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As History's new "Vikings" drama begins, all it takes is the dateline on the screen--Eastern Baltic 793 A.D.--to send a shiver up the contemporary spine. Screaming ravens are everywhere as two blood-splattered men stab and slash their way across a corpse-strewn battlefield under a gray sky in some green and foreign land.

They are the heroes of the series, Ragnar Lothbrok and his brother Rollo. While they are every bit as wild and woolly as the historical figures of Norse sagas, such is the power of "Vikings" that we come to know and even root for them, so enthralling are they and almost everything else here.

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