#KING ALFRED VIKINGS GIFS SERIES#

Generally speaking, Vikings plays faster and looser with history than The Last Kingdom. That makes sense: Ragnar, if he was real (more on that in a minute) was important to Viking history but not so much to Saxon history, so Vikings would focus on him while The Last Kingdom would glide over his story. Pretty much all of Vikings happens in that time jump: Ragnar rises to prominence, sires his sons, and eventually dies in King Aelle’s snakepit. The first season ends with the Battle of Edington, an important Saxon victory over the Viking invaders. After Uhtred is captured on The Last Kingdom, the show skips forward a lot of years and picks up with him begrudgingly swearing fealty to King Alfred.

#KING ALFRED VIKINGS GIFS SERIES#

Most likely the raid is used as a starting point for both series because of its historical importance it’s considered the beginning of “the Viking Age,” which is what both shows are about.īut that’s not the end of timeline slipperiness. Right off the bat, there’s something weird here: the raid on Lindisfarne happened in 793, but King Alfred wouldn’t even be borne until 848 or 849. Meanwhile, on The Last Kingdom, the raid leads to the kidnapping of the young Saxon Uhtred of Bebbanburg (played as an adult by Alexander Dreymon), who will be raised as a Viking by Jarl Ragnar (not to be confused with Ragnar Lothbrok Ragnar was just a super-common name among Vikings at the time). It gives his reputation a big boost and he eventually becomes Norway’s most famous king. On Vikings, lead character Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel) leads the raid with a party from Kattegat. That’s because of another quirk of these shows: The timelines are pretty differentīoth Vikings and The Last Kingdom kick off with the historic Viking raid on the holy island of Lindisfarne. When we meet him on The Last Kingdom, he’s a full-grown man, but he’s spent most of his time on Vikings as a boy, and is only recently become a young man. King Alfred presents yet more complications. One would “go viking,” but wasn’t “a Viking.”) (Side note: At this point in history, Scandinavian raiders wouldn’t have been known as “Vikings.” At the time, it was still a verb. That’s probably because The Last Kingdom focuses on the Saxon side of this story while Vikings focuses on…well, it’s probably pretty obvious. On Vikings, his name is changed slightly to “Ubbe” and he’s depicted as a thoughtful hero. Take Ubba, who on The Last Kingdom is a brutal raider. (If you’re Scandanavian, you’re more likely to call it the Great Danish Army or the Viking Great Army.)īut the shows use these characters very differently. This real-life figure was among the commanders who led the Great Heathen Army in an invasion of England in the 860s. Then there’s the Viking warlord Ubba, played by Rune Temte on The Last Kingdom and Jordan Patrick Smith on Vikings. On Vikings, he’s been played by several actors, but is currently played by Ferdia Walsh-Peelo. On The Last Kingdom, he’s played by David Dawson.

On the Saxon side, there’s King Alfred the Great, a real-life English king who successfully defended against several Viking attacks. Both shows have at least two important characters in common. Let’s start with some of the obvious stuff. Vikings on History and The Last Kingdom on Netflix cover a lot of the same ground: they’re both set roughly during the same time period (the ninth century), deal with basically the same subject matter (the Viking invasions of England long after the collapse of the Roman Empire, when England was split into many petty kingdoms) and even share a few of the same characters.īut what exactly are the similarities? What are the differences, and which series is more historically accurate? Let’s take a closer look. By Dan Selcke 2 years ago How are Vikings and The Last Kingdom alike? How are they different? What characters do they share? Which one is more historically accurate? GO!

King alfred vikings gifs