What Do Vikings and Game of Thrones Get Wrong About Christianity?

Brief Overview

• Popular television dramas about medieval times often prioritize entertainment value over historical accuracy when depicting Christian beliefs and practices during the Viking Age and medieval period.
• Both Vikings and Game of Thrones portray Christianity in ways that contradict what scholars know about how the faith actually functioned in those eras, particularly regarding conversion methods and religious tolerance.
• The shows frequently depict Christian leaders as hypocritical, violent, and corrupt in ways that exceed historical evidence and exaggerate the flaws of medieval church institutions.
• Religious antagonism between Vikings and Christians in these series is portrayed as far more hostile and permanent than the historical record suggests, misrepresenting how pagan and Christian communities actually coexisted.
• Medieval Christian theology, particularly regarding Christ’s teachings about love and forgiveness, often appears completely absent from how these shows portray Christian characters and their motivations.
• Understanding the actual history of Christian conversion among Norse peoples helps viewers appreciate the real complexity of faith transformation without the dramatized distortions that television creates.

The Exaggeration of Religious Conflict

Television creators face constant pressure to generate dramatic tension, and religious conflict provides easy material for such storytelling. In the Vikings series, the clash between pagan Norse warriors and Christian monks and kings becomes almost apocalyptic in scope. What actually occurred during the Viking Age, however, presents a far more nuanced picture of how these two religious communities interacted across centuries. Historical evidence suggests that Vikings who encountered Christian lands frequently adopted aspects of Christian belief alongside their traditional Norse practices, a syncretism that shows like Vikings rarely acknowledge with any depth. The series depicts Christian and pagan religions as locked in an eternal struggle with no middle ground, yet archaeological findings and historical documents reveal that many individuals maintained elements of both faiths during the conversion period. Early converts often kept symbolic representations of both Thor and Christ, seeing no fundamental contradiction in honoring multiple spiritual traditions. The show’s portrayal of Queen Aslaug executing a Christian missionary for failing a supernatural test bears little resemblance to documented historical interactions between Norse leaders and Christian evangelists. This dramatization serves entertainment purposes but fundamentally misrepresents how gradual and often peaceful religious change occurred across Scandinavia. The monks and missionaries who went north were usually intelligent, educated individuals equipped with sophisticated theological arguments and spiritual practices that often impressed Norse leaders who encountered them. Rather than constant warfare between faiths, what actually emerged was a long process of negotiation, cultural exchange, and eventual adoption of Christianity as a result of multiple interconnected factors rather than military conquest or religious persecution. Television condenses centuries of complex social change into seasons of heightened drama that bear little resemblance to the actual lived experience of these religious communities.

Misrepresentation of Christian Conversion

The Vikings program depicts conversion to Christianity as something imposed through violence, forced baptism, and political manipulation, yet this portrayal oversimplifies and distorts how Norse peoples actually embraced the faith. Historical records indicate that when Vikings settled in Christian lands and established long-term communities, they frequently began adopting Christian practices through daily contact with the Christian population rather than through coercion or military defeat. The famous character Rollo in the series accepts baptism purely for cynical political reasons and seemingly benefits from it, which mirrors some historical elements but overlooks the profound spiritual changes that actually occurred among many Norse converts. Real Vikings who converted often did so after extended exposure to Christianity through trade, intermarriage, and prolonged interaction with Christian kingdoms, processes that took decades or even generations to unfold across entire regions. The conversion of Scandinavia happened gradually through various methods, including the patient work of missionaries like Ansgar, who though ultimately unsuccessful in his immediate objectives, planted seeds that bore fruit in subsequent generations. Christian missionaries did not arrive in Scandinavia expecting instant wholesale conversion; instead, they understood that spiritual transformation required time, relationship-building, and demonstration of Christian virtues through the lives of the faithful. Game of Thrones presents no meaningful conversion process at all, instead depicting Christianity as merely one competing religious narrative among many with no particular claim to truth or superiority over other faith traditions. This fundamentally contradicts Christian theology and history, which rests on the claim that Christ is the fulfillment of all human spiritual longing and that conversion represents genuine transformation rather than mere cultural adoption. The actual historical evidence shows that once Vikings genuinely embraced Christianity, they became deeply committed believers who transformed their entire societies around Christian principles and worship, a transformation that television’s cynical approach to religion cannot adequately represent.

