we all imagined that we’d eventually see the face-off between the two. But Floki’s murder of the priest this week is disappointing not only because Aethelstan was a great character, caught between two worlds and thus largely a stand-in for us. The bigger disappointment was in the distinctly un-Viking way in which Floki killed him. What could be less Viking than that? But even if Aethelstan’s manner of death and loss to the programme were disappointments, they brought us something beautiful: Ragnar’s farewell to his friend. Travis Fimmel has gotten more than a bit of razzing for the gimmicky way he tends to play Ragnar: his weird smiles and ambivalent looks. But all that disappears here and we see a man in pain, about to set sail on the greatest journey of his life without his anchor. I wish they’d give Fimmel more such moments. But I doubt we’ll see a lot more introspection in the weeks to come. The Vikings are getting ready to head off to Paris and they carry with them explosive cargo in the form of Lagertha & Kalf and Ragnar & Erlendur. Even odds on whether, all things considered, they even make it to the city on the Seine. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
