‘Vikings’: Gunnhild Once Told Lagertha That She Worships Her
In the series Vikings, there are a number of fierce shield-maidens, and two of them are certainly Queen Gunnhild (Ragga Ragnars) of Kattegat, and Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick), her mother-in-law who once had the same title. In season 6, a situation prompts Gunnhild to tell Lagertha that she worships her. We have all the details.
Lagertha gets involved in fighting bandits in ‘Vikings’
Lagertha, the mother of Bjorn Ironside (Alexander Ludwig), Gunnhild’s husband, decides in season 6 to leave a life in the public eye to live in seclusion on her own farm. However, she doesn’t account for bandits her son let go free attacking a nearby village. Lagertha is then dragged into the fray, fighting with the other villagers against the bandits, losing her own grandson, Hali (Ryan Henson), in the process.
Gunnhild goes to Lagertha’s village
Gunnhild, who is pregnant, is in Kattegat when she has a dream of women dying. She thinks that it could be Lagertha’s place, so she goes with some warriors to investigate. By the time she gets there, Lagertha and the villagers have already fought the bandits, and Hali has been killed by White Hair (Kieran O’Reilly), the bandit leader.
The fighting takes place between the villagers and the bandits
Lagertha and the villagers lay out traps, including makeshift walls to close off the bandits from each other. Trapping them in, they take portions of the bandits down at a time as not to be easily overwhelmed. They even throw oil on some and set them on fire. The villagers start to kill the bandits off one-by-one.
At one point, Gunnhild comes face-to-face with White Hair, engaging him in combat for a short while before he kills another shield-maiden. But it’s Lagertha’s fight, and she takes the leader on in a tense battle. Armed with a sword and an ax, White Hair shows no mercy against Lagertha, who holds her own. Blows are dealt on both sides, and it seems to be an equal fight at times. They wound each other during the fighting, but only one makes it out alive.
He chips away at her shield slowly, even wounding her. But Lagertha doesn’t give up, and fights hard. With a sword in her hand a shield in the over, she tells White Hair that he’s “getting tired.” She even asks if he’s “weak,” and they continue to fight.
At one point, they’re fighting on the ground, and she tells the others to “stay back.” Gunnhild watches as Lagertha keeps fighting, not giving up.
White Hair knocks her sword out of her hands, and she braces for his blows. Now on the ground, her shield is almost completely chipped away when she acts like she’s surrendering, using it and her sword to kill White Hair before it’s all over. She is seriously wounded in the process, but she comes out victorious.
Gunnhild tells Lagertha that she worships her
After Lagertha is victorious, Gunnhild makes a moving speech about her after watching the fight, and she admits that she worships her.
“I am a shield-maiden,” Gunnhild says in front of everyone. “I know how to fight. I have fought for my life many times. But I have never seen anything like what you just did. If I didn’t worship you before Lagertha, I worship you now. May the gods in all of their wisdom keep you alive, for all of our sakes.” The villagers beat their shields after that for Lagertha.
Despite the victory, Lagertha soon loses her life when she goes off to Kattegat to tell everyone what happened and to see her son, declining Gunnhild’s offer to go with her. She falls from her horse in Kattegat, and Hvitserk (Marco Ilsø) sees Lagertha, hallucinating that she’s a giant snake and his brother, Ivar (Alex Høgh Andersen). He stabs her multiple times, and she dies at the hands of a son of Ragnar, just like what the Seer (John Kavanagh) foretold to her.