Distortion of Historical Christian Practice

The Vikings series commits several dramatic distortions regarding how medieval Christians actually practiced their faith, particularly in scenes involving crucifixion as a form of Christian punishment and religious execution. Early Christian theology explicitly condemned crucifixion because Christians understood it as the execution method used to murder Christ, making it unthinkable for Christians to use against their own people or anyone else as a form of religious discipline. Emperor Constantine officially outlawed crucifixion across the Roman Empire in the fourth century, not as a response to Christian pressure but as a general prohibition, and Christian communities certainly would never have adopted it as a punishment for apostasy or theological disagreement. No historical record exists of any Christian authority in Wessex or any other early medieval Christian kingdom employing crucifixion as a legal penalty, making the show’s depiction of this practice not simply exaggerated but entirely fabricated. The portrayal of the character Athelstan facing crucifixion at Christian hands serves the narrative needs of the show but directly contradicts documented Christian practice and theology. Medieval Christian justice systems did employ harsh penalties, including execution, but crucifixion specifically represented everything Christianity had rejected in its foundational experience of Christ’s passion and death. Christians distinguished themselves partly through their refusal to employ the methods of violence and torture that characterized pagan societies and Roman imperial justice systems. The shows also frequently misrepresent Christian teaching about marriage, sexuality, and family life in ways that make Christianity appear more restrictive and life-denying than the actual doctrine teaches. While Christianity certainly advocates for chastity outside marriage and fidelity within marriage, this ethical framework reflects a positive vision of human sexuality ordered toward the good of spouses and family rather than mere repression. Medieval Christians celebrated the married state as a sacrament and understood sexuality within marriage as a profound expression of spousal love and commitment. The shows’ portrayal of Christian celibacy often suggests that Christians despise the body and treat physical existence as fundamentally sinful, yet Christian theology has always taught that the body is good, created by God, and destined for resurrection in eternal life. Understanding actual Christian theology reveals the shows’ representations as crude caricatures that serve dramatic purposes but bear little resemblance to what Christians actually believed and practiced.

Neglect of Christ’s Ethical Teachings

Both Vikings and Game of Thrones frequently portray Christian characters acting in ways that directly contradict the ethical teachings of Christ and his church, yet the shows rarely explore this contradiction or acknowledge the profound gap between Christian teaching and Christian failure. Christ explicitly taught his followers to love their enemies, forgive those who wrong them, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, and reject violence as a means of solving human problems. These core teachings from the Sermon on the Mount and throughout the Gospels provide the ethical foundation for Christianity across all time periods and cultures. When television shows depict Christian leaders as primarily motivated by power, ambition, wealth accumulation, and willingness to employ violence for political purposes, they present characters who violate nearly every ethical principle their faith proclaims. This is not to say that medieval Christians always lived according to these teachings; indeed, Christians have frequently failed to embody Christ’s values, and acknowledging this failure represents an important part of honest Christian history. However, the shows suggest that Christian hypocrisy or moral failure somehow invalidates Christian teaching itself or proves that Christianity is merely a tool for political manipulation rather than a genuine response to God’s call for holiness. Medieval Christianity as an institutional reality certainly involved political power, corruption, moral compromise, and institutional flaws, but Christian theology itself always pointed toward a higher standard of charity, justice, and love. The shows would be more historically accurate and intellectually honest if they acknowledged that medieval Christian figures often failed to live according to their faith’s core teachings rather than suggesting that ruthlessness and ambition represent authentic Christian values. Saints and reformers throughout Christian history have arisen precisely because they recognized this gap between Christian teaching and Christian practice and worked to bring their contemporaries and institutions back into alignment with Christ’s foundational message. Game of Thrones particularly struggles with religious themes because creator George R.R. Martin deliberately crafts a morally amoral universe where virtue provides no particular advantage and goodness offers no special protection or reward, a worldview fundamentally at odds with Christian understanding of how God relates to creation and humanity. Christianity claims that goodness matters eternally, that God loves justice and mercy, and that history moves toward ultimate redemption and restoration, claims that Martin’s vision explicitly rejects. The show’s universe operates according to Machiavellian principles where only power matters and clever manipulation defeats honest virtue, a vision that directly contradicts Christian anthropology and theological understanding of human purpose and destiny.

