Vikings Season 1 (2013)

A farmer insists on turning the prow of a raiding ship, always pointed east, toward the west. Vikings Season 1 sets out from this small, dangerous resolve of Ragnar Lothbrok. The nine-episode run, brought to the History Channel in 2013, follows a man who believes a richer land lies beyond the western sea as he breaks his village’s taboo and prepares to sail. It may look like a simple tale of raiding and adventure, but the drama lifts it into a story where one man’s ambition collides head-on with the order of a community. The density of this departure, slack at not a single moment, more than justifies ★4.5.

What it’s about — A First Expedition Turning the Prow Westward

The stage of the story is Kattegat, a small ninth-century Scandinavian village. Ragnar (Travis Fimmel) doubts the established custom of raiding only to the east, convinced that a richer land lies to the west. But the village chieftain Haraldson will not permit this seemingly reckless venture. Together with his wife and shieldmaiden Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick), his brother Rollo (Clive Standen), and the shipwright Floki, Ragnar undertakes the voyage in secret. Season 1 renders, in one breath, the success this first expedition brings and the structure of power it begins to shake.

Direction — Vikings Drawn as People, Not Plunderers

Michael Hirst’s direction has a clear direction from the very first season. He draws the Vikings not as mere savage raiders but as people with their own faith, law and home. Against the backdrop of Ireland’s rugged nature, the camera often captures cold seas and fog-laden forests, conveying visually the isolation of this world and the fear of the unknown. In the first voyage, the composition of a single small ship advancing toward an endless horizon is a striking moment that shows the danger and the hope the characters carry at once. The battle scenes are rough and short-cut rather than dazzling, conveying an attitude that refuses to treat the weight of violence lightly.

Acting and characters — Fimmel’s Ragnar, Hiding Ambition in His Face

Travis Fimmel’s Ragnar is the greatest discovery of the season. He plays a figure of few words who says more with his expression, and the scenes where the ambition and calculation hidden behind a quiet smile surface in an instant are especially good. Katheryn Winnick’s Lagertha is no mere helpmate but a warrior who takes up the shield herself, a dimensional figure who tries to protect home and honour at once. The relationship between the two — love and rivalry, trust and suspicion all mingled — firmly anchors the drama’s emotional centre. Clive Standen’s Rollo, forever wavering in his brother’s shadow, shows early on the seed of a conflict that will run through the whole series.

What the series says — When Curiosity Shakes the Order of a Community

Vikings Season 1 asks how one person’s curiosity shakes the order of a community. Ragnar’s reason for wanting to go west is not simple greed for treasure but closer to the fundamental human urge to see beyond the prescribed path. The drama does not hide the fact that this urge is at once heroic and dangerous. It also handles, with delicacy, the moment native faith and Christian civilisation first meet, the misunderstanding and fascination that arise when different worlds collide. The gaze of the monk Athelstan, dragged from an English monastery, functions as a fine device to mediate that collision for the viewer.

Ratings & reception

Vikings holds an IMDb rating of 8. Season 1 in particular won high praise as a series opener for building a new world convincingly while maintaining a dense, character-driven narrative. Many note that the construction — efficiently containing one figure’s rise and a whole world within just nine episodes — has less excess than the seasons that followed.

Verdict

Vikings Season 1 is the season that proves most compactly what the series can do. More than vast war or lavish spectacle, the very process of one man breaking a taboo and resolving to set out to sea generates the greatest tension. The presence of the actor Travis Fimmel meshes with Michael Hirst’s restrained direction, and this season becomes the firm cornerstone of an epic that will run for six years. The construction — short, yet slack at not a single moment — is impressive. The rating is ★4.5.

Recommended for

• Those who want to enjoy a character drama with a historical backdrop, taken calmly
• Those who love the tension felt at the starting point of a hero’s tale
• Those who want to follow a vast series from the very beginning, step by step