Snakes, songs and shaggy breeches
Three of Ragnar Lothbrok’s greatest escapades
Love and poison One of Ragnar’s adventures explains how he got the nickname ‘Lothbrok’ while winning Thora, one of his wives. Thora was the daughter of a powerful earl, and one day her father gave her a little snake as a present. She kept the snake as a pet, but it quickly grew into a huge, poisonous serpent that terrorised the neighbourhood.
Thora’s father swore that he would give his daughter in marriage to any man who could kill the serpent. Hearing this, Ragnar decided to fight the snake. To defend himself against its venom, he coated his legs in woolly breeches that were coated with tar, making them stiff and impenetrable. He fought and killed the serpent, and claimed Thora as his prize. As a result he became known as Lothbrok – ‘shaggy breeches’.
A dragon-slayer’s daughter On one occasion, as Ragnar was sailing along the coast of Norway, his men went to find food at a farm where an old peasant couple lived. The couple had a beautiful daughter, Kráka, and when the men told Ragnar about her, he ordered her to come and see him on his ship. But he tested her by setting impossible conditions: she must be neither naked nor clothed, neither hungry nor full, and neither alone nor with company.
Kráka thought hard about how to follow these commands, and worked out a solution to the riddle. She went to meet Ragnar covered only by a fishing net and her own long hair; after having tasted food, but not eaten it; and accompanied by a dog. Impressed, Ragnar married her, and in time he learned she was not really a peasant- girl – her real name was Aslaug, and she was the daughter of the famous dragon-slayer Sigurd the Volsung.
The vengeful sons Ragnar was captured in battle by Ælla, king of Northumbria, who imprisoned him in a pit full of snakes. As the snakes fed on his body, Ragnar sang a song of courageous defiance, listing the battles he had won and looking forward to feasting in Valhalla after death: “Gladly shall I drink ale with the gods on the high benches. Hope of life is gone; laughing, I shall die!”
When Ragnar’s sons heard of his death, the legend says that their reactions revealed which of them was most dangerous. Sigurd cut himself with a knife without noticing the pain; Hvitserk, playing a game when the news came, squeezed a game-piece so tightly that his hand bled; but Ivar was able to master his shock enough to ask for every detail of his father’s death. He set out with his brothers to avenge their father, and conquered Northumbria.