Noggin and the Ice Dragon

Our story opens in a great hall where a man tells the tale of Noggin.  He begins his story with the great green bird, Graculus, flying near the mountains.  Graculus is a talking bird and chief advisor to Noggin, King of the Nogs.  Graculus flying near the castle one morning when he spots something moving about and dives, expecting to catch a tasty rabbit.  Instead, he finds a diminutive man who claims to be from the Hot Water Valley.  He has traveled far to meet with Noggin.  Graculus takes the little man to Noggin.  The little man declares that an Ice Dragon is terrorizing the Hot Water Valley and he asks that Noggin slay the dragon.  Noggin, who is something of a noble bumpkin, agrees and brings Thor Nogson with him.  So it is that Noggin, Thor Nogson, Graculus, and the little man set out on a dogsled to reach the distant Hot Water Valley.  A party more unsuited for the task at hand would be hard to assemble.  However, they overcome each obstacle and manage to return peace to the Hot Water Valley.

 

The story is told in 4 parts, each ending with a new cliffhanger.  Of note, there is never any fighting since it is targeted at children.  The story is told with very basic animation and only a couple of voice actors provide all the voices and narration.  Troubles are resolved with the tools at hand, be it large birds to get over a mountain, geysers to thaw from being frozen, ice to disable a cannon, and so forth.

 

The Saga of Noggin of the Nogs is a long-running British series that began in the late 50s but has been revived a couple of times since.  It is only vaguely Viking.  The main villain seems to be Noggin’s uncle, the aptly named Nogbad the Bad.

 

I like the idea of the show more than the actual show.  A hobbit comes to ask a distant king for aid against a rampaging Ice Dragon sounds like a good story hook.  The magic forest where the trees move and thus erase any path or road is a cool location.  Also, the Glass Mountains that are nigh-impossible to scale because they are smooth as glass is good stuff.  Great intelligent green birds – that might be friend or foe and can, when working in concert, carry a man aloft – make for an interesting encounter.  That it turns out the dragon was driven from his cave by the true villain provides an opportunity for hasty characters to fight the dragon rather than assist it.  This is a really good adventure that has sapped of its dangers to appeal to a young audience.

 

The Norseman

The Norseman opens in 1006 AD on a Viking long ship in the midst of a storm.  Prince Thorvald (Lee Majors) has sailed across the Atlantic in search of his missing father, King Eurich.  Ragnar (Cornell Wilde) is second in command and master of the ship.  The Wizard (Jack Elam) provides mostly useless omens from beneath his dark hood.  Prince Eric (played by the director’s son) is along for no apparent reason though he is the narrator.  Speaking of the narration, Eric is offering it years later so an older man’s voice introduces many of the characters.  However, if we are going to narrate from one character’s point of view, that character should be in every scene; he isn’t.  He is twelve and it is baffling why he is even on the ship.  Is Thorvald risking the whole family on this expedition?

 

Only three natives are worthy of note.  There is Kiwonga, the chief.  He is all hostility and has no problem tossing wave after wave of his men into the metal blades of the Norsemen.  In a flashback, it is shown that his hostility began when Winetta – the sexy Indian – showed too much interest in Rolf, one of King Eurich’s men.  Kiwonga is all screams and shouts, bellicose in every scene.  Next there is the old woman, who is likewise mostly angry and hostile but more thoughtful than Kiwonga.  Lastly, there is Winetta, the only member of the tribe who has any sympathy for the Norsemen.  In fact, she sides against her tribe to assist in the rescue of King Eurich and his men.  Also of note, she has a sexy formfitting mini-dress whereas every other woman wears off-the-rack skins that do nothing for their figures.  Among the rest of the natives, it is funny to see how white some were.  The call for extras had some loose standards.  Moreover, some were rather portly; we have a well-fed band of natives.

 

Thorvald has come to this distant land with approximately 20 men, a rather paltry force for a supposed Prince on a mission to rescue the King.  In flashbacks, we see the King celebrating with the natives and see that he has fewer than 10 men.  Oddly, the natives captured and blinded the King and his band; I am unaware of blinding practiced by Native Americans.  The blinded Norsemen are housed in a cave some distance from the village and they are forced to grind grain into meal.  So, there is this daily march to and from the cave.  Why bother?  They are blind so running away isn’t much of a threat.  No, it just shows how wicked and mean the Indians are.

 

The battles are a disaster.  A score of Vikings with shields and armor should be devastating to a Stone Age tribe that charges into battle virtually naked and with relatively primitive weapons.  Instead, it is the other way around.  The one mass battle between Viking and Indian is declared a loss for the Vikings though during the battle it seemed as if the Vikings were cleaning up.  But after they run away, Ragnar names it a failure that cost too many lives.  Granted, the Vikings have only one crew vs. a tribe.  Also, the Norsemen did break formation and allow a random melee to ensue which really diminishes their technological advantages.  Though they began with a shield wall, it shattered almost immediately under the native charge.

 

The Vikings are ridiculously equipped.  First, they have horned helmets; this is a common misconception but even the most cursory look at history would have nixed the horns.  Second, they are wearing breastplates; a Viking who wore chainmail was a wealthy man and breastplates were not available; the typical Viking would have had shield and helmet.  Third, their shields are metal; the Viking shield was wooden with either leather or iron rim; also, it was fairly large whereas the ones in the movie are little more than bucklers.  Fourth, they have non-Viking swords and axes.  The axes were particularly jarring, looking like something from a fantasy movie rather than an historical epic.  Fifth, they have crossbows.  Crossbows were not used in warfare until the Battle of Hastings (1066), 60 years in the future.  Apparently, the film maker used Hagar the Horrible for historical research!

