I recently discovered that Fil’Anthrope has limited edition, subscription kits for various characters. You have to sign up for the kit for a limited period of time, for this kit from September 10 to October 23, 2020. This is a mystery kit where you get some information about the character and the kit and chart will be sent in parts in six parts until April 2021. The kit is quite expensive, but it includes everything you need to complete the design.

The previous designs have included Marie-Antoinette, Esmeralda from the Hunchback of Notre Dame, a Steampunk character and Cleopatra. I was drawn to this as it is a viking warrior, and there are quite few cross stitch charts available with Scandinavian, or more specifically Norwegian, imagery. There is a lot of “Nordic” cross stitch patterns, but these are most often samplers with simple designs which are more Swedish than Norwegian. As Fil’Anthrope is a French company I don’t expect it to be historically accurate, but I hope it is not too far off. The cover photo is at least promising.

I enjoy both history and old mythology, but I had to look up who Lagertha is, as she is not a character I recognized from neither history nor mythology. Apparently, she is a legendary character, who was a shield-maiden, the ruler of Norway and married to Ragnar Lodbrok. Her story was recorded in the 12th century in the ninth book of “Gesta Danorum” by the Christian historian Saxo Grammaticus. Even though most of the characters in the story of Lagertha are assumed to be more or less historical characters who lived in Scandinavia in the 8th or 9th century, it seems to be generally agreed that Lagertha is mostly fictional.

After falling down a Wikipedia-hole of Norse mythology, the English and the Scandinavian language pages are quite different, I finally discovered that the TV show Vikings is loosely based on the story of Ragnar Lodbrok, who is called Lothbrok in the show. I have not seen this show yet, but it is on my watchlist. This might explain why the name Lagertha was chosen for this cross stitch pattern. I also found that some historians theorize that the myth of Lagertha may have originated in the Frankish tradition, so I speculate that the character of Lagertha may be more well known in France than in Scandinavia.

As mentioned above, the story of Lagertha was written by a Danish historian in a book about the history of Denmark. She is supposed to be from Norway, live in Norway or the ruler of Norway, however, the other people connected to her story seems to be mainly connected to Sweden and Denmark. The main focus of what I learned in school in Norway were the sagas of the Norwegian kings and Norse mythology written by Snorre Sturlasson, so that might also explain why I have never heard this story.