A: You know Hagar the Horrible, our favorite comic strip Viking? Well meet his real-life cousin Hairy Pants, aka Ragnar Lodbrok. The facts about Mr. Pants, a prototypical Viking king, were spun into legend so long ago that it's hard to sort out the fact from the fiction. Most likely born in Norway, where fur trousers were all the rage, the chieftain took to wearing the glorious legwarmers, and it earned him his fine nickname.

Pants (as we like to call him) was a proud pagan and enjoyed attacking the coasts of Europe on holy days when townspeople were off-guard. Legend has it that Hairy Pants even fought Charlemagne (who bit the dust in 814 CE), but it's more likely that he led a 5,000-man attack on Paris in the 850s, which was quelled when Charlemagne's grandson Charles II paid them to cease their offense.

Of course, the Vikings couldn't stop there. The next stop on their European tour was northern England, but the strike proved disastrous. The fashionably furry Ragnar was captured by the Saxon king Aella, who decided to kill him by lowering him into a snake pit, Indiana Jones-style. Too bad. Surely if he hadn't had those hairy pants weighing his legs down, he could've kicked some serious Saxon tail.