How many Ragnars are there in The Last Kingdom?

Two, and confusing them is the single most common thing that happens in a conversation about this show. Earl Ragnar is the Danish warlord who takes Uhtred as a boy and raises him; Ragnar the Younger is his son, who grows up alongside Uhtred and becomes his blood-brother. Father and son, one name, two very different endings.

Who plays Ragnar in The Last Kingdom?

Earl Ragnar is played by the Danish actor Peter Gantzler, from the first episode of the first season, and he returns in the sequel film Seven Kings Must Die. Ragnar the Younger is played by the Norwegian actor Tobias Santelmann, across seasons one, two and three.

How does Ragnar the Younger die?

In the fourth episode of the third season. Cnut wants the leadership of the Danish army — and wants Brida — and arranges the killing rather than doing it himself: Aethelwold holds the blade, on Cnut's instruction, on the night before the march south. Uhtred learns the truth later, and the reckoning for it lands during the fourth season.

Who Is Ragnar in The Last Kingdom — and Which Ragnar Do You Mean?

This is the question everybody actually arrives with, and it deserves the direct answer first: there are two. Earl Ragnar is the Danish warlord who kills Uhtred's father and then raises the boy as his own. Ragnar the Younger is that man's son, who grows up beside Uhtred and becomes his blood-brother. Same name, two generations, two entirely different places in the story.

Earl Ragnar

Played by Peter Gantzler.
First appearance season one, episode one (2015); he also returns in the sequel film Seven Kings Must Die (2023).
Who he is a Danish warlord: charming, formidable, and — the part that makes the whole series work — a warm-hearted family man who sees something in a captured Saxon boy and simply decides to raise him.

The show's most important early decision is refusing to make him a monster. He takes Uhtred's home and kills Uhtred's father, and then he is kind to him, teaches him, and is loved back. Everything difficult about Uhtred for the next five seasons grows directly out of that: he cannot hate the Danes wholesale, because the best father he ever had was one, and he cannot be simply a Dane either, because of what it cost him to become one.

Ragnar the Younger

Played by Tobias Santelmann.
Appears in seasons one, two and three (2015–2018).
Who he is Earl Ragnar's son and Uhtred's sworn brother — the one relationship in the series that is never complicated by an oath to anybody else.

He is the friendship the story keeps holding up against everything Uhtred does for Wessex. Whatever else changes, the two of them are brothers, and neither ever seriously proposes otherwise. That is precisely why the series takes him away in the fourth episode of the third season, and why it does it in the shabbiest available manner: Cnut, who wants both the army and Brida, arranges the killing and sends Aethelwold to do it on the night before the march south. Nobody dies well in that scene, which is the point of it.

A note on quotation, and why this page has none

The other profiles in this section carry a line or two of dialogue, quoted short and credited to the character and the season. There is none here. The lines most often attributed to either Ragnar online could not be pinned to a season with a source we were willing to stand behind, and the rule for this wing is that an attribution has to be sourced before it is printed — a misattributed quotation is worse than a missing one, because it puts words in a real actor's mouth and travels further than the correction ever will. So this page describes instead, and will gain its quotations if and when they can be sourced.

Are either of them real?

No. Both Ragnars are Bernard Cornwell's invention, and neither should be confused with the semi-legendary Ragnar Lothbrok of the Norse sagas or with the character of that name in other television series. What is real is the world they move in: the Great Heathen Army landed in 865, took York in November 866, and the men who led it — Ivar, Halfdan, Ubba — are named in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The full sequence is on the chronicle page.

Worth saying plainly, because it comes up constantly: this show and the several other Viking-age dramas of the last decade share a period, a vocabulary and a couple of historical figures, and share nothing else. A Ragnar in one is not a Ragnar in another.

Common questions

How many Ragnars are there in The Last Kingdom?: Two, and confusing them is the single most common thing that happens in a conversation about this show. Earl Ragnar is the Danish warlord who takes Uhtred as a boy and raises him; Ragnar the Younger is his son, who grows up alongside Uhtred and becomes his blood-brother. Father and son, one name, two very different endings.
Who plays Ragnar in The Last Kingdom?: Earl Ragnar is played by the Danish actor Peter Gantzler, from the first episode of the first season, and he returns in the sequel film Seven Kings Must Die. Ragnar the Younger is played by the Norwegian actor Tobias Santelmann, across seasons one, two and three.
How does Ragnar the Younger die?: In the fourth episode of the third season. Cnut wants the leadership of the Danish army — and wants Brida — and arranges the killing rather than doing it himself: Aethelwold holds the blade, on Cnut's instruction, on the night before the march south. Uhtred learns the truth later, and the reckoning for it lands during the fourth season.

Where to go next

Uhtred is the boy Earl Ragnar took in; Brida is the girl taken in the same raid, raised in the same hall, who drew the opposite conclusion from it. If you would rather find out which of the six you match, the wing's character quiz is a nine-question answer, and the shield wall quiz asks the question the Danes would actually have asked you.

This is fan-made, and unofficial

This is an unofficial fan profile of characters from The Last Kingdom — the television series and the novels of Bernard Cornwell it is based on — naming the work, its characters and its facts under nominative fair use. It is a free, unofficial fan tribute, made for fun. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Carnival Film & Television, Netflix, or Bernard Cornwell and his publishers.

Every word on this page was written for it, and no dialogue is quoted anywhere in it. No scene, transcript, still, clip, logo or artwork is reproduced either. Iron Realms — the strategy game the rest of this site is about — is an original fantasy world and has no connection to the world of The Last Kingdom.

Iron Realms is an original work of fantasy strategy. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any other game or franchise, and “Iron Realms” is a working project name rather than necessarily the final title. Its lore, names and artwork are original or used under CC0/CC-BY/OFL licences (see the in-game Credits). The community section also hosts unofficial fan tributes — quizzes and diversions made for fun, not part of the game — which name other fictional worlds under their own labels and are likewise not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to their rights holders. Pre-alpha, built in public. Nothing is for sale. No payment is accepted, and any price named here describes the intended model only. This is an early build — features, balance and prices are conceptual and may change or disappear between visits, and progress may be reset. Treat anything here as work in progress rather than a promise. Every page here is recorded: a first-party cookie, your IP address, your device and where you came from, and — when you are signed in — your account, are logged for site analytics; see what we record and why.