Ragnar Lodbrok, so the saga goes, died in a pit of snakes – laughing, we are told, and with a threat on his lips. His sons made that threat come true. Yet the truly remarkable thing is not the tale of revenge but an inconvenient truth: while the father remains a glittering legend, several of his sons are historically more tangible than he ever was. A look at Ivar, Björn, Sigurd, Ubbe, Hvitserk and Halfdan – and at the greatest Viking army England ever saw.
The Norse tradition tells it with evident relish: Ragnar Lodbrok, the legendary Viking king in his shaggy protective breeches, was captured on one of his raids into Northumbria by King Ælla. Ælla had him thrown into a pit full of snakes. There, facing death, Ragnar speaks his most famous line in the „Ragnars saga loðbrókar" – not begging for mercy, but mocking, and fully aware that his sons would come.
This is heroic poetry, not a police report. But it is the narrative pivot, because from here the weight of the saga shifts from the father to the sons. In the „Ragnarssona þáttr", the „Tale of Ragnar's Sons", the heirs become what the father had only claimed to be: men who do not merely plunder but conquer. And it is precisely at this point that the story begins to interlock with the verifiable past – for in the year 865 an army really did land in England, an army whose leaders the sources connect with the names of Ragnar's sons.
The sagas name several sons, and the number itself varies from source to source. Five names recur most consistently: Ívarr inn beinlausi (Ivar the Boneless), Björn Járnsíða (Björn Ironside), Sigurðr ormr í auga (Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye), Hvítserkr (the „White Shirt") and Ubbi, or Ubbe. Halfdan is added by the English sources, and some traditions equate him with Hvitserk or set him beside him.
As the mother of these sons the saga names Áslaug, who is herself said to be the daughter of the dragon-slayer Sigurd and the valkyrie Brynhild – an elegant device that links Ragnar's line with the famous Völsung cycle. This pedigree should be read as a literary construction, not a family tree. What unites the sons, however, is a shared motif running through every version: they act as a band, a brotherhood with a common purpose. And that purpose carries them across the North Sea.
Of all the sons, Ivar is the most fascinating – and the most enigmatic. The sagas portray him not as a muscle-bound brawler but as a cool thinker. Where his brothers rely on raw force, Ivar wins through cunning, negotiation and strategic patience. In several episodes it is he who plans the revenge, holds the others back and strikes at exactly the right moment.
His byname „inn beinlausi" – „the Boneless" – has occupied generations of scholars without any interpretation winning out decisively. Some suspect a bone disease, such as brittle-bone disease, which would have required him to be carried; others read the name as a hint at snake-like flexibility or at legendary circumstances of his conception. A third reading takes „boneless" simply as a metaphor – an image of agility and elusiveness. The honest answer is that we do not know. What the saga does make clear is his role. Ivar is not the strongest son but the most dangerous, because he is the cleverest. And this very Ivar, as we shall see, has a very concrete historical counterpart on the far side of the Irish Sea.
Björn Járnsíða, „Ironside", wears his byname like a promise: weapons are said to have glanced off him in battle, as though his flank were made of iron. Björn is the great seafarer among the brothers, and to him the tradition attaches the most spectacular adventure of the whole clan – a multi-year Mediterranean expedition said to have set out around 859 to 862 with the notorious Hástein (Hasting).
The route reads like a plunder catalogue of the south: down the coasts of France, past Al-Andalus, into the western Mediterranean, on to North Africa, the Balearics and the Italian coast. The most famous – and most instructive – moment of the voyage is the sack of the city of Luni. Later tradition claims Björn and Hástein mistook Luni for Rome itself and took it by a ruse: Hástein had himself declared dead and, feigning a deathbed conversion, was carried into the city to be baptised before the Vikings struck from within. Whether the baptism trick is true is saga embroidery. What remains historically striking is the sober punchline: it was not Rome at all, but the far smaller Luni in Tuscany. Only a fraction of the fleet returned with its rich booty through the Strait of Gibraltar – the south did not let itself be robbed as easily as a monastery on the North Sea. Björn himself is regarded in the Swedish royal tradition as founder of the Munsö dynasty of Uppsala.
