Posted on 11/19/2023 6:08:15 PM PST by CheshireTheCat
On an unknown date in (perhaps) the 860s, Norse raider Ragnar Lodbrok (or Ragnar Lothbrok) was allegedly put to death in the Indiana Jones-esque manner of being cast into a pit of snakes.
Ragnar is a half-legendary character who plundered France and Britain in the mid-ninth century, the heyday of Viking marauders; he’s also the lead character of the cable TV series Vikings.
He’s known from Scandinavian sagas, like the Ragnarssona Þattr, which describes Ragnar’s final battle after shipwrecking in Northumbria.....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
Ragnar’s boys did the old blood-eagle on his killer, it is said.
He was also portrayed by Ernest Borgnine in the 1958 film “The Vikings” which also starred Tony Curtis and Kurt Douglas. But in that movie he was killed by by being thrown into a pit of wolves.
Yeah the Viking film where all the Vikings have New York Accents
“Yeah the Viking film where all the Vikings have New York Accents”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Yonda lies da castle of my fadda.”
Even though no one knows if he was a real person, or just a legend, I’ve traced Ragnar in my family tree to be my 41st Great-Grandfather. And Uhtred of Bamburgh, the real-life character in Bernard Cornwell’s book series “The Saxon Stories” on which Netflix’s series “The Last Kingdom” is based, is supposed to be my 29th Great-Grandfather.
“I am Uhtred, son of Uhtred” - “destiny is all”
Wow you can trace back that far? My trail ends at 17th ggf on ancestry.com. Anything after that seems to be pure speculation. I do have Lucille Ball and Katherine Hepburn in there which is kinda neat.
Fun movie. Glad someone besides me remembers it.
Well, let's put it this way. Since you can only go back 5 or 6 DNA connections on Ancestry.com, I've used other online genealogy sources to extend my family tree. I've mostly used Geni.com to go farther back through the generations. Sometimes I've found more than one file on the same person, so I've made note of them in my Family Tree program. I have no idea how accurate the connections are, but I go back as far as I can in them. I have Welsh and English DNA, and have gone back pretty far on some of the lines. I take it with a grain of salt since I can't really prove any of it.
LOL! It was a great series. I really liked Alexander Dreymon in the lead role. Never read that particular book series though, although I do enjoy medieval period novel series.
Dreymon is awesome.
That was cool
You write: “Yeah the Viking film where all the Vikings have New York Accents”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Yonda lies da castle of my fadda.”
I believe the real lines were spoken by Tony Curtis in a film before he mastered the hang of Cary Grant’s accent: “Come inta da tent of da Caliph my fadda.”
Reminds me of the movie, "The Mission," which was a great movie carried entirely by Jeremy Irons and a young Liam Neeson. De Niro plays an 18th century Spanish colonial soldier/mercenary who made no effort whatsoever to mask, mitigate or alter his NY accent. It becomes a distraction from the first moment he opens his mouth. Fortunately it's a strong and compelling story and the other actors didn't phone it in like De Niro.
Jackie Chan could have played the role more convincingly.
My father was born in Norway. His mother claimed her family on her father’s side was descended from Eric the Red and said that a symbol on the family “crest” proved it. I remember as a kid being excited by this until my father told me “you know just about everyone in Norway makes this same claim”. : )
Awesome! Love the line, “I’m no linguist, but the King of England should speak English.
I've got Danish and Swedish DNA, Germanic Empire DNA too. Nobody in my family ever knew that. My grandparents were all gone by the time I was born in 1947, so all I had to go on, was the little info there was readily available when I started. My father was born in Holland. My mother in Canada. Both came to the US as young kids who never knew their grandparents either. The majority of my DNA is English, Welsh and southwestern European. My father's tree ends early as most of them were farmers, laborers, servants. It's my mother's side that has the longest connections.
As a kid growing up, my mother used to tell us that our Great-Great Grandmother was a full-blooded Indian. Because she was from Canada, she assumed they were Ojibway. But according to cousins discovered in Canada, she was actually half-Mohawk, and served as the midwife for the neighborhood. Members of the family remember her delivering so and so's children. But my DNA shows no indigenous connection, so who knows for sure.
After my mother died in 1990, I traveled to the village of Picton, Ontario, Canada where my mother was allegedly born, and found references in the public library to some of her family's line. Some of them were considered the pioneers of the county. My mother was never able to become a citizen of the U.S. because no one can find a record of her birth anywhere. Despite knowing her parent's names, their date of marriage, and her grandparent's names, etc., nothing has been found. It's all pretty weird. My mother never really knew her father. My grandmother's marriage didn't last long, and I don't even know if they ever got divorced. I've tried to track down her father's burial site, but it's unknown, as is my mother's aunt, who initially moved to Kentucky with her silversmith husband. He died in the 30's, and at some point in the 50's, she disappeared, but she's not buried in the plot next to her husband. So she either went back to Canada, or remarried, with no record of her new name anywhere.
It's also very frustrating that my uncle's WWII military records (my mother's brother), were destroyed in the big fire at the Military Personnel Records office in St. Louis, Mo., in 1973. He enlisted in the Army, and allegedly served overseas in the China, Burma, India theater, was also allegedly wounded, but there are no records available to confirm any of it. And of course, no one is left on either side of our families to get info from. I'm the last one left in my family. My last sibling died in 2014. It is rather ironic that I can find more connections, and info further out in the tree I go, but not closer to home. You'd think it would be the other way around, but my family was never normal that way, so I take what I can get from places like Geni.com.
I always enjoyed it when he called Leofric "Arseling."
Interesting little article about the term, and when, and how it was first used:
The Last Kingdom: The Meaning Of Uhtred's Nickname "Arseling"
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