Harald ultimately returns to Norway, where he reunites with Leif before challenging his nephew Magnus’s claim to the throne. The Norwegian jarls strike a compromise, insisting that the family pair rule together, and both are crowned simultaneously. This partnership lasts until the end of the episode when Harald has Magnus seized and imprisoned. (In real life, they co-ruled for about a year until Magnus died.) Season 3 concludes with Harald reintroducing himself to his subjects and finally assuming the identity that comes to define him: Hardrada.
Leif Sets Out to Search For New Discoveries
Leif spends most of season 3 trying to figure out what’s next for him. Losing his sense of purpose while in Constantinople with Harald, he slowly begins his return north, driven by the idea of searching for a mysterious land he vaguely remembers from childhood. Gifted a ship by King Canute and armed with knowledge from the Greek mapmaker Calicinus, who believes in the existence of an undiscovered country, Leif is determined to head west until he finds the land he believes he saw when he was young, or possibly die trying.
Elsewhere, Freydis has arrived at a similar conclusion. Driven out of Jomsburg by Magnus, Freydis is eager to seek a new home for herself and her people. She too is determined to go further west, and to find the Golden Land her brother once spoke of with such conviction during their childhood. There, she believes, she and those like her can be happy, free to worship and live as they please. Though she and the Jomsborg survivors are waylaid in Greenland for a time by Erik’s selfish machinations—and his kidnapping of young Harald—Freydis remains convinced it is the place she saw in her vision and where she is meant to go as Keeper of the Faith.
Freydis Is Burned As A Witch — And Survives
The so-called Last Daughter of Uppsala goes through it in Valhalla season 3. During this run of episodes, Freydis is poisoned, sees half of the village of Jomsborg killed, returns to Greenland only to be beaten and imprisoned by her father, Erik the Red (Goran Visnjic), loses her son when his grandfather kidnaps him, and finds herself seized as a heretic by the militantly Christian Magnus and condemned to death. She is even dragged to a stake to be burned as a witch, though she’s rescued through the combined efforts of Harald and Leif, with whom she is finally reunited.
Thanks to Leif’s deft skill at setting fires, Freydis gets one last big moment to shine. Tied to a pyre she faces down Magnus and Harald sitting in judgment, insisting on her Viking gods’ supremacy as flames roar around her and the villagers of Kattegut scream in terror. It’s straight-up badass, and if Valhalla had to end it’s hard to imagine a more fitting final few moments for this character, who has served as its soul throughout.
While Freydis desperately wants to kill Magnus for everything he’s done to her and her people, Leif and Harald ultimately convince her to return to Greenland and find her son. That the season’s final shot also indirectly implies she’ll be continuing with her brother on his seafaring journey is an especially nice and meaningful touch.
