I wanted to like it more than I liked it.
I'm a sucker for historical documentaries, and I can also get into good historical fiction, but I found the first episode was just trying so hard to feel Epic-with-a-capital-E that I couldn't quite get into it. All the dialogue felt more like a pronouncement than like natural speech, and some of the explication seemed heavy-handed: "Let me tell you about our laws and customs that you have grown up with all your life as if you were an imaginary audience of far-future people that needed to know how we do things."
On the plus side, I liked all the actors, especially the shield-maiden. The settings are also magnificent, and that'll keep me watching at least another episode or two. The plot also seemed believable, even if the dialogue was a little stilted.