With the Feb. 25th premiere of Netflix’s Vikings: Valhalla just a little over a month away, IGN recently spoke at length with showrunner Jeb Stuart about how this sequel series differs from its History Channel predecessor, how it compresses history while still holding to larger truths about the culture and historical figures it depicts.
Set roughly 100 years after the events depicted in Vikings, Vikings: Valhalla weaves in fictional characters with actual historical figures, including some of the most famous Vikings who ever lived such as Leif Eriksson, Freydis Eriksdotter, Canute the Great, and Harald Hardrada.
In our interview, Stuart discussed the major conflict facing the characters in Vikings: Valhalla, Season One, why he took some liberties with Viking chronology in order for certain real-life characters to meet, and much more.
Our full interview with Jeb Stuart is below. It has been edited for clarity.
IGN: This show is set a hundred years after Michael Hirst’s Vikings and follows the descendants of those characters. The original show’s through-line was Ragnar Lothbrok and his sons and Ragnar's dream for the Vikings. What will be the through-line for Vikings: Valhalla?
Jeb Stuart: Well, we know Leif Eriksson [played by Sam Corlett] the was first European explorer sort of credited to have found the New World. So you can kind of bet that we'll be heading that way at some point in the series. We also know that Harald Sigurdsson [played by Leo Suter] was a king of Norway at some point. The Icelandic sagas talk a lot about Freydis [played by Frida Gustavsson]. Her piece is very important in all of this.
And there's a lot of history that is known in my show whereas Michael Hirst got to play in the mythic world of the Vikings. “We don't know much about Ragnar Lothbrok so, hey, I'm going to create this new character right there.” I don't find that to be constraining at all. I actually think that's pretty exciting, but we're incredibly accurate with the details of the 11th century.
What I've learned telling historical dramas over the years is that you and I weren't there. So I don't know what Harald thought when he went into the Rus or he fought so and so, and I do know that he took his own Skalds along, his own poets along to kind of tell the story that he wanted to be told, just like Emma of Normandy [played by Laura Berlin]. She wrote her own biography while she was alive so that everybody would say, “What a cool woman that was.”
So I had to look at all of that historical piece that the historians look at through sort of a jaded filter, but I love this period and I find a lot of cultural resonance with what's going on in our lives and I think that my cast does too. And sadly, we haven't moved very far in the 21st century from the 11th century, and some of the things that we're still dealing with in terms of cultural and religious ideologies and things, but I think it's a pretty nice place to play.
And I too was a fan of Michael's show. I couldn't write a Michael Hirst script if you paid me and I do a lot of things for pay, okay? So it just had to be, this show has a lot more action to it. It has a different pacing to it. It still has that sort of, I hope it still has the Viking DNA to it because I love it as a fan, but I'm pretty upfront about the fact, and Michael knows this, that I write differently and I want to see a different show. So I hope that you, as a fan, can sort of see the transition (between) the two different shows.
IGN: Leif Eriksson and Harald Sigurdsson, who becomes known as Harald Hardrada, are among your main leads. But Leif was decades before Harald in reality. My one big question going into the show was, okay, Leif Eriksson's whole thing is to find the New World, but they had Ubbe get to Greenland in the final season of Vikings. So how exactly does your show kind of reconcile that?
Jeb Stuart: Yeah. And I can't give you the spoiler on that, but I will say that I teased Michael at some point when I was noodling the idea of coming in and writing Valhalla. I said, “You kind of like muddied the water for me, buddy.” It's like, “What were you thinking?”
But there is a situation. It was Leif Eriksson is credited with being the first European to come to the New World because he went back [and] because he told somebody. Ubbe and Floki never came back so we don't know really what happened out there after that particular point.
And by the way, that fits in historically to a lot of things. A lot of research is that there may be other settlements. A Viking fisherman may have gotten blown off into Newfoundland or New York City or something and never found a way to get back.
