The characters in Vikings lived on for a total of six seasons, and came to an end in December 2020.
Vikings initially followed the travels of legendary Norse figure Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel) alongside his Viking brothers, from the beginning of the Viking Age – marked by the Lindisfarne raid, depicted in season 1 – onward. As the series progressed, it gradually shifted its focus to Ragnar’s sons and their own journeys, and they took over the show after Ragnar’s death in season 4. The series explored many aspects of Viking culture, all while it aimed to be as historically accurate as possible, the writers took some creative liberties with some elements. There are some, however, that seem like major historical mistakes, but are actually accurate, though they can be a bit confusing.
The characters in Vikings believed in various gods and they were often seen doing offerings to them and even planning their actions around whether the Gods could get mad at them or not, which is something Floki (Gustaf Skarsgård) did quite often. They also talked about “hell”, and Floki once entered a cave he believed housed the gate to it, only to find a Christian cross and seemingly dying there after the cave collapsed. The mention of “hell” caused some confusion among viewers as Vikings weren’t Christians, but this isn’t a mistake on the show’s part, as there is a location named like that in Norse mythology, but there are a couple of differences between them.
First off, in Valhalla, the opposite of Hel). However, unlike the Christian concept of hell which is an afterlife of damnation, there are no records pointing at the same idea in Norse mythology, and it’s in fact a pretty neutral space. There are no requirements to be met in order to go to Hel after dying, and instead, Hel is described as a place where the dead continue living, in a way, and it wasn’t a place of punishment but one where the dead continued doing some of the things they did while alive, thus ing the idea of it bring a continuation of life in another place.
There is, however, one author who described Hel in an unpleasant light, and it was Snorri Sturluson in the Prosa Edda. However, many scholars have put Snorri’s writings into question, suggesting his description of Hel was most likely influenced by his Christian teachings about a possible afterlife. Vikings, then, wasn’t wrong in having its characters talk about “hell”, but it was a very different place to the one everyone knows.