He made the world take notice with his 2015 feature debut, the period horror film “The Witch, ” which he followed up in 2019 with the psychological ordeal that was “The Lighthouse.”
In his director’s statement for “The Northman” — a largely stunning, often-offbeat movie that lands in U.S. theaters this week — Eggers talks of wanting to make “THE Viking movie. The definitive Viking movie.”
It’s quite a turnaround for him. To hear Eggers tell it, he wasn’t exactly spurred to action by his wife, who was convinced that if he made an effort, he, like she, would become interested in Icelandic Sagas and Viking lore. Apparently, he was more or less “meh” about it. However, that changed after the pair visited Iceland in 2015, where he found himself imagining “solitary tenth-century figures on horseback” against the region’s almost-unbelievable landscapes.
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This newfound passion eventually led him to Alexander Skarsgård, the one-time “True Blood” actor who for years had been working to star in and produce a Viking movie.
Skarsgård turns in an impressive performance in a movie that is both beautiful and brutal. Its opening moments, in which thunder crashes around a mountain and a man with a gravelly voice addresses the Norse god Odin, are guttural and forceful and prove to be a microcosm of “The Northman.”
While Skarsgård portrays Prince Amleth as a man, it begins around 900 A.D. with a younger version played by Oscar Novak, who also was seen recently as young Bruce Wayne in “The Batman.” Amleth is excited for the return of his father, King Aurvandil (Ethan Hawke, “Moonknight”), to him and his mother, Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman, “Being the Ricardos”), in the fictitious island kingdom of Hrafnsey, located somewhere around the Orkney and Shetland Islands, near the top of present-day Great Britain.
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Fearing he may not have much time left on this earth, Aurvandil concludes he must prepare Amleth for what lies ahead of him — including a duty to avenge his father’s future death. And thus we get a wild ritual shared by the two and orchestrated by the court jester and valued advisor to the king, Heimir the Fool (Willem Dafoe, one of Eggers’ “Lighthouse” stars), serving here as a shaman-like figure.
Soon, Aurvandil is killed, not by opposing forces but by his brother, Fjölnir (Claes Bang), who takes Hrafnsey — and Gudrún — for himself. He also orders his men to kill Amleth, but the boy is able to flee the area.
When we catch up with Amleth 20 years later, he is raiding Slavic villages with other Viking Berserkers. At one brutality-laden stop, he encounters a seeress (Björk), who reminds him of his fate and responsibility for vengeance. (Björk — the brilliant Icelandic singer-songwriter, who hasn’t been seen on screen since 2005’s “Drawing Restraint 9, ” is so musically enchanting with the delivery of her spoken words that you may not fully absorb them.)
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Having learned his uncle has lost the kingdom to a greater force and now runs a farm in Iceland, Amleth disguises himself as a slave and boards a ship bound for the area. A real slave, Olga of the Birch Forest (“The Witch” star Anya Taylor-Joy), knows he is an imposter but stays quiet, the two forming a bond that will remain strong long after they arrive at the farm.
There, Amleth proves himself to be more capable than most slaves, impressing Fjölnir and Gudrún and gaining him certain privileges and responsibilities in the process. All the while, he schemes to avenge his father and rescue his mother and is willing to unleash a hellish new reality onto his unsuspecting uncle.
Eggers co-wrote “The Northman” with Icelandic poet, novelist, lyricist and screenwriter Sjón (“Lamb”), and they have crafted a story that, while relatively simple and familiar, is rich with detail. They have infused it with supernatural touches that, Eggers says, would be seen as realistic to the characters. (Well, maybe, but we won’t quibble.)
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And many of its details come to glorious life thanks largely to director of photography Jarin Blaschke, who also worked on Eggers’ other features. Iceland, especially, looks incredible and dramatic — and not quite in the same way a 4K video of the country you may pull up on YouTube to show off your television does — but it’s the movie’s elaborate tracking shots that are most impressive. The aforementioned raid of Olga’s village clearly took high-level preparation, coordination and execution, and it’s captured magnificently.