Oversimplification of Medieval Christian Authority

Television depictions of medieval Christianity frequently flatten the complexity of how authority functioned within the church and between religious and secular powers, presenting a simple hierarchy of hypocritical bishops oppressing common folk while protecting their power. Medieval Christendom was far more complex than such simplified representations suggest, with competing loyalties, theological disputes, genuine piety alongside corruption, and constant negotiation between ecclesiastical and secular authorities. The church owned enormous wealth and property, employed vast numbers of people, ran schools and hospitals, and wielded significant political influence, creating genuine ethical tensions between spiritual mission and temporal power that medieval Christians grappled with seriously. Many medieval church leaders were genuinely learned theologians, dedicated pastors, and committed reformers who worked to maintain Christian standards in their institutions despite overwhelming obstacles and human weakness. Corrupt clergy certainly existed, and the medieval church would eventually face the Protestant Reformation partly because of legitimate complaints about institutional failings, but television’s portrayal of the church as simply corrupt oppressor fails to capture this complexity. The shows also misrepresent how medieval laity actually related to Christianity and how ordinary people experienced faith in their daily lives. Peasants and common folk who constituted the vast majority of medieval European population were not mindlessly controlled by an oppressive church but rather engaged in genuine spiritual practices, devotion, and community life centered on Christian faith. Parish churches served as centers of community life where people gathered for worship, celebration of sacraments, community events, and mutual support in ways that enriched human existence. Medieval theology, while certainly expressed in forms and language foreign to modern ears, grappled seriously with profound questions about God, human nature, salvation, justice, and the purpose of existence in ways that deserve respect rather than dismissal as primitive superstition. Television’s contempt for medieval religion often prevents viewers from appreciating the genuine intellectual and spiritual achievements of medieval Christian thought and practice, achievements that shaped Western civilization and continue to influence how humans understand meaning and purpose.

Misunderstanding of Missionary Methods and Motivation

The Vikings series depicts Christian missionaries as primarily motivated by desire to conquer Norse lands for Christian kingdoms, convert pagan populations through force, and establish ecclesiastical power structures, yet historical evidence reveals more complex motivations and methods. Missionaries like Ansgar, known as the Apostle to the North, genuinely believed that Christianity represented truth about God and human salvation and felt called to share this faith with Norse peoples out of authentic spiritual conviction. Ansgar lived an ascetic life of poverty and prayer, worked to understand Norse culture and language, and demonstrated Christian virtues through his personal conduct and commitment to the welfare of those he served. He did not arrive with armies or seek political power but instead attempted to win Norse hearts through faithful witness to Christian faith, displaying the spiritual fruits that Christian conversion produces in human lives. The show’s portrayal of Ansgar as failing and being executed for his faith actually reverses the historical record; while Ansgar’s missionary efforts did not produce the immediate mass conversions he hoped for, his witness was remembered and respected, and subsequent missionaries built on the foundations he had established. Game of Thrones takes a different approach, presenting religion almost entirely as a tool of political power and social control with no genuine spiritual content whatsoever, suggesting that all religious claims are essentially masks for ambition and lust for authority. This nihilistic approach to religion prevents the show from engaging seriously with what religious faith actually means to believers and how spiritual conviction motivates human behavior in ways that transcend mere political calculation. Many historical figures who embraced Christianity did so against their political interests and at great personal cost, sacrificing power, status, and sometimes life itself for commitment to their faith. Martyrs throughout Christian history chose death rather than renounce their faith or behave contrary to Christian teaching, a phenomenon that makes no sense within the amoral framework that Game of Thrones presents. Christian history includes many figures who genuinely believed that their faith offered salvation and redemption to those who received it, and this spiritual conviction shaped their missionary efforts, their willingness to face persecution, and their commitment to building Christian communities. Television’s reduction of religious motivation to mere power-seeking misses the genuine spiritual experiences and authentic faith that have always characterized Christian believers.

