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Vikings creator Michael Hirst's emotions ran deep when ending the show

Writer of the historical epic talks to us about series finale streaming in the UAE

In a career centred on epics including Elizabeth (1998) and its 2007 sequel, and TV series The Tudors (2007-2010) and Camelot (2011) there was really only one person MGM could call when deciding to resurrect their own historical franchise. Around a decade ago, while searching through a vast back catalogue, the production company discovered a little-known 1958 Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis film titled The Vikings based on material from the sagas of eventual Norse king Ragnar Lothbrok and his sons. British screenwriter and producer Michael Hirst was charged with turning the project into a modern, compelling TV drama and six seasons, 89 episodes and seven years later, it appears to have been a very successful appointment.

As the final 10 episodes recently dropped in the UAE on StarzPlay, available to watch now, we were interested to know why Hirst appears compelled to dramatise events of the past for our entertainment.

“I don’t like fantasy,” Hirst told us via Zoom from his English country house. “I want projects where I can dig into real material. For some reason, the past speaks to me very loudly. I love diving into history books to find little nuggets of humour and build an authentic world.”

Hirst credits this love of research to an early career as an academic. Show business came calling when British director Nicolas Roeg read one of his short stories and asked him to begin writing a few scenes for movies the filmmaker was working on. The rest, as they say, is...well, Hirst’s forte.

Over the seasons Vikings’ fan base has grown from, as Hirst puts it, barely filling a small room at Comic Con to selling out the entire main stage, the audience all dressed in costume. At meet-and-greets the creator had to be on his toes.

“The fact was they (fans) were so smart; the details of the show they knew! I had to be sharp as anything because I had to remember everything I’d written.”

As the numbers swelled, so too did the vociferousness of their support and attachment to the characters.

“I got a lot of letters pleading with me not to kill certain characters. Which I took to mean I was doing my job. I don’t write to be educational. Learning about Viking culture is almost an incidental product of the show. People watch because they care about the characters. The advantage of writing about Vikings is the characters are going to be jeopardised pretty much all the time. If you care about them you’re on the edge of your seat.”

Taking the roles to heart was not just a preserve of the audience, however. Hirst told us as a writer you cannot help but care about the personalities emerging from the page.

“King Harald (Peter Franzen) was pencilled in to die at least twice. I couldn’t do it! I got to tell the actor two times, ‘I know you’ve read the script, but it’s okay, you’re safe’ It’s always a good thing to be able to tell an actor.”

Given this looks to be the last series of the show, feelings understandably bubbled to the surface as the days ran down on set. “They were very emotional. I was killing off some of my favourite characters. It was difficult. I left one ambiguous, slightly open ending because it’s the end of my saga not the end of Vikings. Vikings are travellers. It is ‘onward always onward.’”

What viewers can expect from the final episodes of Vikings?

“The audience has to expect many surprises. The other thing that was important, in rounding off many storylines, I needed to conclude them satisfactorily in a way nobody was being cheated: the audience, the cast and me.”