Viking Lives

This is the first of two episodes on the life of Ragnar Lodbrok.
Richard and Kári begin with the story of the legendary Ragnar taken from the mythic saga that bears his name. 
In this telling, Ragnar is an impossibly strong Viking warrior who kills a dragon, marries the princess Aslaug, and becomes a king. 
Ragnar’s adventures make him famous, but when his sons' reputations threaten to overshadow him, he embarks on a final disastrous invasion of Britain.

Kári and Richard present the strange tale of Amleth the Mad: the Danish prince whose uncle murders his father and then marries his mother in unseemly haste.
 
Amleth, alone and in great danger, pretends to be mad until he can figure out how to take his revenge.
 
This was the original story that inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and formed the basis of the recent film The Northman’, with Alexander Skarsgard.

Richard and Kári dig up the remains of a Viking king named Yngvar.

Yngvar was long thought to have been a figure of legend. But in 2008, a ship-grave was excavated on a Baltic island that was dated to the year 750 AD.

Inside the ship were the remains of 34 wounded warriors and their mysterious leader, who was found with a gilded sword and a chess piece lodged in his mouth.

Kári and Richard plunge into the tale of Beowulf, the legendary Norseman who sets out to kill a murderous creature named Grendel, and then must face an even more dangerous monster: Grendel’s mother.

Richard and Kári delve into the semi-mythic tale of the Viking heroine Gudrun the Vengeful, and her destruction of Attila the Hun.