gwaevalarin | For Everything There Is A Season...

I watched the entire first season of Vikings in a single day, so let me talk about Athelstan, and his faith, and everything else that is important to him.

I'm writing from memory after what was pretty much a Vikings overdose, so please excuse any inaccuracies.

Athelstan never had an easy life. His family places him in a monastery when he is just a child because there simply isn't enough food for them all. It was never his choice to join, but he embraces it nonetheless.
Then his parents, his four brothers, and his sister die from the plague. He mourns them, but he accepts it, probably trusts they are in a better place.
He still has God, and he still has his brothers in the monastery. He has a family. He was never alone.

Until Ragnar comes, and takes them away from him, kills his brothers, burns down his home, and takes him away to a foreign land. Again it isn't his choice, but to some extend, again, he accepts it.

Aside from the cross he wears around his neck, a single book, the gospels of St. John, is the one thing he holds onto; it reminds him that God is the one thing they can't take away from him.

Athelstan used to be a missionary. Visiting other countries, witnessing other cultures is nothing new to him. But he used to go freely, and this time he is forced to go. He doesn't know what awaits him, and this time he has no home left to return too.

When I think about missionaries, it usually has a negative connotation. People who travel into a different part of the world, and try to force their religion on others.
It's impossible to imagine Athelstan that way. I believe he was a different kind of missionary. Someone who'd enter a new country with curiosity and an open heart. Of course he wanted to tell them about his faith, and of course he wanted them to become Christians, to find the same peace in God that he has found, but he also wanted them to want it.
When I picture Athelstan as a missionary, I picture him as someone who offers people to tell them about his faith, someone who will explain it to everyone who is willing to listen. Someone who gives people the opportunity to learn about Christianity, so they can freely choose it.
Yes, to him his God is, without any doubt, the one and only real God, but if someone doesn't love him freely and honestly, then there is no point to it.
The other thing about Athelstan is that he is curious. And I bet that wherever he went, he was just as eager to learn as he was to teach.

When he arrives in Scandinavia, despite being scared and lost and robbed of his choice, on of the first thing he does is ask questions. One of the first things he does it trying to learn about these people and their lives, and even though they dragged him away and enslaved him, he listens with an open heart. And even though he is confused and sometimes disturbed by what he hears and sees, and even if some of the things are so clearly wrong in his mind, he doesn't judge. At most, he comments on the things that just go against everything that makes sense to him, or whispers a prayer or Bible quote to comfort himself. Only when someone shows curiosity about his life back in England and his faith, he is happy to tell them everything they want to know.

In some ways he starts off a little naive, really, and he soon learns his mistakes when Ragnar doesn't learn from what he tells him, but instead uses the information against the people of England, to go back for another raid. At that point it is too late to do anything about it.
It won't be the last time Athelstan blames himself for something he has little or no control over.

Athelstan comes to Ragnar's household as a slave. Or maybe not. Even though the question is brought up at least twice, Athelstan never gets a real answer whether he is a slave or not. It doesn't matter, where would he go anyway? Except that it does matter. It matters to Athelstan.

Gyda seems to warm up to him pretty quickly, Bjorn no so much.

Ragnar looks at him like he is an amusing, sometimes useful, exotic animal. So does Lagertha at first - the scene when they try to convince him to join them for a threesome made me so uncomfortable. Athelstan keeps saying no, his celibacy a sacred vow that means so much to him when he has so little left, and still they keep pushing, until they finally let it go - but Lagertha learns to accept him and his ways over time. I think they find some understanding on how they see the world differently. He tries to fit in the best he can, and she doesn't push him to give up on the things that are too important to him to let go. Ragnar never gets to that point.

He lives with them. They even deem him trustworthy enough to leave the farm and the children in his care - though not trustworthy enough as to not add a threat. It still isn't his choice. Is life is still controlled by others. And yet he finds it in his heart to show them kindness, and to even start genuinely caring about them.

When Ragnar asks him if he wants to join them for their journey to Uppsala, it's a fake choice. What he decides to do, and what he would otherwise be forced to do just happen to be the same thing. Still, he thinks he has a choice when he says yes. He sees his chance to finally fit in, to maybe not feel quite as alone anymore, even if it means giving himself up for it.

When they drug him - and really, what other choice does he have than eat the mushrooms, even if he did have any idea what effect they'll have - that's one of the most obvious moments of how Ragnar's friends and family love to use Athelstan as some source of amusement. Yes, I guess you could argue that they treat their own with rough love too, but they very obviously don't look at him as one of their own, not in any way that counts.

And then it gets even worse.

When the priest asks Athelstan to come with him, I'm pretty sure he expects some sort of initiation ritual, the Viking equivalent to baptism. Something he feels he, at this point, has to do, to finally leave his old life behind for good. When he is asked if he still believes in the Christian god he only hesitates for a moment before he says no. The second time he is asked, he says it more firmly. He needs to convince the priest and himself that he means it. When he is asked for the third time, he knows that this is the time that truly counts, his last chance to turn back. His last no is barely more than a whisper, because it hurts so much.
Only then does he learn the truth. They didn't bring him to make him on of them at least in some respect, they brought him as a sacrifice.
And how does Athelstan react? He is shocked, of course; he feels betrayed. But he doesn't try to run, he doesn't try to backpaddle. The only thing he does is try to hide is wrist, the one that carries the prove that deep inside his heart there is a place where he is keeping his faith, and everything he is, safe.
But the priest sees the cross anyway, and suddenly everyone acts like he is the one who betrayed them. Not openly, but the atmosphere is thick with it.

Athelstan watches another man die in his stead. He never asked to be a sacrifice, and he never refused to be one either. Both decisions were made for him before he could even as much as voice an opinion on either, and still he feels guilty. Leif's death weights heavy on his soul.

As heartbreaking as the finale was, for me this scene, when he watches the sacrifice, was the most difficult to watch.

I'm pretty sure that Athelstan never saw his own family wither away and die, but when the fever breaks out in his new home (or the closest thing he has to one anyway) it still must remind him of getting the news.
And what is his first reaction, despite the pain, and despite the way he was betrayed by these people? He takes care of them the best he can, right until he finds himself on the brink of death.

I don't know if he notices or ever learns of any of the things going around him during his fever. The way Lagertha runs her hand through his hair when she gives him water, how Gyda's only wish is not for her own recovery but for her mother to pray to the Gods for him. I like to believe that the prayers of this little girl, that were born from kindness and love, did reach the heart of some god, Viking or Christian. I just can't decide if it may have been a cruel god.

When Athelstan's fever breaks, the very first thing he does is make sure Gyda is okay, only to find that she has faded away before he had a chance to as much as say goodbye. In a way, she traded her life for his. A trade that is beautiful in its selflessness but horribly in the way it burdens Athestan with yet another death he could not have prevented because the circumstances were completely beyond his control.
But even worse, it is another loved one lost; this little girl who loved him and accepted him just the way he was, no matter how strange he, I'm sure, sometimes still seemed to her. And whom he loved just as much in return.

And now I can only hope that Athelstan and Lagertha - will be able to find some comfort in each other, and some peace eventually, and a sense of home.