Who plays Aud in Vikings?
Aud is played by Leah McNamara in the original Vikings series.
Explore family, allies and rivals or follow the story sections below.
Cast references: Leah McNamara.
Explore Aud’s story
A community she wants to preserve
She participates in the new settlement and becomes close to Floki. The conflict between the households places her concern for the wider group against her father’s pursuit of revenge.
The family she can no longer accept
After learning of Kjetill and Frodi’s massacre, Aud takes her own life at Gullfoss. Her death deepens the collapse of Floki’s vision for the settlement.
Keep the adaptation separate
The show draws her name from saga material, but its young settler’s storyline should not be presented as the biography of Aud the Deep-Minded. Within the drama, her importance lies in showing that a family’s violence can destroy loyalty inside that family, not only create enemies outside it.
Relationships & loyalties
Memorable scenes
The vote on Floki’s fate
Season 5, episode 11
The settlers decide whether to accept Floki’s offer of himself as a sacrifice. Aud’s attachment to his hopes sits inside a community increasingly divided by family allegiance and grief.
Why this moment matters
Offering Floki as a sacrifice threatens to turn the settlement’s disappointment into the removal of the person who represented its hope. For Aud, attachment to that hope also creates distance from her own household’s demands. The vote makes collective decision-making meaningful without pretending that a formally shared choice will repair the grief and resentment behind it.
Learning what her family has done
Season 5, episode 17
After the massacre of Eyvind’s household, Aud confronts the reality of her father and brother’s violence and takes her own life. The feud destroys a daughter within the family claiming its victory.
Why this moment matters
Aud’s response prevents the massacre from being contained within the story the victors might tell about avenging their family. Their own daughter experiences the action as a destruction she cannot accept. Her death gives the feud an inward consequence, showing that a household can lose the very loyalty and future it claims its violence is protecting.
Why fans keep talking
Aud’s appeal comes from the way commitment to a better settlement remains emotionally credible even after the project has become difficult to defend. Her grief over the massacre gives that commitment a personal cost, rather than leaving her as a general symbol of kindness. The performance can therefore leave a strong impression with limited time. Her story also changes the meaning of family allegiance: refusing the family’s account of its violence may be an act of moral clarity rather than disloyalty.
What resonates
Commitment to the settlement and Leah McNamara’s performance give her grief over family vengeance emotional force.
Who plays Aud?
Leah McNamara portrays Aud.
Leah McNamara’s work beyond Vikings includes Gemma Milgrom in Nails (2017); Chantal in Metal Heart (2018); Rosalind Devlin in Dublin Murders (2019); Rachel in Normal People (2020); Tara in Then You Run (2023).