The 25 Best Characters on The Last Kingdom

14) EARL RAGNAR

Though he only lasted one episode, the Viking warlord Earl Ragnar (Bjorn Bengtsson), father of Ragnar the Younger, fascinated us. Big, burly and war-loving, the elder Ragnar was also a dedicated family man who, like Erik, understood that one day Danes and Saxons would need to coexist in peace, even if their conflict seemed everlasting. He looks at England as a fertile land where a man can make a home. More than the joy of battle, to live and prosper there was his goal. “I see a clear river, fish as big as a man’s leg. I see a forest alive with meat. But more than that, I see a place to grow fat and old.” (S1, “Episode One”).

Although Earl Ragnar killed Uhtred’s father on the battlefield, he admired little Uhtred’s spirit when he tried to fight back. He took the orphaned boy in as a slave, together with the Saxon girl Brida, and soon grew to love them both, raising them as if they were his own children. Uhtred and Brida loved him back, and also became greatly attached to his biological son, Ragnar the Younger.

Importantly, Earl Ragnar gives young Uhtred an amulet of Thor’s Hammer, which symbolizes his Viking heritage just as his amber stone symbolizes the Saxon in him. “You make me proud, Uhtred,” Ragnar says. “You make me proud”

But peace and happiness are fleeting on The Last Kingdom. When Uhtred and Brida are older, Ragnar’s household is raided by the traitorous Viking Kjarten and his men, assisted by Scallion, an agent of Aelfric, the despicable Saxon Aelderman of Bebbanburg. Ragnar the Younger, Uhtred and Brida are away at the time, so they keep their lives.

In the most memorable sequence of the first episode, with his house burning down around him and his handful of men and servants being slaughtered, Earl Ragnar bids his beloved wife a tender farewell before mercy killing her, then charges outside, enveloped in flames, sword swinging, to meet his death like a Viking. Ragnar burned brightly but briefly, and we can’t forget him.