Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.5

Vikings: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Valhalla Awaits

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 18, 2013

Successful television dramas have been made about the most unlikely candidates—neurotic mob bosses, meth dealers, serial killers—so why not the Vikings? For starters, there's the practical problem that Viking culture relied on oral tradition. It left almost nothing by way of contemporary written records, unlike the English royals whose histories have provided creator Michael Hirst with such rich material for The Tudors, as well as the film scripts for Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Almost everything written about the Vikings comes either from sagas recorded hundreds of years after the fact or from accounts by those they attacked, pillaged and enslaved. As a result, the portrait handed down in popular history is both larger than life and less than complete.

Modern historians have pieced together a more detailed understanding of Viking society from artifacts unearthed in burial chambers and other archaeological finds. The more Hirst researched this extinct culture, the more surprises he found. With a richly developed mythology (as actor Clive Standen observes, their myths and legends match anything in the modern fantasy genre), a complex and, in some respects, surprisingly modern social structure, and a boldly adventurous spirit, the Viking world was a treasure of dramatic possibilities when viewed from the inside. Like most societies, it just made no sense to outsiders. Indeed, the cultural clash itself was part of the drama.

Vikings was the first original dramatic series to be shown on The History Channel, premiering on March 3, 2013, and concluding an initial nine-episode run on April 28. Although some scholars nitpicked the show's historical accuracy, the general consensus was that Hirst and his production team had captured the feel of a lost world, aided by strong performances and the spectacular landscapes of the Irish coast, doubling for medieval Scandinavia. The History Channel recorded some of the best ratings it had ever seen and quickly ordered a second season, which will be shown in 2014.

The hero of Vikings is Ragnar Lodbrok (Travis Fimmel), a real historical figure who became a legendary Viking chieftain but, as the series opens in 793 A.D., is a youthful and ambitious warrior with a farm, a wife, Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick), and two young children on the cusp of adolescence, Bjorn (Nathan O'Toole) and Gyda (Ruby O'Leary). Ragnar also has an older brother named Rollo (Clive Standen), who lacks Ragnar's taste for family life. A proud adventurer and a ferocious fighter, Rollo's relationship with his brother will become strained as Ragnar's exploits bring him acclaim and Rollo feels overshadowed. Over the course of the season, their loyalties will be tested repeatedly.

As the first episode opens, entitled "Rites of Passage", the brothers are exhausted but victorious on a bloody battlefield, and Ragnar sees the black-cloaked figure of the god Odin wandering among the dead. Accompanied by ravens, the god is selecting the warriors who fought and died with sufficient valor to earn entrance to the great hall of Valhalla. The desire for a good death in battle is an essential element of Viking belief, and later in the series we meet an elderly warrior who grieves that he has survived all the battles that have claimed the friends of his youth, denying him their company in Valhalla—and begs the leader of his clan for a last chance to die on the battlefield. (Star Trek fans will recognize the source of much of Klingon lore in the Vikings.) The Viking belief in honorable death makes them fierce adversaries. When they fight Saxon troops in England, their opponents are stunned at their lack of fear, but it is precisely because they believe that dying well in battle is their surest chance at life after death.

Both Ragnar and Rollo have sworn allegiance to Earl Haraldson (a broodingly regal Gabriel Byrne), who holds court in the town of Kattegat with his wife Siggy (Jessalyn Gilsig). They take Ragnar's son to Kattegat to pledge his loyalty to the Earl and also to receive the annual direction on where to set sail in search of plunder and treasure. But this year Ragnar proposes a radical notion. Instead of staging their annual raids to the east, as has always been the custom, why not head for fresh territory in the west? Ragnar has learned a new technique for navigation (explained in detail in the first episode), and he will soon have a new type of ship designed and built by an eccentric friend, Floki (Gustaf Skarsgård), who half-jokingly claims to be a distant relation of the trickster god Loki.

The Earl rejects Ragnar's idea and is suspicious of his ambition—with good reason, as it turns out, because Ragnar defies his ruler's commands, gathers his brother and closest friends, and sails west anyway. After a perilous crossing, they reach the shore of Northumbria in England, where a peaceful monastery is an easy target, and they depart with a haul of gold and silver chalices, crosses and candlesticks, leaving many slain monks behind. The first raid is followed by others, which are met with greater resistance, as King Aelle (Ivan Kaye) of Northumbria gathers troops to resist. But Floki has been busy building additional ships, and the Vikings arrive in ever greater numbers.

