‘Torn between Saxon and Dane’: Reconstructing ‘Viking’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon’ cultural identity through the ‘personal’ in Vikings and The Last Kingdom

Abstract

This thesis analyses the television series Vikings and The Last Kingdom for their construction of ‘Viking’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon’ identities, particularly looking at the use of ‘personal’ identity as a tool of cultural memory and identity. The thesis first explores how television is a relevant medium to explore cultural memory through particularly because of the nature of longform serialised dramas, which allow audiences to form deeper and more personal connections with the narratives presented to them and their wider political themes. It then studies how memories of ‘Viking’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon’ cultural identities have previously been shaped by an emphasis on personal identity. This occurs through the creation of individual figures whose personal identity becomes symbolic and representative of the wider cultural identity. The racialisation of these identities are also explored, for the way that they enable a further layer exclusion of individuals from the cultural group. The television series Vikings and The Last Kingdom are next analysed in detail for the way they use personal aspects of their character’s identities, particularly names and personal relationships, to reflect and explore the character’s cultural identities and the wider groups’ cross-cultural interaction. Finally, the shows are discussed within their contemporary socio-political climate, to reveal the themes of cultural unity that the series creators lean into through these personal relationships amidst a heavy climate of rhetoric about immigration and multiculturalism. At the same time, neither series addresses the legacy of racialist usage of the ‘Vikings’ and ‘Anglo-Saxons,’ and this silence allows the series to appear complicit in the upholding of these identities as racially white exclusive identities.