The Sons of Ragnar: Ivar, Bjorn, Ubbe, and Sigurd

Did Ragnar Lothbrok exist?

Before discussing the sons, we must ask an uncomfortable question: Did the father exist? The honest answer is that we do not know, and most historians lean toward "no"—at least not in the form depicted in the stories.

The sources that recount Ragnar Loðbrók are all late. The Ragnars saga loðbrókar is Icelandic and dates from the 13th century. Saxo Grammaticus devoted a lengthy section to him in his Gesta Danorum, completed around 1200. The Krákumál, a poem in which the hero sings of his death in the snake pit, belongs to the same era. Four centuries separate these texts from the events they claim to describe.

Contemporary sources, however, know of a Viking leader named Reginheri or Ragnar, who traveled up the Seine and sacked Paris in 845. The Annals of Saint-Bertin and accounts linked to the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés attest to this, and Charles the Bald paid him a considerable ransom to secure his departure. This man did exist. There is no proof that he is the Ragnar of the sagas, and nothing links him to the sons we are about to discuss.

The nickname itself smells of manufactured legend. Loðbrók means "hairy breeches," and the saga explains pedantically that these were leather pants boiled in pitch to face a giant serpent. This is a classic etiological myth: a story invented to justify a nickname whose original meaning has been lost.

The current consensus therefore views Ragnar as a composite figure, aggregating several 9th-century Scandinavian leaders under a single prestigious name, to which a lineage was retroactively attached. The Danish and Norwegian dynasties of the Middle Ages had every reason to claim such an ancestor, and they certainly did so.

This conclusion does not empty the subject—it shifts it. For while the father is doubtful, the sons are well-documented. Several of them appear in chronicles written during their lifetimes by people who were subjected to them. That is where the history truly begins.

865: The Great Heathen Army enters history

In 865, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded the arrival in East Anglia of a force of a new kind. It called it the micel here, the "Great Army," and this vocabulary contrasts with that used previously for raids. It was no longer a plundering fleet that arrived for the summer: it was an expeditionary corps that overwintered and intended to stay.

The difference is strategic. Previous raids aimed for loot—monasteries, markets, ransoms. The Great Army aimed for territory. It negotiated for horses, moved inland, took fortified cities, and installed puppet kings.

Its path is known year by year. In 866, it seized York, capital of Northumbria, taking advantage of a civil war between two claimants. In 869, it killed King Edmund of East Anglia, who would become a saint and martyr. In 871, it faced Wessex, where a young man named Alfred had just ascended the throne. In 876-877, Northumbria and Mercia were divided among the Scandinavian leaders and their men—the first documented land partition.

The leaders named by the chronicle are few, and they are our own: Ívarr (Ingware, Hinguar in Latin texts), Halfdan, and Ubba. They acted together, were described as brothers, and jointly directed the venture.

One point deserves to be highlighted, as it is almost always omitted: the contemporary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle never calls them "sons of Ragnar." It names men, describes their campaigns, and ignores their genealogy. The link with Ragnar appears later—in Æthelweard in the 10th century, then massively in the Scandinavian sources of the 13th century.

One question remains open and divides historians: How many were there? The Chronicle gives no figures. Traditional estimates spoke of several thousand men, but a more recent school, following Peter Sawyer, has argued that medieval vocabulary systematically exaggerates, and that a force of a few hundred combatants would have been sufficient to defeat kingdoms that were themselves sparsely populated. The debate is not settled; the chosen side completely changes the scale we imagine.

What is not disputed, however, is the change in method. The Great Army relied on fortified winter camps, one of which—Repton, in Derbyshire—has been excavated. A rampart backed against a church and a pit containing the remains of nearly three hundred individuals were uncovered there. Archaeology confirms the account here: these men were settling, burying their dead on-site, and holding territory.

In other words, we have two records that only partially overlap: on one hand, real warlords—dated and localized—whose actions reshaped England; on the other, a legendary family constructed after the fact. The challenge is to not confuse the two—and that is exactly what fiction does, very effectively.

Ivar the Boneless: The best-attested of the four

Of all Ragnar's supposed sons, Ívarr is by far the one whose existence is most firmly established. He appears in three independent documentary traditions, which is rare for a 9th-century Viking leader.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and English Latin sources name him at the head of the Great Army, under the forms Ingware or Hinguar. The Irish annals, for their part, track a certain Ímar, King of the Scandinavians of Dublin, active from the 850s until his death in 873, where he is described as "King of the Norsemen of all Ireland and Britain." The identification Ívarr = Ímar is widely accepted, though not formally proven: the dates and areas of activity match, as does the name.

His nickname poses a riddle that no one has solved. Inn beinlausi literally means "the boneless one." Four theories circulate, and none is definitive. A bone disease—osteogenesis imperfecta is frequently suggested—which would explain why he was carried on a shield. Impotence, with the saga specifying that he had no descendants. Exceptional flexibility, comparable to a serpent, which would be a warrior compliment. Or a textual deformation, from a poorly transcribed word.

What is certain is his effectiveness. It was under his leadership that York fell in 866, an event that opened two centuries of Scandinavian presence in northern England. It is to him that English sources attribute the death of King Edmund of East Anglia in 869—executed after refusing to renounce his faith, according to the hagiographic tradition that would make him one of England's most popular saints.

His death in 873 is recorded by the Irish annals without fanfare. He died neither in combat nor gloriously: he died, and it is noted that he was a king. For a man whom legend would turn into a monster of vengeance, the sobriety of the contemporary account is instructive.

Still, the fusion of the two records—the English Ívarr and the Irish Ímar—remains a majority working hypothesis, not an established fact. It is possible that two distinct men bore a frequent name at the same time. That is the kind of nuance fiction cannot easily convey, and history cannot ignore.