In front of the camera, Skarsgård (“The Legend of Tarzan”) — who clearly put on muscle mass for the role and appears to have been in god-like shape — is a force. The singularly focused Amleth isn’t the most dynamic of characters, but the actor keeps you reasonably invested in his plight.
Kidman’s role is rather small — albeit greater than other high-profile players Hawke and Dafoe — but when the “Big Little Lies” costars finally share the screen again, deep into the film, we get some impactful minutes.
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Bang, a Danish actor who played key parts in two 2020 arthouse films about art, “The Burnt Orange Heresy” and “The Last Vermeer, ” is, well, rather artful in his portrayal of Fjölnir. That the character isn’t your typical villain also is a credit to Eggers and Sjón.
One of the disappointments of “The Northman” is that the scribes didn’t make Taylor-Joy’s role isn’t meatier. The talented star of “Emma” and “The Queen’s Gambit” makes the most of some key scenes, but the film simply would have been stronger with more of her.
Some may also be let down by the movie’s pacing; it has what could be considered an odd rhythm, and for all its action, it can be slow at times.
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That said, “The Northman” is more accessible than “The Lighthouse” — and maybe “The Witch, ” as well — and the hope here is it earns a wide audience.The metal detector beeps very faintly as 54-year-old Frants Fugl Vestergaard guides it across a field near Bøvling in western Jutland. The sound is so faint that many would go on without hesitation, but not Frants. For 10 years he has been metal detecting – even several times in the field in question. Frants scratches the ground a little and crushes a clod of earth in his hand. He reveals a small, beautiful enamel earring. “Hey, that looks like gold, ” he thinks, as his brain tries to make sense of what’s in his hand. “Wow I think, and then time stands still for me, ” says Frants Fugl Vestergaard, handing the find to his partner, who is walking a little further ahead. He walks around himself to get some air before turning to look at the find again.
“I’m very humbled and puzzled as to why I should find that piece, and even in West Jutland, where there are such long distances between finds. It’s like getting a text message from the past. You always want to find something beautiful, a great find, and then suddenly you have it in your hands. It’s unbelievable, ” he says.
The unique gold earring features an enamel motif of two stylized birds around a tree or plant, symbolizing the tree of life. Image: Søren Greve, The National Museum of Denmark.
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“The find is a beautiful and quite unusual gold earring from the 11th century”, says Peter Pentz, curator at National Museum of Denmark.
“It seems completely unique to us, we only know of 10-12 other examples worldwide and we’ve never found one in Scandinavia before, ” says Peter Pentz, explaining that the Vikings brought back thousands of silver coins from their travels, but almost never art jewelry.
The earring consists of a crescent-shaped gold plate set in a frame made of gold threads adorned with small gold balls and gold ribbons. The crescent-shaped plate is covered with an enamel created by a special technique of crushing and pulverizing glass, then fusing it with metal to make it opaque. The enamel motif is two stylized birds around a tree or plant, symbolizing the tree of life.
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This type of jewelry is known mainly from Muslim Egypt and Syria and from Byzantium and Russia. The jewelry found is most similar to Arabic examples from Egypt.
The Dagmar cross. Byzantine, 11th or 12th century. Found in 1683 in St. Bendt’s Church, Ringsted. Now in the National Museum of Denmark. Photo: Nationalmuset via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0.
In terms of style and craftsmanship, it is made like the Dagmar cross. They are the only two pieces of this type that have been found in Denmark. They both date from the Viking Age or the earliest Middle Ages and are prestigious pieces of jewelry that were probably not traded but typically donated by kings and emperors.
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This explains why the Dagmar Cross was found in a queen’s tomb. In contrast, the new gold find was made in a field in Bøvling with no known Viking sites nearby. How it ended up there is therefore something of a mystery.
“We expected to find such a fine and priceless piece of jewelry as this alongside a large gold treasure or
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