Sigurðr ormr í auga owes his byname to a sign that marked him from birth: a ring-shaped, serpent-like mark in or around the eye. The saga interprets it as an inheritance from his mother Áslaug and thus as a token of Völsung descent – the serpent an allusion to the dragon Fáfnir, whom his grandfather Sigurd is said to have slain. A birthmark thus becomes a genealogical signature.
Sigurd's real significance lies less in individual deeds than in his descendants. The Norse sources make him the ancestor of important royal lines; through his daughter and grandsons the sagas trace threads to the later Danish rulers, all the way to the forebears of famous Viking-age names. These genealogies must be treated with the same caution as the Áslaug pedigree: they are also politics. Ruling houses of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries liked to trace their descent back to Ragnar, because a legendary ancestor conferred prestige. Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye is therefore the figure through whom Ragnar's blood „marries into" later history – half memory, half coat of arms.
Less dazzling, but all the more tangible for history, are the remaining brothers. Ubbe (Ubba) appears in English sources at the very front and is named, together with Ivar, as one of the leaders of the army that fell upon East Anglia. Later tradition has Ubba fall in 878 in Devon, fighting the West Saxons, with the fabled raven banner of the war-leaders said to have been captured.
Hvitserk, the „White Shirt", remains pale in the English sources and is equated by some scholars with Halfdan – possibly two names for one person, or a confusion in the saga tradition. Halfdan (Old Norse Hálfdan, Old English Healfdene), by contrast, is the most clearly graspable brother of all: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle names him explicitly as a leader, he divided the conquered land of Northumbria among his men in 876 and thereby began the permanent settlement of the Scandinavians. He probably died in 877 in Ireland, fighting rival Norsemen. Plunderers became settlers – and Halfdan stands at the heart of that transformation.
In the autumn of 865 a host landed in England that the Anglo-Saxons named with awe and dread: „mycel hæþen here" – the Great Heathen Army. It was no ordinary raid for a single summer season but a standing army bent on conquest. It wintered in East Anglia, extorted horses there and thereby became more mobile than any Viking army before it. The saga supplies the motive free of charge: these men came to avenge the death of their father.
„How the piglets would grunt if they knew the plight of the old boar!"Ragnars saga loðbrókar (Ragnar's dying words in the snake pit)
The „old boar" is Ragnar, the „piglets" are his sons – and the words are at once a threat and a prophecy. Whether Ragnar ever spoke this line makes no difference to history; what matters is that a real, vast army came to England, and that the storytellers gave it this motive. Here poetry and reality mesh: the names of the leaders – Ivar, Ubba, Halfdan – come from the same world as the saga, yet their deeds left traces in sober chronicles and in the soil of English excavation sites.
In 866 the army turned north and, in November, took the old Roman city of York – Jórvík in Norse. Northumbria at that time was weakened by a struggle for the throne between two rival kings, Osberht and Ælla. Faced with the common threat, the two struck a hasty alliance and tried to retake York on 21 March 867. The attack ended in disaster: both kings fell, and the city remained in the hands of the Norsemen.
For the saga this is the climax, for among the fallen was that very Ælla who is said to have thrown Ragnar into the snake pit. The revenge was complete. Historically it must be noted: the death of Ælla in the fighting for York is well attested. The elaboration of that death into a cruel ritual, on the other hand, belongs to the realm of legend – more on that shortly. York, in any case, became the core of a Scandinavian sphere of power that would shape England for generations. The saga's revenge-quest had become a geopolitical fact.
The second great name that the army of Ragnar's sons brought down was King Edmund of East Anglia. In 869 – some sources date it to 870 – Edmund was defeated by the heathen warriors and killed. The earliest detailed account comes from Abbo of Fleury, who around 985 composed the „Passio Sancti Eadmundi" and names Ingwar (Ivar) and Ubba as those responsible.
According to this tradition, Edmund refused to abandon his Christian faith or submit to a heathen king; he was bound to a tree, shot with arrows and finally beheaded. The fallen king became a saint: Saint Edmund, around whose grave grew the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, one of the most important pilgrimage sites of medieval England. One must read the Passio as what it is – a saint's life with an edifying purpose, written more than a century after the events. That Edmund fell is certain. The details of his death are pious embellishment. Yet it is precisely in Edmund that we see how deeply the Great Army was burned into English memory: the campaign of Ragnar's sons created a national saint.
