Just under 800 years ago, in the midst of a dark and gloomy Icelandic winter, a story was written down.

The tale had already been told for hundreds of years.

It talked of myths and monsters, but great heroes too.

And now, because of the revolutionary, new literary tradition, sweeping through Iceland,

it would be recorded in its current state for posterity. From Greenland to the Mediterranean,

all across the Viking world, up until the 1200s, the story had been memorized by one

generation of poets after another, becoming one of the most popular and long-lasting of all.

The story is still being retold today.

The saga of Ragnar Lothbroke.

But is there any truth to the tale?

Let's find out. In the year 814, the great king Charlemagne, ruler of the largest empire in Western Europe,

since the fall of Rome, was dead.

In the wake of his death, his once prosperous realm, soon devolved into civil war between his descendants.

In some of the other states that filled the void left by the Romans, such as in Visigothic Spain and Austro-Gothic Italy, the Roman tradition

of giving hereditary inheritance to one son had become the norm. This wasn't to be the case

for the Franks. They continued their ancient tradition of dividing up an inheritance between sons, a tradition

that had plagued them for centuries.

When the dust from the succession finally settled, all of Charlemagne's hard work had been

undone, largely through the actions of his own descendants. Three distinct kingdoms

were born. On the one side was East Francia, the state which would eventually go on to become

Germany. In the middle was Lotharingia, a realm which would eventually be absorbed by the other two kingdoms.

In the west, however, in the original heartlands of the Franks, along the Atlantic coast

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