If you are into Vikings—and a great many people are—then there is a televisual feast of programmes available on Netflix. I reckon that if I sat down now and watched them all end to end that I may be dead before I get to the end. But what is not to like about Vikings? Big hairy men with bulging muscles and big hairy women with bulging chests. There is something for everyone. And if you are into depictions of vigorous sexual encounters—with the woman, inexplicably, always on top—then look no further. Our first illegal immigrants seemed to know how to enjoy themselves. After all, one needs to relax after a hard day raping innocent women and pillaging villages before burning them down.
Until recently I have enjoyed all the Viking fare on Netflix, some more historically accurate than others. There was the wonderful series The Last Kingdom with the impossibly good-looking Uhtred (kept my wife interested anyway) and then the historical prequel Vikings with the impossibly beautiful and bisexual Lagertha who could wield a sword as well as any man (that kept me interested). There was also the hilarious spoof Norsemen where the male gaze was accommodated by the formidable Frøya and the Viking men were the most cowardly and useless bunch imaginable.
So far so good. But now the Vikings franchise has gone a step too far and produced a sequel series called Vikings: Valhalla and it is complete Scandinavian turkey. The story is set 100 years into the settlement of Vikings in England. Clearly none of the original cast appears, but the location of Viking HQ in Kattegat uses exactly the same set. The acting is lame, the plot is contrived and, worst of all, it’s woke! Yes, woke Vikings, who’d have thought.
The story revolves around King Aethelred’s (the unready one) decision in the 11th century to slaughter and expel the Vikings from England and the Viking’s inevitable revenge. Sounds like a reasonable plot leading to plenty of sex, violence and Viking shield walls, you’d think. Sadly, this potential does not survive the mangle of the screenwriters who have used the series to launch an attack on Britain, to paint the Vikings in an incredibly good light, and to make some contrived points about immigration, racism and all manner of jiggery-wokery.
So, here goes. The series opens with the Viking settlements being burned down and men, women and children being slaughtered. This was all notwithstanding the fact that many of the Vikings had converted to Christianity. Thus Aethelred, when addressing his minions, referred to the ‘extermination’ of the Vikings (does that remind you of anyone?). The few Vikings who survived and returned to Kattegat claimed that England had been ‘cleansed’ of the Vikings, so you can see where this aspect of the story is going.
In raising a Viking fleet to go back to England and reap revenge, there is a major division amongst the Vikings to be resolved. Many were now Christians, but others held to the ‘old ways’ and there was destined to be an almighty punch up to see who would lead the invasion. However, some brave soul wielding a sword waded in—without killing anyone—and resolved the whole situation in a jiffy. He told them they were all brothers and must stick together and thus I was deprived of a jolly good bloodbath and began to suspect that this might become a motif for the series.
All is well in Kattegat, and we are provided with sweeping scenes of the streets and markets and treated to a multi-racial feast of people of all colours from many corners of the earth, all smiling and getting along just dandy. Needless to say, there was nobody ‘of colour’ when we got similar views of England. The Vikings seem to have solved the problems of immigration and racial tension even before these were ‘things’. Kattagat is ruled by a queen (Jarl Haakon), an ahistorical artefact introduced in the Vikings series. There is no evidence for Viking queens being rulers above their male counterparts let alone a black one. Oh yes, in a display of abject wokery Jarl Haakon is black – possibly she is a distant relative of Justin Trudeau.
All the above was gleaned from the first episode and having fallen asleep during the second episode, I am resolved not to watch any more. Had I stayed awake, nothing would have surprised me. Possibly we may have seen the introduction of a band of transgender Vikings arguing about the use of toilet facilities on the longboats. I can envisage a scene where, after razing an English village to the ground, the Vikings hand out cards to the survivors urging them to rate their favourite Viking or to leave a comment on htpps://www. kattagatvikings.com. I have a comment for the makers of Vikings: Valhalla—put this series on a longboat and give it a Viking funeral.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