Halfdan, Ubba, Björn and Sigurd: Four uneven records

Halfdan is the most concrete of the four, because he did something measurable. In 876, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes that he "divided the lands of Northumbria, and they began to plow and provide for themselves." This dry sentence marks a turning point: warriors became landowners. It was the birth certificate of the Danelaw, the zone where the law, language, and place names would remain Scandinavian for generations. Halfdan died in 877 in Ireland, killed during a naval battle.

Ubba appears primarily at the end. English sources state he was killed in 878 in Devon, during a failed attack against a Saxon fortress, and signal the capture of his standard—the famous raven banner, which late tradition says was woven by his sisters and endowed with omens. He shares responsibility with Ívarr for the death of Edmund in several hagiographic accounts.

Björn Járnsíða, "Ironside," poses a different problem. Frankish sources mention a leader named Berno active on the Seine in the 850s-860s, and especially a spectacular expedition led with Hástein: a Scandinavian fleet crossed Gibraltar, ravaged the Iberian and North African coasts, entered the Mediterranean, and sacked the Italian city of Luna—which the attackers supposedly mistook for Rome, according to a savory and likely apocryphal anecdote. The attribution of this expedition to Björn is, however, late: contemporary annals name Hástein, not him.

Sigurðr ormr í auga, "Snake-in-the-Eye," is the most fragile case. No contemporary source mentions him. He exists only in the sagas and in Saxo, which explain his nickname by a mark in the shape of a serpent in his iris. His role in the texts is genealogical: he is the claimed ancestor of several Danish royal lineages, and through this path, the forefather of William the Conqueror in certain medieval constructions.

One can measure here the ambiguity of the file. Two brothers are solidly attested by enemy chronicles, a third rests on a later attribution, and the fourth may never have existed outside of a politically useful family tree.

What one should take away is not disappointing—on the contrary. These men—whatever their actual kinship ties—led a venture between 865 and 878 that destroyed three out of four English kingdoms and only failed before the Wessex of Alfred. Their historical importance depends in no way on their father.

The blood eagle: Real torture or translation error?

No episode has left such a mark on the imagination as the blood eagle—the blóðörn—a torture in which one supposedly opened the victim's back, severed the ribs from either side of the spine, and spread the lungs like wings. The sagas apply it to King Ælla of Northumbria, put to death by Ívarr in vengeance for Ragnar.

The problem is that this story rests on a thin textual basis, and has been the subject of intense scholarly debate.

In 1984, philologist Roberta Frank published an argument that remains famous. She observed that the earliest mentions are found in skaldic poetry, the language of which is made of kenningar—those coded circumlocutions. Yet, saying an eagle "scratches the back" of a vanquished foe is a conventional way to describe scavengers on a battlefield—a commonplace image in that repertoire. According to Frank, later authors, no longer mastering this language, took the metaphor literally and reconstructed a ritual out of a misunderstanding.

The thesis held sway for a long time. It was challenged in 2022 by a study published in the journal Speculum, in which the authors—a philologist and an anatomist—examined the physical feasibility of the operation. Their conclusion: the act is anatomically possible on a body, and the descriptions in the sagas are consistent with one another. This does not prove that it was practiced, but it removes the argument of impossibility.

Where do we stand? In a situation of acknowledged uncertainty. No grave, no human remains, no contemporary source documents such a torture. The texts that describe it date from three centuries later and belong to a genre that cultivates spectacular cruelty. But the hypothesis of a real ritual, perhaps exceptional and dedicated to Odin, can no longer be dismissed out of hand.

We will therefore stick to this: the blood eagle is an attested literary motif, whose historical status remains debated. It is less spectacular than a certainty, and it is more honest—especially since the story serves an obvious narrative function in the sagas: justifying the invasion of 865 through filial vengeance, whereas historians see it primarily as a planned campaign of conquest.

What the series adapts, what the sources say

The series Vikings did for these figures what no textbook could have: it made them familiar to millions of people. It is worth specifying what it adapted, not to discredit it, but because confusion sets in quickly.

The main technique is the compression of time. The Ragnar of the series participates in the raid on Lindisfarne (793), the siege of Paris (845), and his sons lead the Great Army (865). This spans over seventy years, and nearly a century if you include what follows. No single man lived through those three episodes; the series assembles them into one biography.

Rollo was not Ragnar's brother. He appears in sources at the beginning of the 10th century and obtains Normandy through the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte in 911—that is, two to three generations after the events of the series. We have dedicated an entire article to him, as the gap between the character and the man is so instructive.

Lagertha does not come from Icelandic tradition but solely from Saxo Grammaticus, who presents her as a warrior whom Ragnar married and then repudiated. She is absent from the sagas that recount his sons' lives, and her historicity is highly doubtful.

Floki blends two figures: Hrafna-Flóki Vilgerðarson, a very real navigator who reached Iceland around the 860s and gave it its name, and the god Loki, whose personality the series lends him. The eccentric, mystical boat builder is a creation.

Finally, the series presents the sons as a fraternal group structured by rivalry and grief. The chronicles, however, describe allied leaders heading a joint enterprise, without saying a word about their feelings. That whole intimate register is fictional, by necessity: no one wrote down what Ivar was thinking.

None of this diminishes the value of the series. It reintroduced into popular culture a Scandinavia of merchants, farmers, and jurists, where cinema had previously been content with helmeted brutes. It simply did what historical fiction does: choose dramatic coherence over chronology. Knowing where the line is drawn makes the story more interesting, not less.

Frequently Asked Questions about Ragnar's Sons

May the Aesir guide you on the path of honor.