Vikings: Valhalla offers more fantasy than historical awareness. With the above in mind, Vikings: Valhalla is primarily an interesting adventure series. Strengths that the series takes from the main Vikings series are the impressive battle scenes and the excellent sets. Although this season takes place a hundred years later, the differences in life are small. In fact, this is quite right. Changes at that time were significantly slower than, for example, in the last century.
Vikings: Valhalla revolves around brother Leif Eriksson (Sam Corlett, Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina) and sister Freidis Erisdotter (Frida Gustavsson, De Utvalda), among others. Both are descendants of the infamous berserker Erik de Rode. Looking for revenge, they arrive in Kattegat. Once there, taking revenge turns out to be more complex than expected. The ultimate result is that Leif leaves for England with the Vikings and Freidis finds out that her life is all about faith.
Strengths that the series takes from the main Vikings series are the impressive battle scenes and the excellent sets.
Other main characters are Christian Olaf (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Stella Blómkvist) and Harald Sigurdsson (Leo Suter, Sanditon). Olaf is a real hawk. He wants to conquer Norway by force, but above all to exterminate the pagans. When Olaf comes into contact with a religious maniac, he sees his chance. Harald is more nuanced. He has ambitions, but would rather connect the world between Christian and pagan Vikings. Both find each other again when it comes to their fight against the English.
That battle is led by the strategically clever Canute (Bradley Freegard, Keeping Faith). Canute emerges as an empathetic leader, but with a hard, violent side. The battle seems to be going on with the young king of England. However, the greatest strategist on the English side turns out to be a woman. Emma of Normandy (Laura Berlin, Einstein) makes the battle more difficult than expected. When Canute and Emma find each other in mutual respect, this causes problems in Canute's homeland.
Vikings: Valhalla operates from a completely different premise than the original series. Where Vikings started as a historical series, Vikings: Valhalla is clearly based on fantasy. There are characters who actually lived, but little remains of their original story. In fact, Vikings: Valhalla even chooses to transform a historical character into a black woman. That is a clear bow to the present time.
Where Vikings started as a historical series, Vikings: Valhalla is clearly based on fantasy.
The conclusion is that Vikings: Valhalla is a good adventure series. No better than Vikings or The Last Kingdom, but since those series have ended, this series fits perfectly into the gap that has arisen. In that sense a welcome addition. Who knows, Vikings: Valhalla will grow even further in terms of quality. In any case, the foundation has been laid with this first season.
About the writer, Karzal
Mike (1995) has been a member of MySeries since 2016 and is mainly active on the English version of the site. Since 2018, he has been actively translating news articles, columns, reviews and basically everything that ends up on the Dutch site. The original articles, columns and reviews were actually written by others. During the week Mike can be found at IKEA, where he is a national systems specialist and occasionally also in the classroom to teach an English lesson. In addition, Mike logically enjoys watching series and has actually been spoon-fed this from an early age. The genre doesn't matter, there is a place for everything in the otherwise busy life.