Failure to Portray Christian Community Life

Both Vikings and Game of Thrones concentrate almost exclusively on dramatic conflicts involving powerful figures, leaving little room for depicting the actual community life and spiritual practices through which ordinary Christians experienced their faith. Medieval parishes functioned as genuine communities where people gathered regularly for worship, shared meals, celebrated important life transitions, supported one another through suffering, and created meaning and purpose together through shared Christian narrative and practice. Monastic communities represented another form of Christian communal life, where monks and nuns devoted themselves to prayer, scholarship, hospitality, and service, creating centers of learning, spiritual wisdom, and practical assistance that served the broader society. These religious communities produced the written works, artistic achievements, theological reflections, and spiritual practices that shaped medieval culture and continue to influence Western civilization today. The character Athelstan in Vikings begins as a monk, and while the show does depict some elements of monastic community and spiritual practice, it primarily uses his monastic background as a source of internal tension and romantic frustration rather than exploring what monasticism actually represented. The spiritual discipline, intellectual rigor, theological training, and community support that characterized monastic life provided meaningful existence for thousands of individuals who committed themselves to this form of Christian living. Christians gathered not only for formal worship but also for practical mutual aid, sharing resources, providing hospitality to travelers, caring for the sick and poor, and creating systems of justice and community accountability based on Christian ethical principles. Women participated actively in this religious life through various forms of monastic community, leadership roles as abbesses, mystical spirituality, and theological reflection that shaped the broader Christian tradition. The shows almost entirely neglect this rich dimension of Christian existence, presenting Christianity only through its institutional and political dimensions while ignoring the profound spiritual meaning it held for millions of believers across centuries. A more complete portrayal would acknowledge that Christianity’s endurance and influence stems not primarily from institutional power or political manipulation but from the genuine spiritual experiences, meaningful community life, and transformative faith that it offered to believers in every era.

Distortion of the Crusader Mentality

Game of Thrones depicts the Red Priesthood and Melisandre’s cult as religiously justified in burning heretics and unbelievers as a form of sacred purification, portraying religious fervor as primarily motivated by desire to eliminate those who disagree with one’s theological positions. While historical crusading movements and religious violence certainly occurred within Christian history and represent genuine failures to live according to Christian teaching, they were not inevitable consequences of Christian theology but rather departures from it. Christ taught that his kingdom would expand through spiritual persuasion, witness, and genuine commitment rather than through violence or coercion, and the use of warfare to promote Christianity represented a compromise with and departure from core Christian ethical teaching. Medieval theorists who justified crusading warfare had to construct complex theological arguments to explain how Christian commitment to peace could be compatible with military conquest, arguments that many medieval Christian leaders rejected and that subsequent Christian theology has repudiated. The show presents religious fanaticism and willingness to burn unbelievers as natural consequences of holding religious convictions at all, suggesting that all sincere religious believers will inevitably become violent fanatics willing to eliminate those who oppose their faith. This conflates religious conviction with violent fanaticism in a way that misrepresents both Christian teaching and the actual diversity of response to religious disagreement within Christian history. Many Christian leaders advocated peaceful coexistence with those holding different beliefs, respected intellectual disagreement, and protected religious minorities within their territories. Medieval Spain saw periods of religious coexistence between Christians, Muslims, and Jews, though this coexistence was often fragile and sometimes broke down. Christian theology has always contained resources for respecting human freedom and conscience in religious matters, even when medieval practice frequently failed to honor these principles. The shows would be more accurate if they acknowledged that religious violence represents failure to live according to Christian teaching rather than suggesting that sincere Christian conviction necessarily produces violent fanaticism and willingness to purge those who disagree with one’s theological positions.

Absence of Genuine Theological Content

Both Vikings and Game of Thrones present religious systems almost entirely divorced from any genuine theological content, depicting religion as merely cultural practice and institutional structure without any substantive theological claim or spiritual meaning. Christian theology contains profound reflection on fundamental questions about human existence, meaning, purpose, suffering, justice, mercy, grace, and redemption, theological reflection that medieval Christians engaged with seriously and that shaped how they understood the world and their place in it. The shows never explore what Christians actually believed about God, what they meant by Christ’s resurrection and its implications for human destiny, how they understood forgiveness and reconciliation, or what they believed ethical living meant in light of their faith. When Athelstan in Vikings struggles with reconciling Christian and Norse religious traditions, his struggle is presented primarily as cultural identity confusion rather than genuine theological disagreement about what is ultimately true about reality and human salvation. Christianity makes definitive claims about God, Christ, salvation, and the proper ordering of human life that cannot be reduced to cultural practice or political power structure. These theological claims represent something Christianity’s adherents actually believed to be true about ultimate reality, beliefs that motivated their choices, shaped their communities, and gave meaning to their lives. Medieval Christians believed that God was genuinely good and just, that Christ’s death and resurrection genuinely saved humanity from sin, that following Christ genuinely transformed human existence, and that these truths were ultimately more important than any temporal power or social status. Game of Thrones cannot explore such conviction because the show’s framework explicitly rejects the possibility that any ultimate truth exists about reality or human purpose. The show’s vision presents all religious claims as equally valid fictions that individuals adopt for pragmatic reasons while no ultimate truth distinguishes one from another. Christianity, by contrast, makes definitive truth claims that differentiate it from other religious and philosophical systems. A more intellectually honest portrayal would engage with what Christians actually believed and why these beliefs seemed compelling and transformative to those who held them, rather than dismissing all religious conviction as power-seeking and institutional manipulation.

