Hello readers. Here’s some friendly advice: Watch Vikings. If you only have time to watch one episode, watch this episode (opinion on next week’s broadcast pending). This is the type of television people are wistfully referring to when they sigh “They just don’t make television like they used to.” This episode was a work of art.
Okay, soapbox over.
The storyline in ‘Sacrifice’ was big enough to warrant its own episode, instead of having a few parallel storylines going on at once, the plot being that Ragnar’s family and troupe are making a pilgrimage to the temple of Uppsala, which a huge group of Vikings every nine years, apparently, throwing a huge festival over it—this episode is just wrought with Vikings rituals and traditions, which is really what the whole series is about, so it’s pretty awesome.
The lure of the episode is a little hard to describe in words, since a lot of the information was conveyed fairly subtly, and the cinematographers went a little crazy, though in a good way.
Ragnar visits with a king that decided to join in the festivities, pledging his allegiance to him, Rollo gets jealous and grumpy over everything, and Floki and Helga continue to be silly and somehow sweet.
Athelstan, meanwhile, draws the short-stick, plot-wise. As was revealed in the promo, he was actually brought to the festival as one of the nine humans that were going to get sacrificed to the gods…though there seems to be a catch.
Dramatic music.
The rest, as they say, is History—and let me tell you, the last scene was a masterpiece.
Watch this episode of Vikings and more at History.com/Vikings, and catch the season finale of Vikings—next Sunday the 28th on History at 10/9c.