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Vikings set to conquer TV in Season 2

Vikings Season 2

Fans of the TV show Vikings don’t have to wait much longer to see what happened to Ragnar, Rollo and Lagertha as the second season begins airing on February 27th.

Vikings Season 2

This season will feature ten episodes and begins naturally enough with a major battle between King Horik against Jarl Borg and the two brothers Ragnar (Travis Fimmel) and Rollo (Clive Standen) are on opposite sides. Meanwhile, Ragnar’s love interest Princess Aslaug arrives at Ragnar’s home in Kattegat bringing a surprise.

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“There’s more boats, there’s more fights, there are bigger battles. It’s the golden age of the Vikings now,” says Clive Standen in a recent interview.

The second episode of the new season moves takes place four years later, and Ragnar’s son Bjorn is now a teenager (with Nathan O’Toole being replaced by Alexander Ludwig to play the character) and we will be introduced to King Egbert of Wessex (played by Linus Roache).

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George Blagden, who plays Athelstan, an Anglo-Saxon monk captured by Ragnar and taken from England to Scandinavia, also returns in Season 2. Blagden explains that he has now become the Viking leader’s closest confidante: “Ragnar is the man who has kept Athelstan alive in Scandinavia throughout Season 1. And so I think where you find him in Season 2, he’s alive four years later in Scandinavia because of Ragnar. And I think to move on it’s very easy to forget some of the scenes that maybe he witnessed as a monk when he first comes into Kattegat in Season 1 and sees all of his brethren monks hung up to die in the market square. I think to move on and survive you [have to] block them from your memory. I think you’re absolutely right, when he comes back to Wessex and lands on the English soil for the first time, it’s very hard for him, it’s very conflicting.”

The premiere episode of the first season drew over seven million viewers in the United States and Canada. The show centres around two brothers Ragnar and Rollo, who lead the first Viking attack on England at the end of the eighth century, with Rangar rising to power. Here is four-minute recap of the first season.

The promotion of the new season includes the American sports network ESPN creating a series of ads featuring the mysterious character known as The Seer

The show creator Michael Hirst explains, “My whole passion for this show was to try and attack and overturn a lot of the prejudices and cliches about the Vikings and to tell the story from a Viking point of view, which had never been done before. I wanted to show that they were human beings, to start, that they had family lives, but also to show that they were really interesting and complex people and that their Gods and their systems of belief were fascinating. I find them fascinating. I’m exploring that with the audience, in way. I hope that the audience will go and read more about the Vikings.”

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Check back with Medievalists.net to see our reviews of each episode. Vikings airs in Canada and the United States Thursday nights at 10pm EST.

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