fl. 800s

Scandinavian monarch whose military exploits, including a battle with Charlemagne, became legendary in medieval European literature. Lothbrok's story was recounted in several Icelandic sagas and the twelfth-century Gesta Danorum by Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, in which Lothbrok is reported to have been captured by the Anglo-Saxons and thrown into a snake pit to die. Anglo-Saxon legend maintains that it was Ragnar's three sons who led the Viking invasion of East Anglia in 865 to avenge their father's murder.