The Historical Reality of Religious Coexistence

Archaeological and documentary evidence from the Viking Age reveals a far more complex picture of how Christian and Norse religious traditions actually interacted than television’s portrayal of constant conflict suggests. Norse settlers who established communities in Christian lands often adopted Christian practices while retaining elements of their ancestral traditions, creating a syncretic religious identity that honored both traditions simultaneously. This blending of traditions was not unusual in medieval Europe, where many recently Christianized peoples maintained folk practices, spiritual beliefs, and cultural traditions alongside Christian orthodoxy. The conversion process in Scandinavia did eventually succeed in establishing Christianity as the dominant religion, but this success came through generations of gradual adoption, political incentives for Christian identity, and genuine spiritual conviction that Christianity offered something valuable. By the eleventh century, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden had become fully Christian kingdoms, not through constant warfare but through the cumulative effect of trade relationships, political alliances, and regular contact with Christian communities. Kings who adopted Christianity often did so for multiple reasons, including desire to participate in European Christian political structures, access to Christian literacy and administrative capabilities, and genuine spiritual conviction that Christianity represented truth. Once these Scandinavian regions became fully Christian, they produced their own distinctive Christian culture, theology, and practices that reflected their particular historical experience while maintaining continuity with broader Christian tradition. Iceland established an early Christian commonwealth that achieved remarkable cultural flowering in medieval period while maintaining some connection to ancestral traditions through preservation of Norse sagas. The Christianization of Scandinavia should be understood not as conquest of paganism by Christianity through violence but rather as gradual transformation of how these societies understood themselves spiritually and politically. Television’s constant warfare and religious hostility misrepresents this historical reality by exaggerating conflict, neglecting the peaceful interactions that dominated most exchanges, and failing to depict the long-term processes through which religious transformation actually occurred across centuries.

Conclusion: The Importance of Historical Accuracy

Television dramas have every right to prioritize entertainment value and dramatic tension over historical precision, and viewers enjoy these shows for their compelling storytelling rather than expecting documentary accuracy. However, the cumulative effect of misrepresentations about Christianity in popular media contributes to widespread misunderstanding about what medieval Christians actually believed, how they practiced their faith, and what Christianity as a religion actually teaches. When millions of viewers encounter only distorted depictions of Christian history and theology through entertainment media, they develop impressions of Christianity based on caricatures and exaggerations rather than accurate understanding of the genuine faith traditions and communities that have shaped human civilization. Christianity deserves to be represented accurately, not because the faith requires special protection from criticism or honest examination, but because intellectual integrity demands representing any major human tradition accurately before critiquing or dismissing it. The rich intellectual, spiritual, and practical achievements of medieval Christianity warrant serious engagement rather than dismissal as primitive superstition or cynical power manipulation. Many genuine theological insights, spiritual practices, moral wisdom, and works of art and literature from medieval Christian tradition continue to offer meaning and value to contemporary people regardless of their own religious commitments. Understanding medieval Christianity accurately requires acknowledging both its genuine achievements and its genuine failures, both the sincere spiritual conviction of its believers and the institutional corruption that sometimes compromised its witness. Catholics and other Christians can watch and enjoy these dramatic series while maintaining critical awareness of how they distort historical reality and misrepresent Christian theology and practice. Engaging seriously with actual Christian history, theology, and tradition provides a foundation for understanding where these shows diverge from reality and why such divergence matters for anyone seeking genuine understanding rather than entertaining fiction. The goal should not be to demand that entertainment media provide historical accuracy at the expense of storytelling, but rather to cultivate in audiences a sophistication that distinguishes between dramatic fiction and historical reality, appreciating each for what it is while recognizing that they serve different purposes and answer different questions about human existence and meaning.