I couldn't finish this movie last night, so I was interested in what other IMDb reviewers thought. Imagine my surprise upon reading positive review after positive review. I didn't finish them all, so there may be negative reviews out there. Since I am going to write a negative review, here are my credentials: M.A. in anthropology, graduate level courses in Old Norse language and saga literature, paper on Victor Turner and his misuse of sagas to analyze symbolic anthropology, archaeologist, practical knowledge in viking weapons and armor, both crafting them for sale and fighting in them in SCA-style combat (Society for Creative Anachronisms). My people come from Norway and Sweden and have been farmers for the last 400 years (as far back as I can trace). I also understand the berserker mindset intimately.
To start off, slaves were too highly prized to be slaughtered for entertainment. Horsefighting was the preferred Old Norse analog to gladiatorial entertainment. Real men used real swords and hacked each other to death for purposes of law, or revenge, or real wealth changing hands. Shields were just as important as swords in these duels. The overall level of filth was not only unhygienic and would have led to death, but also unlikely because the Norse were often quite vain and bathed a lot. Around 1000 AD, the ladies at the English court preferred Norse warriors to the Anglo-Saxons because they bathed regularly.
There doesn't seem to be any settlements around and the idea you could maintain a trained fighter in a wind-blown cage on a diet of gruel and no daily exercise is ludicrous. The ridiculously small boat with low gunnels could never have gone anywhere besides along a coast, much less a deep sea voyage to Canada. That boat would have never made it to the Orkneys! As for the location, one of the Christians mentions they are in Sutherland, which locates them in Scotland. I have done several bike tours in Scotland and the terrain is right, but the adaptations to the environment are all wrong. It really does take a community working together to make a living in such a land.
The upshot is that the director was probably limited in his budget, but the level of detail has an important role in making a movie. The introduction of Chrisianity into Scandinavia around 1000 AD was based on cold-blooded calculation of wealth and domination. It was not a bunch of half-starved groaty cast-offs wandering around trying to save their souls or mitigate some sort of existential psychological pain inside their heads. Any Old Norse warrior would laugh or be insulted by such a characterization (or both!).
If this was supposed to be some sort of oblique view of what modern soldiers are going through in their psychological difficulties with incipient PTSD, it fails miserably. There is more than a little bureaucracy in any structured warrior grouping and certainly in the Viking Age. Read a little about the Jomsvikings if you don't believe me. This movie was all about fantasies - fantasies driven by very little knowledge of what life was like back then or what life is like now. If you want a REAL look at combat and the mindset of the vikings, go to the sagas first, and then do a little more digging into the mythology and skaldic verse. I suggest Njals Saga, Egils Saga or Grettirs Saga as good places to start. Njals Saga especially has a good look at the introduction of Christianity into Iceland.
As I have said many times before, "No anthropologists were harmed in the making of this film."
To start off, slaves were too highly prized to be slaughtered for entertainment. Horsefighting was the preferred Old Norse analog to gladiatorial entertainment. Real men used real swords and hacked each other to death for purposes of law, or revenge, or real wealth changing hands. Shields were just as important as swords in these duels. The overall level of filth was not only unhygienic and would have led to death, but also unlikely because the Norse were often quite vain and bathed a lot. Around 1000 AD, the ladies at the English court preferred Norse warriors to the Anglo-Saxons because they bathed regularly.
There doesn't seem to be any settlements around and the idea you could maintain a trained fighter in a wind-blown cage on a diet of gruel and no daily exercise is ludicrous. The ridiculously small boat with low gunnels could never have gone anywhere besides along a coast, much less a deep sea voyage to Canada. That boat would have never made it to the Orkneys! As for the location, one of the Christians mentions they are in Sutherland, which locates them in Scotland. I have done several bike tours in Scotland and the terrain is right, but the adaptations to the environment are all wrong. It really does take a community working together to make a living in such a land.
The upshot is that the director was probably limited in his budget, but the level of detail has an important role in making a movie. The introduction of Chrisianity into Scandinavia around 1000 AD was based on cold-blooded calculation of wealth and domination. It was not a bunch of half-starved groaty cast-offs wandering around trying to save their souls or mitigate some sort of existential psychological pain inside their heads. Any Old Norse warrior would laugh or be insulted by such a characterization (or both!).
If this was supposed to be some sort of oblique view of what modern soldiers are going through in their psychological difficulties with incipient PTSD, it fails miserably. There is more than a little bureaucracy in any structured warrior grouping and certainly in the Viking Age. Read a little about the Jomsvikings if you don't believe me. This movie was all about fantasies - fantasies driven by very little knowledge of what life was like back then or what life is like now. If you want a REAL look at combat and the mindset of the vikings, go to the sagas first, and then do a little more digging into the mythology and skaldic verse. I suggest Njals Saga, Egils Saga or Grettirs Saga as good places to start. Njals Saga especially has a good look at the introduction of Christianity into Iceland.
As I have said many times before, "No anthropologists were harmed in the making of this film."