It's kind of tough sledding getting back across that North Atlantic and so it doesn't bother me. (Ubbe’s) history does not affect ours. The second part of your question in terms of the Leif and the Harald coming together, even though there may be decades apart historically, it's not nearly as much of a leap as Rollo and Ragnar being brothers when there were 200 years of difference between those two and he may have put them in the same family. And a lot of the fans didn't have any problem with that, so I'm thinking I might get a pass on Harald and Leif.
IGN: On the Rollo of it all, his descendants more than Ragnar's, in history, are the ones that kind of change the whole thing. So how much does the legacy of Rollo play into this? And I guess I'm getting way far ahead, but in the original press release for the show, they mentioned William the Conqueror, who is obviously decades later. When will the show actually get to William? Is he basically a Season Five or Six character?
Jeb Stuart: Well, from your mouth to God's ear, okay, and God is on this call listening. So let's hope that we do get that because I do think that there's wonderful symmetry in terms of the story because as William the Conqueror is related to Rollo, wouldn't it be [cool] to kind of bring this whole story around to this piece? Emma of Normandy is also related to Rollo.
So, as you said, Normandy is Normandy because of the Normans, the Norseman. It's there for a purpose. And I think that that's part of the theme of Valhalla is that I wasn't interested in doing a show that just stayed in Kattegat, okay? My Vikings were much more exploratory. We will go out. I want to see people of different colors. I want to see where the Vikings went.
The things that we do know about the Vikings, and you know this as a historian, Vikings didn't have a word for racism. I mean, they didn't. They called people of color “Blaumenn” [blue men] and they spent time in North Africa and they were very, they didn't try to take over places. When they went into the Rus or they went into the Middle East or Constantinople as the Varangian Guard, they came into a culture and left an imprint and also a lot of DNA as we know from everywhere.
But they're really a terrific group of people to write for because there is something kind of strangely wonderful about this culture that believed that women in the 11th century could own property or divorce husbands or rule kingdoms because of your value because of what you do. So that's something that I think resonates with our audience and any audience of any period.
IGN: The first episodes explore this, and the previous series was setting this up, which is the divide between the Christian Vikings and the pagan Vikings. How much of your show will get into all that?
Jeb Stuart: I think in Season One, you'll see, you'll feel it a lot. There was a reason why those Catholic monks got up to Germany and looked across the Baltic and said, “I ain't having any of that stuff, okay? I hear stories about those guys on the other side over there.”
It took a long time for Christianity to take root. When it did it, it didn't soft sell it. It had to go in all the way. And I mean, I think we even describe it as almost a tidal wave and you'd get a guy like Olaf the Stout would come in and say, “Give me all your pagan symbols. I want all of your idols and bring me your idols out and you must convert.” And they would say no. And then he literally would kill everybody in the village. I mean, everybody. No questions asked.
And that's Viking conversion, and there are some incredible books and histories about Christianity in Scandinavia that are terrifying to read. Don't read them at night before you go to bed. So, that's good stuff to make a series out of. But that will not be necessarily the overarching piece of all of Valhalla. It is the overarching theme of Season One, however, and it's a big part and it's embedded in our two characters.
One thing we do know about Leif Eriksson other than the explorer of the New World is that he became a Christian and we do know that Freydis and Erik the Red, his father, never went over to Christianity. So there's a lot to look forward to down the road on them.
IGN: Finally, in the lore, Freydis is portrayed in two different ways. Somebody who shamed the family name so much that it stuck to their descendants, or as the fearless warrior who fought eight months pregnant. So which Freydis are we getting in this show?
Jeb Stuart: You're definitely not going to get the psychopathic Freydis, okay, if you follow those sagas and stuff like that, but I do think that like all of these characters, like even the Ragnar character, you lean into those almost epic qualities, those epic traits like that. And I think one of the things that Michael's show and mine do share is that ability to sort of blow life into characters that are out of the Middle Ages. And yet they have families and they lose children and they have challenges with parents and things like that, that are just as real as what we deal with right now.
