Ancient history

The true story of Aslaug, the last wife of Ragnar Lodbrok

To complete the look we have been taking at the characters of the television series Vikings We were missing this one from Aslaug, who also has a fundamental role because, among other things, she is part of the leading family. Princess, queen, sorceress, visionary, always wrapped in a mythical aura that surpasses even that of her own husband, on the small screen she appears in a fairly free version, with some characteristics that did not really correspond to her, as we will see.

As we said in the previous articles, the primary historiographical sources are imprecise and inexact, mixing reality and fiction so closely that it is impossible to determine how much there is of each. The most important to know the figure of Aslaug is the saga Völsunga , written in Iceland at the end of the 13th century but based on pieces from the so-called Poetic Edda , a collection of poetry by various authors that includes the Nibelung Cycle , the oldest version of the Song of the Nibelungs; This, let us remember, is the German epic poem that combines mythological elements with the story of the destruction of the Burgundian people (a people of Scandinavian origin, hence the transmission of its argument).

Another important source is the Edda but not the one cited above but another known as the Prose Edda or Minor Edda , composed in the first quarter of the 13th century by Snorri Sturlusson, an Icelandic skald (poet). The sagas say that Aslaug was the daughter of King Sigurd, the Siegfried of Germanic legend, and the skjaldmö Brynhildr (a skjaldmö she was a warrior woman, like Lagertha in the series), that is, Brunilda; These names will sound familiar to more than one because of the opera The Ring of the Nibelung , by Richard Wagner.

However, it was hers her grandfather hers Heimer, Brynhildr's father, who raised her. When her parents died, he, concerned for her safety, made a large hollow harp, hid the girl inside it and traveled from one place to another singing and playing without anyone suspecting them.

Thus they arrived at a place called Spangerein, in Norway, being hosted by a peasant couple named Áke and Grima who, thinking that there would be something of value inside the harp, murdered Heimer. Instead of the expected treasure they found the girl, whom they adopted and renamed Kráka (meaning Raven). She was so beautiful that she could only come from a noble family, so to protect herself from her they always had her face smudged and covered her with a hood.

But that wouldn't stop her from one day meeting her future husband, the famous warrior king Ragnar Lodbrok. To be exact, it was her men who surprised her bathing in a river, being dazzled by her beauty to the point that their bread was burned. When her boss asked them what had happened to the food, they explained it to her and, out of curiosity, she ordered them to go get it.

In addition, wanting to know if her intelligence was consistent with her appearance, she set some curious conditions:she had to go neither dressed nor naked, neither hungry nor satiated, neither alone nor accompanied. And she, in a show of cunning, appeared dressed only in a net, eating an onion and escorted by a dog; Of course, Ragnar fell madly in love with her and proposed to her.

Here we can move on to the Ragnars saga loðbrókar or Ragnar Lodbrok Saga , written at the beginning of the 14th century and that tells the life of this legendary Viking. Whoever has seen the television series may be confused because in it Ragnar leaves Lagertha to marry Aslaug, but in reality he had already abandoned Lagertha before for Thora Borgarhjört (Þóra Borgarhjǫrtr), daughter of Herrauðr, jarl from Götaland (jarl was a title similar to that of count and Götaland a region of Sweden), character omitted in television fiction.

If Thora bore him three sons (Eric, Agnar, and Olof), Aslaug was the mother of six others:Björn, Hvitsärk, Sigurd, Guthrod, Rongvald, and Ivar the Boneless , although in Vikings the motherhood of the first is changed, for example, attributing it to Lagertha (from whom some sources say that she had no offspring while others mention a son named Fridleif and two daughters of unknown names).

The most interesting, however, is the last one, Ivar, who received his unique nickname due to a disease that he suffered from birth, probably osteogenesis that prevented the bones and ligaments of his legs from keeping him on his feet. It was said that Ivar's defect was due to a curse:after his wedding he was forced to wait three nights before consummating the marriage, but Ragnar did not want to wait and the child born paid the consequences. Of course, Ivar was not the only offspring around whose conception a legend revolved; Sigurd was also born in a mysterious context that makes it unclear whether his mother was Aslaug or Thora.

It all started when Ragnar visited the Swedish viceroy Eysteinn Beli, who tried to convince him not to marry him with an outcast like Aslaug, offering him his daughter Ingeborg instead. But when Ragnar returned, Aslaug had already been informed by some birds -remember that she had magical powers and was taken for a witch- and she revealed to her fiancé her true ancestry. And to show that her father had been the famous Sigurd, who slew the dragon Fafnir, she prophesied that they would have a son who would bear a mark in the form of a serpent in his eye. That child was born that way, in fact, and that is why they called him Sigurd, receiving the nickname of Serpent in the eye . Eysteinn felt mocked and took up arms against Ragnar but Ragnar's sons killed him, instigated by Aslaug.

As can be seen, that woman did not hesitate to defend Ragnar's offspring (which would be expanded with Ingvar, Ubbe and Halfdan, born from other relationships, although in the series they are attributed to her), even the one who had had with Thora, because when she learned that the Swedes had killed Eric and Angar, she organized an army to avenge them, at the head of which she placed herself as a skjaldmö, adopting Randalin as a nom de guerre. She, accompanied by the other brothers, defeated the enemy and this made Ragnar, not to be left behind in deeds, make the decision to make a raid on Northumbria, Great Britain.

Ragnar had previously visited that kingdom in the year 865; at that time he was one of those that made up the east coast of the not yet unified England together with Mercia, Anglia, Essex and Kent (although in the series they also attribute the assault on the Lindisfarne monastery to him but it was in the previous century and he necessarily had to do another). The fact is that when he was preparing this new expedition, his wife warned him of the bad state of the fleet -of a strong storm, in television fiction- and the consequent disaster that awaited him.

The prophecy was fulfilled, Ragnar was captured by King Ælla, who executed him by throwing him into a pit full of snakes, which he survived ephemerally thanks to the pants that gave him his name because Aslaug had made them for him and they were magical (another version says that Thora gave them). It would be the sons of both, Ivar, Halfdan and Ubbe, who avenged his death by leading the so-called Great Heathen Army (a coalition of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Vikings) against the British island.

As for Aslaug, neither the sources cited nor others containing additional information, such as the Hálfdanar sagas and Eysteinssonar They say what became of her after her, just as they don't say about the other women who passed through Ragnar's life. That is why the plot of the television episode in which she dies at the hands of Lagertha is an invention of the scriptwriters.