After exploring 16th-century English monarchs with Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (both starring Cate Blanchett in the title role) and the Showtime series The Tudors (which starred Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII), British screenwriter Michael Hirst turns his attention to the Dark Ages with Vikings, the History Channel’s first scripted series, which premiered earlier this month. Filmed in Ireland, the gorgeous historical drama stars Travis Fimmel, as the Norse hero Ragnar Lodbrok, and Kathryn Winnick, as his wife, Lagertha, during the warriors’ first raids into the British Isles.

Last week, we spoke by phone with Hirst, the show’s creator and one of its executive producers, who told us about his attempts to overturn the stereotype that Vikings were “hairy monster people,” the difficulty of casting a lead actor who looked like he could lift an ax, and what’s wrong with Downton Abbey.

Julie Miller: You’ve focused so many of your projects on the British monarchy. Why did you decide to cross over to the Vikings?

Michael Hirst: I don’t know! I am kind of promiscuous in my historical interests. Once I engage in something, I really engage in it, and I love the process of reading and researching because I come from an academic background. When I was writing about Alfred the Great, he fought against the Vikings in England. I got interested in the Vikings, and then you realize that there isn’t much to be read about them, because they did not write their history. It was written by hostile witnesses, by Christian monks and so on. From what I could see and understand, I was really excited about it. I loved their culture and loved their gods. And I couldn’t wait to use the material that I had found.

Since it’s the History Channel’s first scripted series, how much pressure was there to be historically accurate, especially considering how little information was available?

Because it’s on History, there’s a kind of audience expectation that what they’re watching will have at least something to do with reality. That’s what I wanted, because everything I do starts out in research and historical reality. I’m not interested in fantasy. I am a writer, though, and I create things, and this is the Dark Ages, so you sort of start with the reality and you run with that. You invent things, and you write a story. Just like the Vikings write their own stories and sagas. It’s a marriage between fact and fiction, but it’s not fantasy.

One of the things to say about this is that there is no such thing as historical authenticity. Nobody knows what really happened in any historical period. There are some periods where we know more than others, though.

I was surprised to learn how advanced the Vikings were when it came to women’s rights. Women could own property and divorce and fight. For instance, Katheryn Winnick’s character is a shield maiden.

We had trouble finding both the lead man and the lead women. Because all of the lead guys these days are very pretty, often Englishmen, who you couldn’t imagine lifting a sword or an ax. And the women don’t have a physicality, which we needed because I knew that Viking women fought with their men and they were strong. Katheryn Winnick is a black belt in Judo so she came with the physicality. And Travis Fimmel is a farmer. He comes from farming stock. So they sort of had this wonderful physicality. And it was very important to me that were believable in these roles.