Vikings: A Tale of Russophobia Gone Stupid

Vikings has been one of my favorite shows over the first four seasons. Sure it always played fast and wild with chronology of real history, compacting some 300 years of historic events into approximately 30, but it did a good job of capturing the complexity of characters and the often contradictory behaviors and views of the cashing cultures.

Season 5 began the veering off into historical lala land, where alternate reality takes over and any semblance of history takes a far back seat on the bus.

And then we came to season 6. I only got through the first two episodes before I put a big X on it and moved on. It was obvious the writers were driven by the West's mania of demonizing all things Russian and any reality be damned, a sorry state of affairs.

Lets begin.

The Rus apper attackig a convoy for no reason and one on the Silk Road none the less. Never mind the Silk Road was not even going through Rus lands but through Asia Minor. Oops, but we must show them as evil war mongers.

Truth be told, when the attack happened, for anyone with any knowledge, from the cloths, no one could even guess that the mongol dressed warriors are Russians. Seriously? Long fur hats with steel spikes, round shields, dark cloths and furs? Rus warriors, be they slavik or scandanavian dressed a lot like everyone else in Europe and had kite shields or round flat shields not the round raised shields of the mongols. If anything, Russians preferred bright colours, especially red.

The people themselves are mostly shownas dark haired and well swarthy. Never mind that every second Russian is some shade of blonde or red head.

So, they go to Kiev...and of course its winter, since every Westerner knows that there is only one season in Russia: winter.

Now we meet prince Igor, who of course just got done murdering someone, that is the Russian breakfast ritual, as everyone knows.

Oleg, the Christian who remembers his ancestral Norse tongue....what? Oleg was a pagan, a scandanavian, brother to Rurik, who adopted Ruriks young son Igor. Oleg and Rurik both came from Denmark, where Rurik was a minor lord...so yes, they would "remember" their ancestral tongue.

Then there is the Christian issue. Oleg was pagan and the first strong Christian influence was St.Olga, the widow of Igor, who was baptized in Constantinople with the emperor as her Godfather, and that in the second half of her life, so roughly 30 years later. But the Rus nobility was still pagan, and her son Svetasav the Great was a raging pagan, as were his sons. It was only after his youngest son Vladimir defeated his brothers for the throne did he convert in mid life and became St. Vladimir Equal to the Apostles for baptizing Rus. But all that is some 100 years after the show.

Further, Oleg after taking Ivar as a guest proceeds to torture Ivar's henchman. After all, Oleg is Russian and everyone knows that's what Russians do. In reality Guest Law was so important that a Rus prince would go to war with another Rus prince if the guest of the first would then go visit the second and be insulted in any way. Honour demanded no less.

Kiev itself is show as guess what..yup a dreary, dark place full of dreary, dull and rather unseemly people. Who could have guessed that from a Western writer and caster.

Yup, the show, like most everything else feeding on the Western mania of Russophobia has skated down hill in a hurry. Sad but not surprising.