page_title: Ragnar Lodbrok
section_title: Sources and historical accuracy
hierarchical_section_title: Ragnar Lodbrok / Sources and historical accuracy
caption_attribution_description: English: Captioned as "Ragnar Lodbroks död", according to the source page. Etching by Hugo Hamilton, depicting Ælla of Northumbria's murder on Ragnar Lodbrok. Original image size approximately 17 x 22 cm. Dansk: Af Hugo Hamilton (1802–1871)
context_page_description: Ragnar Lodbrok or Lothbrok is a legendary Viking hero, as well as, according to the Gesta Danorum, a legendary Danish and Swedish king. He is known from Old Norse poetry of the Viking Age, Icelandic sagas, and near-contemporary chronicles. According to the traditional literature, Ragnar Lodbrok distinguished himself by many raids against the British Isles and the Holy Roman Empire during the 9th century. According to the sagas Ragnarssona þáttr and Sögubrot af nokkrum fornkonungum, Ragnar Lodbrok's father was the legendary king of the Swedes, Sigurd Ring.
context_section_description: Whereas Ragnar's sons Ivar the Boneless, Halfdan Ragnarsson, Björn Ironside, Ubbe and Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye are historical figures, opinion regarding their father is divided. Modern academia regards most of the stories about him to be fiction. According to Hilda Ellis Davidson, writing in 1979,
  Certain scholars in recent years have come to accept at least part of Ragnar's story as based on historical fact.
   A generation later, however, Katherine Holman wrote in 2003: 
  Although his sons are historical figures, there is no evidence that Ragnar himself ever lived and he seems to be an amalgam of historical figures and literary invention.
  The most significant medieval sources that mention Ragnar include:
  Book IX of the Gesta Danorum, a 12th-century work by the Christian Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus
  the Tale of Ragnar's sons (Ragnarssona þáttr), a legendary saga
  the Tale of Ragnar Lothbrok , another saga, a sequel to the Völsunga saga
  the Ragnarsdrápa, a skaldic poem of which only fragments remain, attributed to the 9th-century poet Bragi Boddason
  the Krákumál, Ragnar's death-song, an old and mysterious skaldic poem
  In her commentary on Saxo's Gesta Danorum, Davidson notes that Saxo's coverage of Ragnar's legend in book IX of the Gesta appears to be an attempt to consolidate many of the confusing and contradictory events and stories known to the chronicler into the reign of one king, Ragnar. That is why many acts ascribed to Ragnar in the Gesta can be associated, through other sources, with various figures, some of whom are more historically tenable.
  The candidates scholars like to associate with the "historical Ragnar" include:
  the Reginherus or Ragnar who besieged Paris in 845
  the Danish King Horik I (d. 854)
  King Reginfrid (d. 814), a king who ruled part of Denmark in tandem with his brother Harald Klak, but was expelled by Horik I and his brothers and later fell in a battle against them
  possibly the Ragnall (Ragnvald or Ragnar) of the Irish Annals
  Attempts to reliably associate the legendary Ragnar with one or several of those men have failed because of the difficulty in reconciling the various accounts and their chronology. But the tradition of a Viking hero named Ragnar (or similar) who wreaked havoc in mid-9th-century Europe and who fathered many famous sons is remarkably persistent, and some aspects of it are strengthened by relatively reliable sources, such as Irish historical tradition and, indirectly, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
caption: 19th-century artist's impression of Ælla of Northumbria's execution of Ragnar Lodbrok
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