The Northman: Is this Viking movie based on a true story?

Witches were with the Witches, the film that revealed this and brought it to the attention of horror fans. Then the sea creatures in The Lighthouse. Now move on to the Vikings with Robert Eggers with The Northman. The furious and animalistic epic against the backdrop of revenge and family, which the English director told us about during a visit to Paris.

AlloCiné: Your three feature films are based on myths and legends. Do you think they are so interesting that you want to make movies out of them?
Robert Eggers : Attracts with the past, mythology, religion and the occult. And I think it is not surprising that when you look for the sublime or the spiritual in storytelling, they are prone to science fiction. Because we spend all day with the computer in our hands. I live enough every day (Laughs) So I want to ask myself who we are and where we are going depending on where we are coming from.

What is the main difficulty when dealing with the past as you are? When do we try to re-invent old stories without falling into pure illustrations?
When I say “Vikings”, People think they know them. Because they lived more than a thousand years ago and archeology allows us to learn a little more about them every day. But they know nothing about their material and cultural worlds because nothing we have seen in movies, TV or comics has been based on research.

Wagner even gave us horns on the helmets, which put us on the wrong track for a long time. But there are some things to expect when talking about the Vikings, such as these long ships. Or at a funeral. And I wanted to have these recognizable elements in my film, but I brought them out in a way that might have been unexpected, based on research.

As well as developing Viking tropes that you may not have known about but are found in every saga. Do you like to fight the immortal Viking to win your sword if you are a hero. There is also a ball game called Knattleikr which has many sagas but people know little about it. Therefore, the idea is to take into account the expectations of the public and to break them to some extent. (Laughs)

I wanted to have these recognizable elements, but I brought them into the game in a way that might be unexpected

Have you thought about making a Scandinavian film that was as faithful to this world as possible?
I prefer to be able to shoot a movie in Old Norway. But such a thing can only be done by Mel Gibson, who sponsors his own epics.

Did you have any visual cues, from movies or pictures?
It was hard here. When working around a historical period, one tends to use the works of that time as a starting point for the visual aspect. However, Viking art is very stylized and not too atmospheric. So landscapes have become my main source of inspiration for the atmosphere, with time and elements like mud and fire.

But like poetry and the visual arts, he was beautiful, but also tough and rude. We tried to find Scandinavian simplicity in the story. And besides, the camera is always in motion. Which I hope will create something submerged that will immerse you in the story. Even though you have a world built around you.

Does this meaning of landscapes mean that places played a crucial role in writing and staging? Even if it means you have to find them too early?

I could not find locations before writing or filming. But the scale of the film made it possible. Had the project been smaller, we would probably have had to find places that would inspire us. Sure, there is the Hekla volcano that I had seen and passed on in the story, but after writing we were looking for mountain peak towns and Icelandic farms.

Like many recent films, “Northern Man” has run into complications with Covid. Have you had many changes to adapt to new health measures?
We hardly had to change the content of the movie because of Covid, which is great. The only thing I remember is the scene where we meet Olga Persona, played by Ania Taylor-Joy. He casts a healing spell on a woman and puts herbs in her mouth. First Anna had to put them in her mouth, chew them and then put them in the woman’s mouth. Which we could not. In addition to this example, there was talk of finding creative solutions.

My biggest disappointment is that most of the film takes place in Iceland, but we did not shoot much there. The main filming was supposed to take place there, but we only managed to do extra footage there. So we had to find places in Ireland that would be as close as possible to Iceland. There are also shots of Iceland that we picked up and then added to the background. I really do not like such behavior, but I have to tell this story.

And why exactly this story? The one who inspired “Hamlet”?

If I wanted to make a Viking movie, it had to be a revenge story. And very soon I met Amlet’s Amlet, who inspired Hamlet Shakespeare. Because The Northman is aimed at a wide audience, I knew I had such a simple mythological tale that everyone knows – because he is also the Lion King! – I could focus more on the material and inner world of the Vikings without losing the audience.

Interview with Maximilian Pierrett in Paris, March 28, 2022