Historians have unveiled a startling new theory about the true identity of the legendary Viking Ragnar Lothbrok, suggesting that the man behind the myth may have been a composite figure whose exploits were stitched together from the deeds of multiple Norse raiders. The revelation comes as scholars continue to wrestle with one of the most enduring questions in medieval history: where does the man end and the legend begin?
For centuries, almost everything known about Ragnar Lothbrok has come from semi-fictional sources. The old Norse sagas, poems, and Icelandic chronicles paint a portrait of a terrifying Viking warrior and Danish king, yet what is real and what is fantasy remains fiercely debated. The answer, researchers now suspect, may lie somewhere in the frozen tundra of the Norse world.
The best available information suggests Ragnar was the son of Sigurd Ring, the famed king of the Swedes and Danes. His mother was reportedly Alfhild, a Swedish princess from the small kingdom of Alfheimr. Noble Norse blood, by all accounts, ran through Lothbrok’s veins.
But according to the man himself, he was far more than mere nobility. He boldly claimed to be a direct descendant of Odin, the All-Father, a divine lineage that legitimized his rule and struck terror into the hearts of his enemies.
The sagas draw a captivating picture of Lothbrok, describing him as the largest and most handsome man ever seen by human eyes. Another account calls him a huge, handsome man who possessed great wisdom. He was good to his men and cruel to his enemies.
In short, he was the ideal Viking.
Yet Lothbrok and his Viking raiders appear to have been far too busy raiding and plundering to record where they raided or what they looted. As a result, the richest accounts of his exploits come from Icelandic sagas composed decades, or even centuries, after his time. Some scholars, however, agree that at least part of Ragnar’s story is historically accurate.
A growing body of academic opinion holds that Lothbrok was in fact a composite character. According to this theory, all or most of the feats attributed to him were actually the real deeds of several Viking raiders whose victories slowly merged under a single name. It is a name that, notably, does not even appear consistently in historical records.
Historians rely largely on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for their facts about Viking raiders, but even this generally trusted source offers little clarity on Lothbrok. The chronicle mentions two powerful Viking raiders in 840 AD. One is called Ragnall and the other Reginherus.
Most experts believe both names refer to the same man and that his exploits are genuinely legendary.
The first act of heroic daring attributed to Lothbrok appears to be drawn directly from a fairy tale. According to legend, Lothbrok confronted a giant serpent, sometimes said to be a dragon, that guarded the beautiful Thora Borgarhjort. Once he killed the monster, he saved the girl and earned her hand in marriage.
Among the few facts about Lothbrok that most historians agree upon is that he had three wives. According to legend, his first wife was not Thora Borgarhjort but Lagertha, a fierce warrior woman. To win her hand, he killed a bear and a huge hound that prowled outside her home.
The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus provides some of the only accounts of Lothbrok’s troubled marriages and private life. Grammaticus claimed Lothbrok fathered a son, Fridleif, and two daughters with Lagertha. Yet despite their fruitful marriage, Grammaticus claims Lothbrok later divorced his first wife.
Thora Borgarhjort was his second wife, but she was no mere damsel in distress. She was a princess, the daughter of the Swedish king Herraud. Grammaticus again records Lothbrok’s sons by Thora, naming Radbard, Dunvat, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, Bjorn Ironside, Agnar, and Ivar the Boneless.
Most historians, however, believe Lothbrok’s famous sons had a different mother.
According to the sagas, Thora died of an unknown illness. Afterwards, Lothbrok was said to have fallen in love with Kraka, a woman of exceptional beauty and wisdom. The story of Ragnar Lothbrok recounts that Ivar the Boneless, Bjorn Ironside, and Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye were the product of Lothbrok’s marriage to Kraka, not to Thora Borgarhjort.
When Lothbrok met Kraka, she was living with a peasant couple, but Kraka was not her real identity. She was in fact Aslaug, the hidden daughter of Sigurd Fafnisbani, the dragon slayer himself, and the fearsome warrior Brynhildr. Unlike his marriages to Thora Borgarhjort and Lagertha, Lothbrok did not have to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 a monster to win this girl.