Back at home, Ragnar's exploits are celebrated by the people, which is exactly what Earl Haraldson feared. The Earl is happy to see his wealth increased by Ragnar's raids, but he cannot forgive disloyalty, and he does not brook competition. He soon becomes suspicious of all around him and begins testing even those he used to trust. Eventually he behaves with the summary brutality of Shakespeare's tyrant kings.

One of Vikings' most intriguing characters is a Saxon monk named Athelstan (George Blagden), whom Ragnar brings back from England as a slave but then treats almost as a family member. Athelstan has learned ancient Norse in his travels as a missionary, and he teaches Ragnar enough of the Saxon language to let the Viking commander parlay with representatives of King Aelle. But Athelstan's real function in the story is to provide a pair of Christian eyes through which to perceive Viking culture. As he repeatedly prays to God for guidance and is alternately fascinated and repulsed by what he sees around him, Athelstan's is the closest to the audience's perspective. In Episode 8, "Sacrifice", Athelstan accompanies Ragnar's family to the temple at Uppsala for a major religious event involving celebration, feasting, hallucinogenic intoxication and carnal indulgence—followed by human sacrifice of willing victims. To Ragnar and his family, this is all normal custom, but Athelstan experiences each event as a new and strange occurrence. His combined horror and fascination as he witnesses the ritual killings is provocative, and it's a reminder that his own religion is also steeped in the blood of sacrifice—but until now the blood has only been symbolic. For the Vikings, the shedding of blood is part of the natural order.

In the later episodes, writer Hirst expands his canvas to include the political machinations of King Horik (Donal Logue), the future ruler of Denmark, and his enemy Jarl Borg (Thorbjørn Harr) of Götaland, which would eventually form part of Sweden. On this larger stage, both Ragnar and his brother Rollo must decide anew where their loyalties lie and their futures will lead. The possibilities for the second season are numerous, but the commentaries suggest that even larger battle sequences can be expected.

The performances in Vikings are impressive, and the three leads in particular inhabit their period wardrobes and surroundings so completely that the actors are almost unrecognizable when they appear in the Blu-ray extras in contemporary garb speaking in their own voices. Travis Fimmel's Ragnar is clearly a man who hears the call of destiny, but he is patient enough to wait until that call provides clear direction. As Ragnar's wife, Lagertha, Katheryn Winnick creates a credible portrait of the Viking shieldmaiden who was just as capable of standing beside men on the battlefield as she was of keeping a household; such women had rights, and commanded respect, far beyond what is usually seen in a typical patriarchal society. Clive Standen's Rollo is a darkly complex presence whose actions are impossible to predict; he is the classic individual trapped between a good angel and a bad one on either shoulder, but Standen always leaves you guessing which one has Rollo's attention at any given moment.

Vikings: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Vikings was shot in HD video by John S. Bartley, a veteran of such stylized storytelling as Lost and The X-Files. The color palette has the slightly desaturated look often used for historical tales, but certain colors have been emphasized in post-production, e.g., the rich green of grasses and forests in both Scandinavia and England, the deep red of blood, the bright yellow and orange of fire and the intense blue of Ragnar's eyes (their natural color, according to Standen and Winnick).

Each of the three 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-rays in Fox/MGM's set of the first season contains three episodes (in various versions, as discussed under "Special Features"), presumably sourced from digital files, and they all look fantastic. The sequences shot in direct sunlight are sharply detailed and free of noise or artifacts. Those shot at night or indoors are authentically and darkly lit, by candlelight or torches, but the blacks are solid, and the shades of black and gray are well delineated to allow detail to emerge from shadow. The lovingly re-created period detail in clothing, weaponry, decor, utensils and other practical objects can be seen in its full glory, and so can the blood and grime of battle.

Thanks to some updated BD-Java code that choked my BD-ROM drive, I was unable to obtain complete BDInfo scans or calculate average bitrates, but if there were any compression artifacts, I certainly did not see them. Vikings is one of the finest video presentations of a TV series I have had the pleasure to review.

