'The Wanderer' Recap 

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Waves of blood crash upon these Mercian shores. Ragnar Lothbrok and his men have traveled a great distance—farther than their fathers or their fathers’ fathers. But blood is the same, Saxon or Northmen. In the aftermath of the battle with Brihtwulf’s army, the unified forces of Kattegat and Wessex celebrate in the forest. Torstein looks rather sickly—he took an arrow in the arm, and now he’s not hungry for the first time in his life. “May Frejya lie with you tonight,” says Ragnar. Just try not to get her pregnant too, Torstein, or that’s a hat trick.

Princess Kwenthrith may hail from Mercia, but she drinks like a Viking. “I’m so happy that my uncle is dead,” she says. So happy that she doesn’t quite believe it. “Fetch the King’s head,” commands Ragnar. While Floki obligingly splits Brihtwulf’s neck, Ragnar asks the question on everyone’s mind: Why does Kwenthrith hate Uncle Wulfy so? “Do you think that my older brother was the only member of my family who raped me when I was a child?” asks the Princess. “Since I was 6 years old, my uncle abused me. He violated my body and soul.” Brihtwulf brought men into Kwenthrith’s chamber when she was but a child; he shared the young girl with her older brother.

The threat of physical and sexual abuse has popped up before on 

, usually right before Lagertha stabs out the eye of the potential abuser. Kwenthrith’s story is less hopeful, more old-world mythic: A young girl abused by her own family for essentially her entire life. Not for Kwenthrith the catharsis of fighting back against her tormentor. The Mercian Princess has to settle for the next best thing: Cradling her uncle’s head in her hands, stabbing it over and over again. She spits in his face, throws the empty head away, and throws her hands up. Vengeance is hers. Floki giggles like a schoolboy; Ragnar watches, perhaps wondering if Christian ghosts can feel any pain.

Thorunn celebrates her first battle as a shieldmaiden. She’s drinking some grog, which I’m tempted to say is dangerous for a pregnant woman, but I’m pretty sure most doctors also recommend not fighting any Mercians during a pregnancy. Bjorn isn’t happy about her battle form. She was sloppy. She shouldn’t fight tomorrow. “I only do this because I care about you.” “Or because I’m a woman?” All this talk! Bjorn gets down to brass tacks: He asks Thorunn to marry him. “Yes,” she says. “Good,” Bjorn responds, walking away, the matter settled.

Roundabout now is when Rollo stares, a bit confused, at a Mercian prisoner. Apropos of nothing—maybe he ate some bad mushroom?—Rollo picks up his axe and has a frank exchange of ideas with the prisoner. It’s a rather in-depth conversation, which I’ve reproduced here in its entirety:

Having hacked off the Mercian’s limb, Rollo has no real explanation for his actions. “It was just the angle of the leg,” he explains to Torstein. “I couldn’t help myself.” Right about now is when Kwenthrith appears, deep into a just-stabbed-my-uncle’s-decapitated-head bender. She playfully flirts with the Northmen, until handsy Rollo grabs her breasts. Which earns him a slap and a stern talking-to; given Rollo’s romantic history, this counts as a great success.

Soon enough, the Northmen are sailing across the river, scaring off Burgred’s army with the old “Row of Human Heads” diplomacy method. Kwenthrith begs her brother to stick around; she’ll make sure the eight-foot-tall monster men with indie-rock facial hair don’t hurt him. But Burgred runs off; perhaps because he wants to be King, perhaps because he doesn’t trust his sister, perhaps because some cowards are only brave when they shouldn’t be.

But enough of miserable Mercia and its bloody battlefields! Back in Wessex, the Northman agri-colony is coming together faster than you can say “SimCity 2000.” Lagertha is overjoyed: All the old dreams are coming true, the ones she and Ragnar had, in the long-ago days when they were farmers happy together and not powerful warlords separated by old sins and new marriages. King Ecbert is positively infatuated; he asks Lagertha if she is a free woman; he picks up some dirt and hands it to her, saying “Here is my gift to you.” “Oh, great, dirt,” is what most boring ol’ Saxon women might say. Not so Lagertha, who knows the power of fertile land: “This gift is worth more to me than a necklace of precious stones,” she says. They don’t understand each other; they understand each other.

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