In the Gesta Danorum, Grammaticus’s most prominent work, another woman appears in Lothbrok’s life. While most sources agree he had only three wives, Grammaticus lists a possible fourth wife, Svanlaug. It is possible, however, that Svanlaug was merely another name for Aslaug.
Lothbrok, nonetheless, was not known for his fidelity. Grammaticus records that Lothbrok fathered another son, Ubbi, from what may have been an extramarital relationship with an unnamed woman.
Lothbrok’s tales of slaying dragons and fighting hounds may be mythical, but his sons were certainly real. Multiple historical records from different times and places confirm that several of Lothbrok’s sons did exist. Ivar the Boneless, Ubbi, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, Fridleif, Halfdan Ragnarsson, and Bjorn Ironside are all confirmed historical figures.
Nearly every one of them came close to surpassing his father.
Because his sons were real, historians have striven to find conclusive evidence proving Lothbrok was also a real man and not merely a myth. One piece of evidence they often cite comes from the Chronicon Roskildense, a twelfth-century historical document that describes Lothbrok as the father of the brutal Norse king Ivar, most likely Ivar the Boneless, and his brothers.
Around 1190, the Danish historian Svend Aggesen became the first person in recorded history to use the full name Lothbrok as it is known today. Aggesen’s account gained greater weight because of his claim that Lothbrok’s son, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, conquered Denmark, sent its king to Valhalla, and married his daughter before taking the throne himself. All of that is largely realistic and accurate.
By the twelfth century, whether true or false, the legend of Lothbrok had spread widely throughout the Norse world. The Icelandic scholar Ari Thorgilsson, writing between 1120 and 1133, confirmed details about Lothbrok’s exploits. Specifically, he claimed that Ivar, the son of Ragnar Lothbrok, was the one who ended the life of King Edmund of East Anglia.
The ninth-century poet Bragi Boddason composed the Ragnarsdrapa, a skaldic poem that turned Lothbrok into a legend. Although there is some dispute over the poem’s exact origins, its story is clear. The words praise Ragnar, the son of Sigurd, and speak of his skillfully decorated shield.
Part of the difficulty in confirming Lothbrok’s life and exploits lies in the fact that nearly all information about him comes from Norse sources. That is, until the Norman historian William of Jumieges wrote about King Lothbrok of Denmark, who banished his son Bjorn Ironside from his kingdom. History certainly records that Bjorn raided and plundered from Normandy to the Mediterranean.
While writing the history of the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen, the historian Adam of Bremen mentioned Lothbrok in passing. He wrote of the cruelty of Ivar the Boneless and his Norse warriors toward Christians. He took care to note that Ivar was the son of Lothbrok.
The famous stone grave at Maes Howe in the Orkney Islands bears the only confirmed runic inscription that actually mentions Lothbrok. This tomb was built long before Lothbrok’s time. Its sons were bold.
Men of such strength and skill were rarely found. The mention of her sons led some to believe that Lothbrok was in fact a shield-maiden.
Whether fact or fiction, man or myth, or a woman, Lothbrok was one thing above all: he was terrifying. Multiple sources confirm that he was an expert in the Viking style of warfare, the fearsome blitzkrieg method of fighting. By striking hard and fast, and only when he held the advantage, Lothbrok sowed fear in his opponents before they could even organize a proper defense.
The siege of Paris in 845 is one of the best-documented Viking raids in history, and it was certainly Lothbrok’s idea. Frankish accounts of the siege and sack specifically name “Reginherus” as the commander of the attack. Historians hesitate to state definitively that Reginherus was actually Ragnar Lothbrok.
But Lothbrok alone was capable of something as horrifying and grand as what happened next.
Before reaching Paris, while making his way up the Seine, Lothbrok was said to have raided Rouen. This prompted Charles the Bald to split his army in two, allowing Lothbrok to destroy both halves with ease. But he did not stop there.
