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Starring Alexander Skarsgård, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and Björk. Directed and co-written by Robert Eggers. Opens Friday at theatres everywhere. 136 minutes
Viking epic “The Northman” opens with a bang: a volcano angrily belches fire and lava into the night sky. The year is 895 AD in a craggy corner of the desolate North Atlantic.
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You might well ask yourself, as I did: How is writer/director Robert Eggers going to top this scene in the rest of this violent fable?
Stripping the royal murder-and-vengeance theme of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” back to its Icelandic and Scandinavian folklore roots, “The Northman” remains positively volcanic even when it’s a human being doing the exploding.
The human in question, described more accurately in the film as “a beast cloaked in man-flesh, ” is the furious Viking Prince Amleth.
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Played by Sweden’s Alexander Skarsgård, so ripped he looks like he bench pressed Volvos to prepare for the role, Amleth is out to avenge the murder of his father, King Aurvandil (Ethan Hawke). The warrior monarch fell to the arrows and sword of his duplicitous brother, Fjölnir (Claes Bang), who then seized the throne and also the king’s wife, Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman).
Amleth witnessed this treachery as a boy (played by Oscar Novak), barely escaping with his own life. He has plotted to exact revenge and gain his rightful place on the throne ever since.
Fear no spoilers, even if you haven’t seen “Hamlet.” This information is all in the trailers and Amleth mutters the plot basics like a mantra: “I will avenge you, Father. I will save you, Mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir.”
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This is surprisingly literal mainstream filmmaking by American auteur Eggers, who co-wrote the story with Icelandic poet Sjón. In his much-lauded previous features “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse, ” Eggers made virtue of narratives that whispered their intent and mostly cloaked their mayhem.
Not much is hidden this time, although cinematographer Jarin Blaschke once again views Eggers’ vision through a dark lens. Much of the film is shrouded in smoke, mist and murk, with the gloom infrequently broken by glimpses of the sun or by fires.
Craig Lathrop’s production design is also vintage Eggers, which is to say heavily researched and recreated to be as historically accurate as possible. The clothing is of hand-stitched furs, wool and leather. The Viking longboats and longhouse gathering places creak from rough-hewed wood.
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The weapons seem almost prehistoric. To the pounding drums of the doom-laden score by Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough, Amleth brings the heat in multiple ways — blade, axe, spear, club and even his head — as he and his band of Viking “berserkers, ” clad in wolf and bear skins, wreak havoc upon the forces of Fjölnir, a Putin-esque figure who isn’t going to back down easily, if at all.
This makes for bleak if mesmeric viewing, even in a rare moment of recreation. A field game that seems to start out as an early version of cricket turns into something resembling a savage mob beating.
Kidman doesn’t get much screen time, but her character establishes herself as no mere kidnap victim. She brings to mind a line from “Hamlet”: “God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another.”
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Anya Taylor-Joy, made famous by Eggers’ “The Witch, ” arrives near the 40-minute mark as Olga, no friend of Fjölnir. She sides with Amleth and also fosters the closest thing to romance and family life this film can muster. She helps gives Skarsgård’s character much more humanity than he might otherwise possess; the innate intelligence of both actors also shines through.
Then there’s Björk, the Icelandic pop star and actor, barely glimpsed as the mystical Seeress in her first big-screen feature role in 17 years. Majestically accoutred in a headdress fashioned out of feathers and arrowheads that partially covers her eyes, she seems like she’s in a Viking version of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” video as she dispenses both prophecy and warning to Amleth.
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Tall, blonde, with merciless blue eyes. Barbarians crowned with terrifying horned helmets, indulging in pillaging and bloody rituals. Were these accurate portrayals of the people whose expansion shaped Europe’s northern reaches and beyond—or hyperbole?
Myths and misconceptions shroud the Vikings. Legends were born after their first incursions in the British Isles in the late eighth century, and they’ve captivated our imagination ever since, inspiring operas, movies, novels, comics, even video games, which makes untangling fact from fiction a daunting task. Researchers are still at work today unearthing artifacts and probing their origins.
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Recent finds credit the Vikings as the first Europeans to set foot in the Americas, at least 400 years before Columbus, and the first DNA studies of their remains suggest they were a diverse group. Excavations turn up buried treasure, such as a jewelry trove discovered outside Stockholm this year, continuing to feed our fascination for the ancient raiders. As archaeologists fill in the details, we look at some of the enduring myths the Vikings have inspired.
The Vikings are often thought of as a single nation, but they were more accurately small groups ruled by elected chieftains. Some of these tribes—who lived in what is now Scandinavia—cooperated with each other in organizing raids on foreign countries.
“Viking” does not refer to a people but rather to an activity. In the two centuries spanning the Viking age, most inhabitants of northern Europe were engaged in fishing, farming, trade, and crafts. “To ‘go viking’ was something a man might do in his youth to accrue honor and the spoils of war, but it was rare for any man to take part in foreign raids continuously throughout his life, ” wrote Oxford Brookes University scholar Brian McMahon in The Viking: Myth and Misconceptions.
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The origin of the name “viking” itself is all but certain. The Old Norse word usually meant “pirate” or “raider.” For McMahon, the term refers to those “who adventured overseas to raid and plunder, ” he says. “’Vik’ means ‘bay’ or ‘creek’—as in Reykjavik in Iceland, where Scandinavian emigrants first settled around the year 870 A.D.”
Swedish historian Fritz Askeberg offers another take. The verb vikja means to break, twist, or deviate, and the Vikings, explains Askeberg in his book on ancient Nordic culture, were people who broke away from typical societal norms, abandoning their homes for the sea in search of fame and spoils.
"Never before has there been a terror in Britain as it is now by the heathen race … These barbarians poured the blood of saints around the altar and trampled the bodies of the saints in the temple of God like dung in the streets.”
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The horror-struck description of an attack on the Lindisfarne Priory, on an island off the coast of northeast England, was penned in 793 A.D. by the scholar Alcuin of York—an event that marked the beginning of the Viking age in Europe, which lasted for more than 250 years.
Though the Vikings indeed instilled fear, experts say violence was endemic. “Viking cruelty does not differ from what was happening in those times, ” said Joanne Shortt Butler from the University of Cambridge. “They were no more brutal than the representatives of other nations or tribes. Murders, arson, and looting was the order of the day.”
“Look at the actions of Charlemagne, King of the Franks during the Viking age, ” she writes. “The patron of the revival of ancient culture ordered the beheading of 4, 500 Saxons in Verden.”
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Tales of the cruelty of the Scandinavian raiders made it plausible to credit the Vikings with some despicable habits—like a penchant for drinking from the skulls of their enemies. The popular misconception originated with an inaccurate translation.
Ole Worm, court physician to the king of Denmark in the 17th century, was also a linguist with a passion for runestones, boulders inscribed with runes (the Germanic and Norse alphabet). In 1636, Worm published research on runes, citing a Nordic poem whose protagonist claims he will drink ale in Valhalla—heaven to the mythic slain Norse warriors— from the curved branches of skulls.
The poet was referring to the branches growing out of the skulls of animals—that is, the horns. But the court doctor translated the phrase into Latin as ex craniis eorumquos ceciderunt—from the skulls of those they killed. It added another
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