Vikings: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The most pervasive presence on the Blu-ray's lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 track is the haunting score by Trevor Morris, who also scored The Tudors for Hirst. Morris' score takes its cue from the song "If I Had a Heart" by Fever Ray, which plays over the stylized opening titles, and invests each episode of Vikings with a brooding, intense presence. The score expands throughout the surround array and reaches down into the low ranges for deep bass response, where it readily mixes with some of the more impressive sound effects, such as the thunder and lightning of a major storm during Ragnar's first crossing to England.

Crowd noises at the Earl's court and various other scenes, the sounds of the sea and, of course, battle sequences engage the surrounds in subtle but effective ways that help immerse the viewer in the experience. The dialogue is clear and well-prioritized, when it's in English, but there are smatterings of old Norse and Saxon throughout Vikings as a reminder that the characters spoke languages long since dead. These lines are subtitled.

Vikings: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Extended Versions: Each episode offers an option between the version shown on The History Channel (which includes "previously on" recaps) and the so-called "extended version". The extended versions appears to be the uncensored episodes shown in Europe, featuring alternative takes with more explicit nudity and gore.



• Season Mode: This option allows the episodes to be played continuously, and it automatically bookmarks the spot when the viewer stops playback.



• Commentaries
• Episode 1, "Rites of Passage" (disc 1), with Michael Hirst and Jessalyn Gilsig: Hirst discusses his original concept for the series, and Gilsig describes the process of entering this historical, re-imagined world to portray one of its characters. Her account of how she and Gabriel Byrne developed the relationship between Earl and Siggy Haraldson is especially interesting.


• Episode 9, "All Change" (disc 3), with Katheryn Winnick and Clive Standen: The actors who portray Lagertha and Rollo chat amiably about matters both small (details of hair, makeup and props) and large (the bigger themes of the show and elements of Viking culture). They also drop a few hints about season 2, which was filming when they recorded their commentary.



• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1): All of these scenes are brief extensions to existing sequences and were probably cut for running time.
• Disc 1 (3:01): Three scenes, all of which were removed from Episode 1.
• Disc 3 (0:38): A single deleted scene from Episode 8.



• A Warrior Society: Viking Culture and Law (disc 3) (1080p; 1.78:1; 20:48): Series creator Michael Hirst provides an overview of Viking society, with substantial contributions from Dr. Anthony Perron, Professor of History, Loyola Marymount University; Dr. Jochen Burgtorf, Professor of History, University of California, Fullerton; and Justin Pollard, described as a "Vikings Consultant". Cast members, including Fimmel, Winnick, Standen, Gilsig and Blagden, also contribute insights based on their research into their characters.



• Birth of the Vikings (disc 3) (1080p; 1.78:1; 17:09): Hirst and the principal cast discuss how the series and its lead characters were developed and evolved.



• Forging the Viking Army: Warfare and Tactics (disc 3) (1080p; 1.78:1; 12:11): This short feature covers training for the complex battle sequences with sword master Richard Ryan, stunt coordinator Mark Henson and key members of the cast. Comparisons between rehearsal and on-set footage illustrate the extent of the preparation.



• Interactive Blu-ray Exclusives (disc 3): Each of these features loads a graphical chart featuring individual items. Clicking on an item activates a brief segment featuring historian Dr. Jochen Burgtorf, who provides relevant background or context. Both charts include a "play all" function.
• The Armory of the Vikings
• Conquest and Discovery: Journeys of the Vikings



• Sneak Peaks (disc 2): The first four also play at the startup of disc 1.
• Paranoia
• The Family
• The Wolverine
• The East
• American Horror Story Asylum
• Carrie (2013)

Vikings: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I missed Vikings during its History Channel broadcast, and my first encounter with the show was this Blu-ray set. Without knowing what to expect, I was surprised at how quickly the series drew me into its storylines. Hirst is a talented writer, both in his creation of individual scenes and in planning long-term arcs that play out over several episodes, or an entire season, or even longer. He also appreciates the value of surprising the audience with an unforeseen development that isn't just pulled out of the air for shock value but, when you look back, turns out to be the logical outcome of events to date. (I am being vague on purpose, but I am thinking of one specific development in this first season.) Above all, he appreciates the importance of casting the right actors, directors and craftspeople to fill out the visual dimension of a story, which is why Vikings doesn't look quite like any other series. If the upcoming second season is as good as this first one, The History Channel can look forward to more great ratings. Highly recommended.