The most memorable Vikings in popular culture

We’ll start somewhere a little thorny. Is Thor himself a Viking? In the world of Marvel, Thor would not necessarily be considered one. He’s an alien and a superhero. All in all, Thor is a Norse god worshipped by Vikings, but he also has a lot of Viking traits to him. Even Chris Hemsworth’s Thor embodies a lot of what we think of when we think of Vikings. As such, he makes our list.

The History Channel has been hit-or-miss when it’s gotten into scripted series, but Vikings largely worked out. It proved popular and lasted for six seasons. The story borrows quite heavily from Norse history and mythology, including the lead character of the first four seasons, Ragnar Lothbrok.

A lot of Vikings are portrayed as violent and malevolent. Hagar is a bit lighter in terms of content. After all, he’s a staple of the comics pages in newspapers. Hagar and company’s adventures have been chronicled since 1973, making him arguably the most famous Viking.

An underdog story set in the world of Vikings, How to Train Your Dragon has become a popular movie franchise. Focusing on Hiccup and his dragon Toothless, there are three movies overall. Additionally, there have been three spinoff TV series. Not too shabby for a Viking called “Hiccup."

Beowulf is a legendary mythological figure. His story is often read in high school, but naturally, there have been several films centered on the heroic character. Perhaps the best known of those is Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf, although that’s mostly because he made it while totally preoccupied with motion-capture filmmaking.

The Monty Python crew had a lot of hits. Occasionally, there would be a miss. Unfortunately, when you are a comedy legend, your misses often become memorable. Take, for example, Erik the Viking. It was written and directed by Terry Jones. He got Tim Robbins to star, and John Cleese appears, but the reviews were mixed. The overall rating on Rotten Tomatoes is 47 percent, but it’s hard to overlook Roger Ebert calling it “an utterly worthless exercise.”

Noggin is the star of a series of popular children’s books in Britain, and he also got his own TV show. The friendly king’s show has become a cult classic due to affection from adults who grew up watching it. Noggin even earned a spot on a postage stamp in 1994.

This comedic side-scroller for Super Nintendo proved surprisingly popular. Three Vikings are kidnapped. After escaping, they become lost. You can play as Erik the Swift, Baelog the Fierce, and Olaf the Stout. Each has its pluses and minuses as characters. The Lost Vikings proved popular enough to get a sequel.

To spruce up a video game series that had gotten into double digits, Assassin’s Creed decided to dip into the world of Vikings. In this 2020 game, you play as Eivor Varinsdottir, a Viking raider doing battle against the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Since this is a modern game, you can customize Eivor’s look. All in all, people seemed happy with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

Americans may not know Thorgal, but Europe does. Thorgal is the main character in a series of comics that have been released since 1977. Created by Belgian writer Jean Van Hamme, Thorgal also got his own video game in 2002.

Doctor Who can traverse time and space, so naturally, Vikings pop up. During Peter Capaldi’s time as the Doctor, he came across Ashildr. She appears in a few episodes during Capaldi’s run, and Maisie Williams notably played Ashildr. She’s best known for her time on Game of Thrones, which only feels like it’s about Vikings sometimes.

This is one of those classic epic adventure stories they used to make films of. It’s also a time when they could simply call a movie The Vikings. This film has quite the cast. While Kirk Douglas headlines it, it also features Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, and Ernest Borgnine. People were quite taken with this Norse swashbuckler.

Kirk Douglas decided to strike while the iron was hot. After making the Vikings, he produced a TV show called Tales of the Vikings. It used most of the same sets, costumes, and props as his film. While it only lasted one season, this was early television, so they made 39 episodes.

Roger Corman didn’t bother hiding anything about the plot of his film in the title. He was, after all, a believer in giving the people what they want and doing it as cheaply as possible. We probably don’t need to tell you more about the plot than the title does. It ended up memorable mostly because the movie was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Thorgal is popular in Europe but can’t hold a candle to Asterix. The warrior from Gaul is one of the continent's most popular and well-known comic characters. France named its first satellite Asterix-1. There have been many Asterix movies, but he was hanging out with Vikings this time. Interestingly, in the English-language dub of this French film, Paul Giamatti voices Asterix.

John Nord wrestled early in his career as Nord the Barbarian, but when he came to WWF in 1991, he changed his moniker to The Berzerker. This was a comedic Viking character, and The Berzerker had a weird tic of wanting to win matches via count-out. He never won any titles, but WWF fans of the early ‘90s certainly remember The Berzerker.

This slice of historical fiction focuses on Viking and Anglo-Saxon relations in the 800s. The first two seasons, or “series” in British vernacular, were on BBC Two. However, the show moved to Netflix. Many people considered this a good thing because the production values noticeably increased.

This movie decided to mix history with fiction, taking real-life people and events and mixing in aspects of Beowulf. However, they strangely decided to tweak names very slightly. Beowulf is “Buliwyf,” Grendel is “Wendol,” and so on. That being said, the main character is Ahmad ibn Fadlan, played by Antonio Banderas. He was a real person, but he never met Beowulf or Grendel.

You won’t find us saying many good things about Entourage, but we will praise the concept of Viking Quest. This is the show-within-a-show that Johnny Drama starred on. It’s an analog of Hercules, down to the fact Angel, a spinoff of Viking Quest, proved much more popular than the show it spun off from. This is a riff on Xena: Warrior Princess spinning off from Hercules. It’s the perfect kind of show and level of success for Johnny Drama to have.

Vikings has ended, but now, it’s time for its spinoff to rise. Vikings: Valhalla takes place 100 years after the original show, so don’t expect any of those characters to show up. It is focused on the end of the Viking Age and features a lot of real Vikings as characters. That includes none other than Leif Eriksson. Unlike Vikings, Vikings: Valhalla is a Netflix show.