The Vikings (1958)

This week, we've got anachronistic leather daddies, siege-based penetration imagery, big old snake holes, and Tony Curtis in tiny hotpants - it's got to be a Viking episode!

Sara sat down with Dr Roderick Dale to discuss The Vikings (1958), a film with some loud feelings about the Middle Ages. The film loosely adapts the sagas of King Ragnar Lodbrok (Ernest Borgnine) and his rivalrous sons Einar (Kirk Douglas) and Eric (Tony Curtis), as they invade the Kingdom of Northumbria and battle for creepy masculine ownership of the Welsh Princess Morgana (Janet Leigh). Sara and Roderick talk about how the film glamourizes the Sagas - what is surprisingly accurate to the archaeology, and what is way off base? They also discuss the film's trivialisation of sexual assault, cinema's weirdly colourless, beige vision of the medieval period, and throw in a good amount of 1950s Hollywood gossip.

Historical Friction is a podcast about storytelling, pop culture, the past, and why we reenact it.



Find Sara on Twitter at @tinyredbook, and Roderick at @Berserkjablogg. Follow the show on Twitter @historyfriction



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