Vikings director Ciaran Donnelly is proud of Ragnar’s ‘cinematic’ death scene in season four (Picture: History Channel)

Vikings director Ciaran Donnelly has recalled how Travis Fimmel struggled to say his lines in Ragnar’s death scene because he became so emotional.

The pivotal scene took place in season four when Ragnar, who had been the hero of the show up until this point, was captured, tortured, and thrown into a pit of snakes that fatally poisoned him.

Given that the scene was Fimmel’s exit, the actor was understandably overcome with emotion at having to say goodbye to his character and couldn’t get his words out.

‘The mood on set was extraordinary. I worked on the show for a season and had done a lot of work with Travis. It was hugely emotional for him I feel,’ the director told Metro.co.uk.




‘It was more emotional than he or any of us expected. When he’s up there in that cage and he’s trying to get that dialogue out, I think he had real problems getting it out because of the real power of the emotion in the moment.

‘I would sense that and say, “Let’s bring you down Travis and take a break” and he’d go “No, I’m staying. I want to get this done.” Then all the crowd, there were a couple of hundred extras there, they were all cheering him on.

‘For me as director it was probably one of the most cinematic episodes I’ve ever directed, and it’s the one I’m most proud of.’

Donnelly recalled having to film outdoors in the ‘mud and blood and s**t in the depths of winter’ with Fimmel actually being suspended in a cage about 40 feet in the air.

But he felt the biting atmosphere and cold conditions were important to capture Ragnar’s doomed situation.

He explained: ‘It just rained solidly the entire time and it was really very cold.

‘But on a show like Vikings which is heavily location driven, that’s the world you’re in and you’re always encountering weather. We would have called it the mud and blood and s**t.

‘It was almost always up to your knees in mud, but it makes it feel very real because it is real. He is out there suspended in a cage and thrown in a pit with snakes as you see it.’

Fimmel became so emotional during the scene he struggled to say his lines (Picture: History/REX)

Creating the shots of Ragnar being repeatedly bitten by snakes took some serious camera trickery in an indoor studio setting, and there were real snakes involved – not that Fimmel minded.

‘What was amazing about Travis Fimmel is that he’s Australian and he grew up on a farm in Australia and he’s quite used to snakes,’ Ciaran said.

‘He wasn’t bothered by snakes. Obviously all of the snakes that were in there with him were not poisonous or dangerous.

‘Some of them would have had fangs and things like that, but he was quite happy to be in there with the snakes and have them on him or around him or slithering over him. I feel it was quite authentic in that way, and that’s thanks to Travis’ ability to hang with snakes.’



Other computer generated snakes lunging and sinking their teeth into Ragnar were then added into the shot later.

Working on Ragnar’s bloody exit, Ciaran knew the gravity of it and how his death would affect everything that came after it.

Describing it as ‘an immense watershed moment’, one significant creative choice he made was to keep the episode as stripped back as possible to ‘get the audience inside Ragnar’s head’.

He sat down with writer and creator Michael Hirst to discuss the scene, and was pretty much given free reign.

‘We only talked about it once and I just said to him, “I feel like this is a silent episode,”‘ said Ciaran.

‘There’s almost no score in it. It should be just [Ragnar], very aware of the world around him. It’s about the insignificance of man on the world and what comes next.’

Of course he has his favourite moment out of the whole sequence that he is proud of.

He revealed: ‘I think his last words and speech were powerful before they drop him into the pit. He’s talking about his sons and family and his name. I think that’s incredible.’

Ciaran Donnelly has just completed filming the opening episodes of Altered Carbon Season 2. Vikings season six is set to return to History Channel later this year.

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