Although Vikings is based on historical events and characters, it also took many creative liberties when building the stories of Ragnar Lothbrok and company, prompting questions about which characters existed and which didn’t. Among those is Aslaug, Ragnar’s wife and mother of four of his children, but was Aslaug real? Created by Michael Hirst, Vikings became one of the most successful and popular historical dramas in recent years, thanks to its heavy dose of drama and action, as well as how it told a combination of historical events and others that can only be found in myths and other tales.

Vikings covered the first years of the Viking Age, and it was initially led by the legendary warrior Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel). Viewers followed Ragnar and his Viking brothers through many travels and raids in the first four seasons of Vikings, as Ragnar met his fate in season 4, and after that, his sons took over and led the series until its final episode. Ragnar went through many ups and downs during his time in Vikings, and there was a lot of drama in his story, especially when it came to his personal life. When viewers met Ragnar in Vikings season 1, he was married to Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick) and had a son, Björn, and a daughter, Gyda, but that quickly changed.

Related: Vikings Fact Check: Was Ragnar's Daughter, Gyda, Real?

In Vikings season 1, Lagertha got pregnant but had a miscarriage, and Ragnar, distressed and upset over it, went on a pilgrimage to the temple in Uppsala, where he asked the gods who will be the mother of the sons promised to him if not Lagertha. Later, Ragnar and his crew traveled to Götaland to resolve a land dispute, and there, two of his men found Aslaug (Alyssa Sutherland) as she was bathing. Aslaug demanded an apology from their Earl on their behalf, so Ragnar saw her as a challenge from the gods, and she ended up becoming not only Ragnar’s second wife but also the mother of his sons Ubbe, Hvitserk, Sigurd, and Ivar. Just like Ragnar, Aslaug wasn’t a real person, and instead, her story comes from the sagas, and the test Ragnar put her through in the sagas was shown in Vikings.

Aslaug in Vikings standing in fur with flowing hair and clouds in the background, with an ominous look on her face.

In Vikings, Aslaug was a Götaland princess, the daughter of famed dragon slayer Sigurd and shield-maiden Brynhildr, and that’s taken directly from the sagas. Aslaug appears in Snorri’s Edda, the Völsunga saga, and the Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok, and she was the daughter of Sigurd and Brynhildr, though she was raised by Brynhildr’s foster father, Heimer. After the deaths of her parents, Heimer became concerned about Aslaug’s security, so he hid her in a harp and traveled to Norway, where they stayed at the house of peasants Áke and Grima. Believing the harp to contain valuable items, Grima persuaded Áke to kill Heimer while he slept, but once they discovered Aslaug inside the harp, they raised her as their own, calling her Kráka (crow). As her beauty gave away her noble origins, Áke and Grima rubbed her in tar and dressed her in a long hood, but one day, as she was bathing, she was discovered by some of Ragnar Lothbrok’s men.

Ragnar’s men told him about Aslaug, and so Ragnar sent for her but decided to test her wits. Just like in Vikings, Ragnar asked Aslaug to arrive neither dressed nor undressed, neither fasting nor eating, neither alone nor in company. Aslaug arrived dressed in a net, biting an onion (an apple in Vikings), and with a dog as a companion. Impressed by this, Ragnar proposed to her, and while she refused at first until he accomplished his mission in Norway, they eventually married. Contrary to what Vikings showed, Aslaug and Ragnar had three sons: Ivar the Boneless, Björn Ironside, and Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye. It’s unknown how Aslaug died in the sagas, but she surely wasn’t killed by Lagertha as happened in Vikings.

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