Reports indicate Lothbrok took more than a hundred prisoners and hanged them on an island in the Seine to demoralize the Frankish forces.
With his forces defeated and Paris sacked and burned, Charles the Bald had no choice. He had to surrender to Lothbrok. The terms set by this legendary Viking were insane.
Just to leave and hopefully never return, Charles the Bald paid Lothbrok a staggering 7,000 livres of silver, one of the largest ransoms ever paid to Vikings.
Frankish chroniclers were understandably somewhat bitter about the ransom they paid to Lothbrok and his Vikings, but if their accounts are accurate, justice came swiftly. The accounts claim that shortly after leaving Paris, Lothbrok fell gravely ill and died in Denmark. Christian writers called it divine retribution.
Turning away from the Frankish accounts and back to Saxo Grammaticus and his Gesta Danorum, Lothbrok continued raiding after leaving Paris. Grammaticus claims Lothbrok went on to raid the Irish coast in 851 and even established a settlement near modern-day Dublin. From there, Grammaticus writes, Lothbrok sailed back and forth along the Irish and English coasts doing what he did best.
Grammaticus was not the only one who contradicted the Frankish accounts. The Icelandic sagas confirmed Grammaticus’s claim that Lothbrok went raiding in England, where they say he met a gruesome end. According to these records, the Anglo-Saxon king Aella of Northumbria captured Lothbrok and threw him into a pit full of snakes in 865.
Other accounts of Lothbrok’s death are less mythical. One account, for instance, states he most likely perished doing what he loved: raiding. According to these stories, Lothbrok met his end between 852 and 856 in a storm in the Irish Sea.
Many scholars agree that this version of Lothbrok’s final days may be the most accurate.
According to the thirteenth-century Icelandic Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok, by the time he sacked Paris, his sons Bjorn Ironside and Ivar the Boneless had already established their reputations as fearsome Vikings. But Lothbrok did not want his sons to overshadow him. So he sailed to invade England with a small force of men and only two ships.
Thus, according to legend, King Aella was able to defeat him.
When Lothbrok’s sons learned of their father’s death, they did what any true Viking would do. They flew into a berserker rage. They mustered a force of 4,000 warriors and sailed for England.
The Great Heathen Army was unlike anything the world had ever seen.
When they reached Thetford, they immediately put their swords to work on their enemies, killing Edmund the Martyr in a famous incident. Afterwards, they marched on the city of York, where they fulfilled their father’s final prophecy. In that battle, Lothbrok’s sons defeated King Aella and sent him to Valhalla, where Lothbrok was waiting for him.
This victory paved the way for the Viking occupation and ultimately led to the creation of the Danelaw.
Ivar led the Great Heathen Army for another five years, eventually dying in Dublin in 873. Afterwards, Halfdan took command of the Norse forces and invaded Wessex. When the Danish king Bagsecg fell during the Battle of Ashdown, Halfdan seized the opportunity to make peace with the new, powerful king of Wessex, Alfred the Great.
Meanwhile, the rest of Lothbrok’s sons were causing chaos elsewhere. Between 857 and 859, historical records point to a fearsome Viking and skilled naval commander who raided in and around Paris. The chronicle names this warrior simply as Bjorn.
According to some sagas, Bjorn Ironside became king of Sweden and Uppsala, then passed the crown to his son Erik. Historians note, however, that these accounts, if taken literally, contain chronological contradictions.
The legend of Ragnar Lothbrok, with its tales of dragon slaying and prophecies, may have been a carefully constructed piece of groundwork for Viking raids. Some historians believe most of what is known about Lothbrok was merely political propaganda. If so, it was effective.
Many of his sagas note that the mere mention of his name was enough to spread panic among his enemies.
For centuries after his death, and throughout the Norse lands, everyone wanted to claim a share of Lothbrok’s mystique. Kings, chieftains, and fierce Viking warriors all claimed descent from the legendary Ragnar Lothbrok. The man may be lost to history, but the myth, historians now say, was built to conquer it.