This is where it becomes especially intriguing, for of all the sons it is the most enigmatic who has the most solid historical counterpart. The Irish annals know a powerful Viking leader named Ímar, king of Dublin, who dominated the Irish Sea and died in 873. The Annals of Ulster describe him in his obituary as „king of the Norsemen of all Ireland and Britain" – an extraordinary title. Many scholars identify this Ímar with Ivar the Boneless.
From Ímar/Ivar sprang an entire dynasty, the Uí Ímair – the „descendants of Ivar" – who for generations linked Dublin and York and ranked among the most important powers of the north-western Viking world. This inverts the familiar picture: it is not the glittering father Ragnar who is historically tangible but the son. Ivar is no mere saga figure but – in all probability – a real war-leader whose descendants still ruled kingdoms in the tenth century. And here lies the real point of the whole subject: the sons are the historical kernel from which the later saga worked backwards to construct a legendary father.
The Great Heathen Army landed in England in 865 and was a real, well-attested historical event. York fell in late 866; in the attempt to retake it on 21 March 867 the Northumbrian kings Osberht and Ælla fell. King Edmund of East Anglia was killed in 869 and venerated as a saint. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle names Halfdan (Healfdene), Ivar (Ingware) and Ubba as leaders; Halfdan divided Northumbrian land for settlement in 876 and probably died in 877 in Ireland. Ubba fell in 878 in Devon. A Viking king named Ímar ruled over Dublin, died in 873 and is regarded by many scholars as the historical Ivar; his dynasty, the Uí Ímair, linked Dublin and York for generations. Unlike the Ragnar saga, these people and dates are tangible through near-contemporary chronicles and annals.
Anyone who knows the sons of Ragnar today often knows them from the television series „Vikings" – and that is perfectly fine, for the series first drew many people to this material. Like every good story, however, it condenses and shifts things. A few differences are worth knowing, without taking away any of the show's appeal.
In the tradition, Ivar, Björn, Sigurd, Ubbe, Hvitserk and Halfdan are not a single core family acting all at once with neatly assigned character roles, but names from various sources of differing age that only the saga arranges into a brotherhood. Ivar's „bonelessness" is a puzzling byname in the saga, not a settled medical diagnosis. Björn's Mediterranean voyage belongs to Björn and Hástein, not to a family outing, and its most spectacular target was Luni, not Rome. And the timeframe is stretched: between the landing of 865 and the last deeds of the brothers lie decades that no single lifespan can bundle together. In short: the series tells the saga, the saga tells an idea – and history tells of an army. All three are interesting, as long as one does not confuse them.
Ragnar Lodbrok himself cannot be securely pinned down historically – he is probably a composite figure condensed from several real Viking leaders of the ninth century. The famous „blood eagle", which the sons are said to have carried out in revenge on Ælla, is fiercely disputed in source criticism: it rests on hard-to-interpret skaldic kennings, and prominent scholarship regards it as a misunderstanding by later translators rather than an attested ritual. Ivar's byname „the Boneless" has several competing interpretations (illness, agility, metaphor) and none is certain. Björn's expedition „to Rome" was in truth the sack of Luni; Hástein's baptism ruse is saga embroidery. The Áslaug pedigree, which links Ragnar to the Völsungs and Sigurd to famous royal lines, is genealogical legitimising fiction. And finally: the central sagas were written some 300 to 400 years after the events. What remains is an honest finding – the sons are more tangible than the father.
The sons of Ragnar are a textbook case of how the Viking Age works: a hard historical kernel around which a gleaming layer of narrative settles over the centuries. The Great Army was real, its leaders bore genuine names, its consequences – York as a centre of power, a national saint in East Anglia, a dynasty across the Irish Sea – are still written into the landscape and into memory today. And over all of it arches the saga of the laughing father in the pit and the sons who came.
Perhaps that is exactly why these figures will not let us go. They stand for a thought that runs through the Hávamál itself: possessions pass away, kindreds die, but one thing endures – the fame of one's deeds. Ragnar's sons, for good and for cruel, lived for that afterglow of renown. That we still speak their names eleven centuries later is, in a bitter, northern way, their final victory.
Ragnar Lodbrok · The Great Heathen Army · The shield wall · The longships · Berserkers.