Viking Expert Breaks Down The Northman Weapons

[Narrator] Director, Robert Eggers' latest film,

The Northman is being described

as the most accurate depiction

of Viking culture ever rendered on film.

It's very layered. It's very deep.

Even the things out of focus

in the back of the shot,

they're all things that have been

carefully worked on.

[Narrator] Archeologist Neil Price

was one of three historical advisors on the film.

He specialized in Viking objects,

buildings, and religion.

For a Viking specialist,

it was very special to see this world

that I've been researching for decades

come to life in a form that you can

pick up and hold.

It was absolutely extraordinary.

[Narrator] Let's examine each weapon

in The Northman with the help

of the film's consultant.

One of the key scenes,

a raid on a Slavic village,

a fortified settlement.

[foreign language]

Someone is throwing a spear.

Amleth grabs it in mid-air,

and throws it straight back.

That's actually an episode from

the Icelandic sagas,

this amazing body of medieval literature

written down centuries after the Viking age.

In many ways, throughout the film,

Robert has very carefully drawn

on that deep vein of storytelling

that goes all the way back

to the time of the Vikings.

[battle cries]

The spears are made with very straight shafts,

usually of ash wood.

The spear point is a metal, usually iron,

obviously with a sharp point.

Some of them for throwing, some of them for use

in more close combat.

They're also quite cheap.

This is the basic weapon of the Viking age.

Everybody had a spear.

[arrow thuds]

The bow and arrow is also

a quintessential Viking weapon.

And there are so many different kinds of arrows.

Special ones to a go through armor,

others to cause enormous bloody flesh wounds.

This is really a very important Viking weapon.

Another one of the main Viking weapons

is the axe.

Lots of different kinds.

Short axes for close combat.

You can throw them.

Amleth makes innovative use of them here

using it to climb a wall.

They have wooden shafts,

the axe head itself is made of iron.

Very heavy.

Absolutely devastating in close combat.

The primary defensive weapon is the shield.

They're made of wood, often of lime wood.

Quite thin, but flexible and strong,

with a frame around the outside.

Often covered in leather,

and in the center is this iron boss.

And what that is actually is the handle

on the backside of the shield.

If your shield has been hacked away in combat,

and all you're left with

is that iron boss on your fist,

you can use it to punch people with.

So the shield in some circumstances

is an offensive weapon as well.

Is absolutely crucial to how the Vikings fought.

Apart from the axe,

there are two main kinds of bladed weapons.

There's the classic Viking sword,

either a single- or a double-edged weapon

used for slashing.

But there's also a smaller,

slimmer kind of blade,

which is what you see Amleth using

in the raid on the village.

They're using that as fighting knives

or battle knives.

And these can be used to stab, to slash,

to hack, or to cut.

They're nasty things.

You can see that Amleth has the scabbard

for this sword horizontally at his waist,

and that seems to be how they were worn,

at least to judge from how we find them

in burials.

The swords are made of iron.

Very, very carefully made.

Sometimes with edges of steel,

they can be made with patterns in the blade.

In the film is a special sword,

and it's a sword with a name.

And this idea of a named weapon

is something that we find very often

in the Icelandic sagas.

A really illustrious warrior

would have a sword with a name

and a history.

These are swords that are inherited,

or given as gifts, or taken from fallen enemies.

And everybody knew the story

of these weapons.

What you see here is silver arm rings

with animal heads on the terminals,

and the arm ring is a very common

item of jewelry in the Viking age.

Mainly for men.

It seems to been some kind of symbol of loyalty.

There are images on carved stones

of men waving rings in the air,

and that's perhaps what these ones mean

on Amleth's arms here.

Most of the film is taking place

in the early 10th century,

the 920s, 930s.

The time that we call the Viking age is

from about 750 to around 1050.

At the time of the movie,

the Scandinavians have traveled over

an enormous part of the world.

The early 10th century, when this is going on,

the Scandinavians are really well established

on these rivers connecting

the Baltic and the Black Sea.

All of Scandinavia is essentially

a maritime culture.

There's few places that are

really far from the sea.

It's the rivers that are

kind of watery motorways

that take those ships deep

into the heart of the mainland

to attack towns and villages.

And then to get back up those rivers

out to the open sea

before anyone can stop them.

I will avenge you, Father.

The boats that we see them rowing

is a classic Viking long ship,

rather a small model, actually.

The biggest could hold 120 men.

Their shallow draft, easy to get into the rivers.

So this is the machine

that made the Viking age possible.

A lot of the settlements along the Eastern rivers

were defended in some way,

either with a bank of earth or a palisade,

or wall of some kind.

[Narrator] Director, Robert Eggers

wanted to avoid romanticizing The Northman.

Instead, the film portrays Vikings

warts and all.

[battle cries]

[Neil] Viking raids were very, very violent.

It's important to see what this

kind of raiding really was.

How bad it was.

This kind of scene, the attack on more or less

defenseless settlements,

looking for loot, looking for plunder,

looking for slaves.

This plays out all over Western Europe,

and all over the East.

These Vikings do appalling things,

and they're shown to be appalling.

This is a raid as it really was.

One of the most important things to grasp about

Viking age Scandinavia is that

this is a slave economy.

Enslaved people, human beings, form an absolutely

fundamental foundation to how

Viking age society runs.

It's a nightmare.

Kidnapping people, trafficking them,

taking them back and using them as forced labor,

and worse.

I'm particularly happy that the film

has managed to convey is just

how ubiquitous this was.

The enslaved are present

all the way through this film,

and that's an important thing

to understand about the Vikings.

I think it's been missing

from our picture of them

for far too long.

In some scenes, they they're shackled

with iron chains and links.

These are direct copies of examples

that come from archeological excavations.

[Narrator] The film's attention to detail

carries over into the depiction

of the rich inner and spiritual life of Vikings.

Something that recurs throughout the film

is a special kind of ritual and magic.

Something resembling shamanism, actually.

Fate is set and you cannot escape it.

I'm really happy with

how it's depicted in the film.

This was a central part of the way

in which Viking age people

got in touch with the other world.

And it's also clear that this was an arena,

above all, of women's power.

You shed your last tear drop.

Women were the gatekeepers

of the world of sorcery,

the world of magic.

This is a world that is absolutely teeming

with spiritual life,

a kind of invisible population.

I have the calling to break their minds.

One of the things that in some ways

sets apart the people of the Viking Age

at this time is that unlike most of their neighbors,

they are not Christians.

They are still part of this very deep, ancient set

of beliefs that goes back way earlier than the Vikings.

Something that has really sort of

set the internet alight from the trailer

is the image of a Valkyrie.

The word Valkyrie in old Norse means

'chooser of the slain'.

Their job is to find the best warriors

and to take them into the afterlife,

to serve in Odin and Freya's armies

for the battle at the end of the world,

the Ragnarok.

I think often they tend to now

be rather stereotyped, and especially sexualized.

And it's something that Robert

was very keen to avoid.

And the Valkyries as we see them here

are exactly as they should be.

They are war-like, they're violent,

and they are terrifying.

With the Viking Age, you're going back

a thousand years.

There's a lot we don't know,

so it's not possible for any historical advisor

to give the filmmakers the same level of detail.

Our image of the Viking age is the end result

of hundreds and hundreds of years

of gradual distortion

that started pretty much in the Viking Age itself,

and has continued ever since.

And what I hope is that, at least to some degree,

this movie will kind of peel away

all those centuries of distortion

and show us perhaps a little bit of a glimpse

of what the Viking Age was really like.