Lagertha: The Legend of the Viking Shieldmaiden

Lagertha is a legendary Viking shieldmaiden known from exactly one source: the Gesta Danorum, written in Latin by the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus around 1200. Saxo makes her a warrior, the first wife of Ragnar Lothbrok, and finally a ruler in her own right. No Norse saga, chronicle, or runestone mentions her at all.

Thanks to six seasons of television, Lagertha may be the most famous Viking woman in the world. Her entire paper trail, meanwhile, fits into a few paragraphs of medieval Latin. This article retells her story exactly as Saxo wrote it, then asks the harder questions: where he got it, why she is missing from every Scandinavian source, and how much of the modern legend was invented for the screen.

Where Does the Lagertha Story Come From?

One book. Saxo Grammaticus was a Danish cleric working in the circle of Archbishop Absalon of Lund, and his Gesta Danorum, the "Deeds of the Danes," was completed in the early 1200s. It is a patriotic history of Denmark in sixteen books of ornate Latin, and it mixes kings we can verify against other records with heroes who are plainly mythical. Lagertha, whom Saxo calls Lathgertha, appears in Book 9, inside his long account of Ragnar Lothbrok.

Three things about Saxo matter before you read a word of the story. He wrote more than three centuries after any plausible historical Ragnar. He worked in Latin from Norse oral tradition and poetry, which he reshaped freely. And he moralized constantly. Elsewhere in the Gesta Danorum he describes Denmark's warrior women as those who "offered war rather than kisses," and he does not entirely mean it as praise. His shieldmaidens are marvels, but they are also warnings about women who step outside their place. Lagertha's story ends the way it does partly because Saxo wanted it to.

What Does Saxo Actually Say About Lagertha?

The story opens with an atrocity. Frø, king of Sweden, kills Siward, king of Norway, and forces the women of Siward's family into a brothel to shame them in public. Ragnar, Siward's grandson, sails from Denmark to avenge him. When he lands, many of the abused women dress as men and come to his camp, choosing to fight their humiliation with weapons.

Lagertha fights at the front of that army. Saxo describes her as a skilled fighter with a man's courage in a woman's body, battling among the bravest with her hair loose over her shoulders. In Oliver Elton's classic translation, "her locks flying down her back betrayed that she was a woman." When the battle is won, Ragnar tells his men he owes the victory to one woman alone.

The courtship that follows is pure folktale. Ragnar sends messengers; Lagertha pretends interest, then posts a bear and a hound at the door of her hall in the Gaulardal valley in Norway. Ragnar runs one beast through with his spear, chokes the other with his bare hands, and wins the bride as the prize of the danger. They have a son, Fridleif, and two daughters whose names Saxo never bothers to record.

How Does Lagertha's Story End?

Badly for her husbands. Ragnar, still resenting the beasts she set on him, divorces Lagertha to pursue Thora, a Swedish king's daughter he wins by killing two venomous serpents. Lagertha remarries in Norway, and Saxo moves on to other deeds.

Then Denmark turns on Ragnar. Facing a rebellion led by a pretender named Harald, he sends to Norway for help. Lagertha, whose love for him, Saxo admits, had never really ended, sails to his aid with her husband, her son, and 120 ships. In the decisive battle she rallies Ragnar's wavering line and, in Saxo's telling, "flew round to the rear of the enemy," spreading panic and turning the day. Note that verb. It will matter shortly.

Then comes an ending nobody expects from a rescue story. Home from the war, Lagertha kills her husband in the night with a spearhead she had hidden in her gown. She takes his name and his sovereignty for herself, because, as Saxo sniffs, "this most presumptuous dame thought it pleasanter to rule without her husband than to share the throne with him." That is her final appearance. Saxo never mentions her again, and he never records her death.

Was Lagertha a Real Person?

Almost certainly not, and the honest answer starts with a fact that surprises people: Lagertha does not appear in the Norse sagas. Not once. Ragnars saga loðbrókar, the Icelandic tradition about Ragnar, names his wives as Thora and Aslaug. The Tale of Ragnar's Sons repeats them. No skaldic verse mentions Lagertha, no chronicle, no runestone. Outside Saxo's Latin, she does not exist.

That is a very weak position for a historical figure. Compare Ragnar himself, whose case is already shaky. We have examined whether Ragnar Lothbrok was a real person, and even he can point to candidate figures in ninth-century Frankish records. Lagertha has nothing of the kind. One author, writing three centuries after the supposed events, in a foreign language, with an open moral agenda, is the entire case for her.