Vikings: Valhalla debuts on Netflix on February 25.
Continue reading...
Set roughly 100 years after the events depicted in Vikings, Vikings: Valhalla weaves in fictional characters with actual historical figures, including some of the most famous Vikings who ever lived such as Leif Eriksson, Freydis Eriksdotter, Canute the Great, and Harald Hardrada.
In our interview, Stuart discussed the major conflict facing the characters in Vikings: Valhalla, Season One, why he took some liberties with Viking chronology in order for certain real-life characters to meet, and much more.
Our full interview with Jeb Stuart is below. It has been edited for clarity.
IGN: This show is set a hundred years after Michael Hirst’s Vikings and follows the descendants of those characters. The original show’s through-line was Ragnar Lothbrok and his sons and Ragnar's dream for the Vikings. What will be the through-line for Vikings: Valhalla?
Jeb Stuart: Well, we know Leif Eriksson [played by Sam Corlett] the was first European explorer sort of credited to have found the New World. So you can kind of bet that we'll be heading that way at some point in the series. We also know that Harald Sigurdsson [played by Leo Suter] was a king of Norway at some point. The Icelandic sagas talk a lot about Freydis [played by Frida Gustavsson]. Her piece is very important in all of this.
And there's a lot of history that is known in my show whereas Michael Hirst got to play in the mythic world of the Vikings. “We don't know much about Ragnar Lothbrok so, hey, I'm going to create this new character right there.” I don't find that to be constraining at all. I actually think that's pretty exciting, but we're incredibly accurate with the details of the 11th century.
What I've learned telling historical dramas over the years is that you and I weren't there. So I don't know what Harald thought when he went into the Rus or he fought so and so, and I do know that he took his own Skalds along, his own poets along to kind of tell the story that he wanted to be told, just like Emma of Normandy [played by Laura Berlin]. She wrote her own biography while she was alive so that everybody would say, “What a cool woman that was.”
So I had to look at all of that historical piece that the historians look at through sort of a jaded filter, but I love this period and I find a lot of cultural resonance with what's going on in our lives and I think that my cast does too. And sadly, we haven't moved very far in the 21st century from the 11th century, and some of the things that we're still dealing with in terms of cultural and religious ideologies and things, but I think it's a pretty nice place to play.
And I too was a fan of Michael's show. I couldn't write a Michael Hirst script if you paid me and I do a lot of things for pay, okay? So it just had to be, this show has a lot more action to it. It has a different pacing to it. It still has that sort of, I hope it still has the Viking DNA to it because I love it as a fan, but I'm pretty upfront about the fact, and Michael knows this, that I write differently and I want to see a different show. So I hope that you, as a fan, can sort of see the transition (between) the two different shows.
IGN: Leif Eriksson and Harald Sigurdsson, who becomes known as Harald Hardrada, are among your main leads. But Leif was decades before Harald in reality. My one big question going into the show was, okay, Leif Eriksson's whole thing is to find the New World, but they had Ubbe get to Greenland in the final season of Vikings. So how exactly does your show kind of reconcile that?
Jeb Stuart: Yeah. And I can't give you the spoiler on that, but I will say that I teased Michael at some point when I was noodling the idea of coming in and writing Valhalla. I said, “You kind of like muddied the water for me, buddy.” It's like, “What were you thinking?”
But there is a situation. It was Leif Eriksson is credited with being the first European to come to the New World because he went back [and] because he told somebody. Ubbe and Floki never came back so we don't know really what happened out there after that particular point.
And by the way, that fits in historically to a lot of things. A lot of research is that there may be other settlements. A Viking fisherman may have gotten blown off into Newfoundland or New York City or something and never found a way to get back.