The shape of the story argues legend too. A perfect three-act arc, folktale animals guarding the bride's door, the spurned wife who saves her husband and then seizes a throne of her own: this reads like literature because it very likely is literature.

Is Lagertha Built on Valkyrie Legends?

Probably in part. Look at the details Saxo chose to keep. She fights with her hair unbound. She decides battles almost single-handedly. And in the battle against Harald she does not ride or march around the enemy, she "flies" to their rear. Those are the marks of the valkyries, Odin's battle-women, who move above the field and hand out victory and death. Many scholars read Saxo's shieldmaidens as legendary material he historicized, dressing supernatural figures in earthly biography.

Some go a step further and connect Lagertha to Þorgerðr Hǫlgabrúðr, a semi-divine woman venerated in northern Norway who, in Jómsvíkinga saga, aids Jarl Hakon in battle. The suggestion goes back to the scholar Nora Chadwick, and the geography loosely fits, since Saxo places Lagertha in Norway. But the name connection is thin and not everyone accepts it. What is safe to say is narrower: Saxo's Lagertha looks far more like a figure of Norse legend than like a documentary report.

Were Viking Shieldmaidens Real?

That is a genuinely separate question, and it does not stand or fall with Lagertha. Saxo describes warrior women as a class. Several saga women take up weapons. And archaeology has added a real argument: at Birka in Sweden, a richly furnished warrior grave known as Bj 581 was shown by a 2017 DNA study to hold a woman, and researchers have debated what that means ever since. We walk through it all, grave by grave and text by text, in our guide to the real evidence for Viking shieldmaidens.

The short version: fighting women were possible, a formal institution of shieldmaidens is not proven, and Lagertha is evidence for what a medieval author imagined, not for what Viking armies fielded.

How Different Is the Show's Lagertha?

Katheryn Winnick's Lagertha in Vikings (2013 to 2020) is one of television's great characters: farmer, earl of Hedeby, queen of Kattegat, killer of Aslaug, and finally a gray-haired warrior who dies at Hvitserk's hands while he hallucinates under the influence of mushrooms. Almost none of it comes from the source.

Saxo's Lagertha gets a few paragraphs. There is no earldom and no Kattegat, a name the show borrowed from a real strait between Denmark and Sweden, not from any saga town. She and Aslaug never meet, because they belong to two separate branches of the Ragnar legend that no medieval author ever combined. And her death scene is pure screenwriting: Saxo leaves her alive and ruling. None of this is a complaint, since fiction is allowed to invent. The trouble only starts when the inventions get repeated as history, and with Lagertha they constantly are.

Keep exploring: place the Ragnar legend against the real events with our timeline of the Viking Age, or browse the shieldmaiden jewelry collection inspired by the warrior women of the sagas.

Lagertha FAQ

Was Lagertha a real person?

Almost certainly not. Lagertha appears only in Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum, written in Latin around 1200, more than three centuries after the events it describes. No Norse saga, poem, chronicle, or runestone mentions her. Historians treat her as legend, probably assembled from older shieldmaiden and valkyrie story motifs.

Is Lagertha in the Norse sagas?

No, and this surprises people. The Icelandic sagas about Ragnar Lothbrok, including Ragnars saga loðbrókar, name his wives as Thora and Aslaug. Lagertha never appears in any Scandinavian text. She exists only in Saxo's Latin history of Denmark, which drew on traditions the sagas apparently did not share.

Did Lagertha marry Ragnar Lothbrok?

In Saxo's account, yes. She was Ragnar's first wife and bore him a son, Fridleif, and two daughters. Ragnar later divorced her to marry Thora. Since both figures are legendary rather than securely documented people, this is a marriage inside a story, not a historical event we can date or verify.

How did Lagertha die?

Saxo never says. Her story ends with her killing her second husband with a spearhead hidden in her gown and seizing his name and sovereignty for herself. The dramatic death scene in the TV series, where a hallucinating Hvitserk kills her, is a modern invention with no medieval source behind it.

Was Lagertha a shieldmaiden?

In the story, absolutely. Saxo shows her fighting at the front with her hair loose over her shoulders and later deciding a battle for Ragnar. Whether real Viking shieldmaidens existed is a separate, genuinely debated question involving finds like the Birka Bj 581 grave, and Lagertha's legend cannot settle it either way.

Skål!