It's kind of tough sledding getting back across that North Atlantic and so it doesn't bother me. (Ubbe’s) history does not affect ours. The second part of your question in terms of the Leif and the Harald coming together, even though there may be decades apart historically, it's not nearly as much of a leap as Rollo and Ragnar being brothers when there were 200 years of difference between those two and he may have put them in the same family. And a lot of the fans didn't have any problem with that, so I'm thinking I might get a pass on Harald and Leif.
IGN: On the Rollo of it all, his descendants more than Ragnar's, in history, are the ones that kind of change the whole thing. So how much does the legacy of Rollo play into this? And I guess I'm getting way far ahead, but in the original press release for the show, they mentioned William the Conqueror, who is obviously decades later. When will the show actually get to William? Is he basically a Season Five or Six character?
Jeb Stuart: Well, from your mouth to God's ear, okay, and God is on this call listening. So let's hope that we do get that because I do think that there's wonderful symmetry in terms of the story because as William the Conqueror is related to Rollo, wouldn't it be [cool] to kind of bring this whole story around to this piece? Emma of Normandy is also related to Rollo.
So, as you said, Normandy is Normandy because of the Normans, the Norseman. It's there for a purpose. And I think that that's part of the theme of Valhalla is that I wasn't interested in doing a show that just stayed in Kattegat, okay? My Vikings were much more exploratory. We will go out. I want to see people of different colors. I want to see where the Vikings went.
The things that we do know about the Vikings, and you know this as a historian, Vikings didn't have a word for racism. I mean, they didn't. They called people of color “Blaumenn” [blue men] and they spent time in North Africa and they were very, they didn't try to take over places. When they went into the Rus or they went into the Middle East or Constantinople as the Varangian Guard, they came into a culture and left an imprint and also a lot of DNA as we know from everywhere.
But they're really a terrific group of people to write for because there is something kind of strangely wonderful about this culture that believed that women in the 11th century could own property or divorce husbands or rule kingdoms because of your value because of what you do. So that's something that I think resonates with our audience and any audience of any period.
IGN: The first episodes explore this, and the previous series was setting this up, which is the divide between the Christian Vikings and the pagan Vikings. How much of your show will get into all that?
Jeb Stuart: I think in Season One, you'll see, you'll feel it a lot. There was a reason why those Catholic monks got up to Germany and looked across the Baltic and said, “I ain't having any of that stuff, okay? I hear stories about those guys on the other side over there.”
It took a long time for Christianity to take root. When it did it, it didn't soft sell it. It had to go in all the way. And I mean, I think we even describe it as almost a tidal wave and you'd get a guy like Olaf the Stout would come in and say, “Give me all your pagan symbols. I want all of your idols and bring me your idols out and you must convert.” And they would say no. And then he literally would kill everybody in the village. I mean, everybody. No questions asked.
And that's Viking conversion, and there are some incredible books and histories about Christianity in Scandinavia that are terrifying to read. Don't read them at night before you go to bed. So, that's good stuff to make a series out of. But that will not be necessarily the overarching piece of all of Valhalla. It is the overarching theme of Season One, however, and it's a big part and it's embedded in our two characters.
One thing we do know about Leif Eriksson other than the explorer of the New World is that he became a Christian and we do know that Freydis and Erik the Red, his father, never went over to Christianity. So there's a lot to look forward to down the road on them.
IGN: Finally, in the lore, Freydis is portrayed in two different ways. Somebody who shamed the family name so much that it stuck to their descendants, or as the fearless warrior who fought eight months pregnant. So which Freydis are we getting in this show?
Jeb Stuart: You're definitely not going to get the psychopathic Freydis, okay, if you follow those sagas and stuff like that, but I do think that like all of these characters, like even the Ragnar character, you lean into those almost epic qualities, those epic traits like that. And I think one of the things that Michael's show and mine do share is that ability to sort of blow life into characters that are out of the Middle Ages. And yet they have families and they lose children and they have challenges with parents and things like that, that are just as real as what we deal with right now.
Vikings: Valhalla debuts on Netflix on February 25.
Continue reading...