 

The natives aren’t any better.  The Vikings landed on the east coast of what is now Canada, not known to be balmy, and yet the locals are running around in loincloths.  The movie was filmed in Florida, which is rather balmy.  Florida is very like Medieval Canada, which is certainly why the location was chosen.  You know, palmetto trees and such were all over Canada back in the day.  Or perhaps this movie presumes that this particular band of Norsemen really did land in Florida.

 

Of particular note, one of the Norsemen is Deacon Jones, Hall of Fame Football Defensive Lineman; it should be noted that Deacon is black.  A brief narration at the beginning of the movie explains that he was captured during a raid in Africa.  Why that makes him a Norseman is unclear.  He is called Thrall, which is the Norse word for slave.  He is the slave of Olaf, a berserker whose tongue he cut out.  Thrall wears Olaf’s tongue around his neck.  Huh?

 

Speaking of Olaf, he is the butt kicker of the outfit.  He is routinely the rearguard and is seen as the lead berserker.  At one point, he drowns two natives simultaneously.  However, he is terrible at throwing his axe and looks less than menacing in his tan skirt and fuzzy horned helmet.

 

Lee Majors is wooden as can be.  His delivery sounds like that of an Indian in a 1950s Cowboy movie – slow and stilled, as if English isn’t his first language.  Even though his dialogue is admittedly bad, he manages to imbue it with all the emotion of a potato.   He also has some odd pronunciations.  He says ‘Norzman’ rather than Norseman.  Then there was the first Norseman who died, Bjorn.  Amazingly, both he and Cornell Wilde pronounced it Bee-John.  Really?  Hadn’t you guys ever heard of Bjorn Borg?  He was a famous tennis player in 1978.  These guys must have sailed from the Fjords (Fee-Johds) of Norway.

 

After the initial encounter on the beach where Bjorn is killed, the Norsemen row up river for a couple of days.  When Thorvald takes the berserkers to rescue his father, he tells Ragnar to meet him at the beach by day’s end.  Fine, it is a river and raising the anchor should get you moving.  No, actually, it seems to be a pond.  There is absolutely no flow.  The ship must be rowed to move and comes to a stop when the rowing halts.  Yes, that is probably useful for filming but somewhat irksome when it figures in the plot.

 

Why is it that every Norseman shot in the long ship must tumble over the gunwale and splash into the river?  None of you could fall inside the boat?  Well, that would be less cinematic and this is an epic.  Sigh.

 

I saw the Norseman in the theaters lo those many years ago and thought it was a great movie.  Seeing it again, it is one long disappointment.  One wonders how such films get funding.

Vikingdom

The Malaysian-made Vikingdom is mostly a travesty.  The story opens with the death of our hero, Eirik Bloodletter (Dominic Purcell), King of Jomsberg.  Ten years later, Thor the Thunder God assembles an army to destroy Midgard (that would be the world of men).  Why does he want to do this?  Mostly, he seems pissed about the rise of the one God who is replacing the Norse Gods.  So as not to leave out some historical revisionism, Thor leads a fleet to attack Lindesfarne in 793 – this is the traditional start date and location for the Viking Age.  There he captures a necklace that belonged to the Virgin Mary, an artifact vital in his plans to unravel the world.

 

Meanwhile, in a Scandinavian forest, Eirik Bloodletter is living the life of a hermit.  It turns out that he had been having an affair with Freya – fertility/love goddess – and she was unwilling to let him stay dead.  However, she could never see him again after his resurrection and he abdicated his throne in favor of his brother.  Thor’s gambit has convinced Eirik to end his hermitage and seek to defeat the Thunder God.  The only thing that can stop Thor is a magic horn that is hidden in Helheim (the Norse land of the dead).  Because he has been resurrected, he is considered ‘undead,’ and can travel to and from Helheim.  He is uniquely suited to the task.

 

Eirik collects a crew in Osberg and hires a boat captained by a woman!  Most of his crew are ordinary Vikings but a couple are bizarre.  There is Brynna (Natassia Malthe), the owner of the ship who wears a leather halter top though they are often trudging through snow.  Of course, she falls in love with Eirik.  Then there is Yang the martial artist.  We first meet him as the slave of a bumpkin.  How did that come to pass?  Yang often speaks Chinese but when it is important, he speaks perfectly understandable Norse.  Why is this character here?  Along the way, they recruit Alcuin the Druid who bears some uncanny similarities to Gandalf.  Though Brynna and Yang were irritating, I liked Alcuin.  He was the wisest of the characters and acted to save the world, sometimes without informing his allies. 

 

Dominic Purcell is wooden, delivering most of his lines with a dull monotone.  Sven, his right-hand man, has a working-class British accent.  Conan Stevens in a ridiculous red wig and beard stars as an often bare-chested, skirt-wearing Thor with a ludicrous plastic hammer standing in for Mjolnir.  OMG!  How can you cast Thor as the villain?  Frey, the male fertility god, looks like a medieval drag queen.

 

At one point, when trying to recruit a crew in a shield hall, Eirik gives a monotone speech about how he’s likely to die and so is everyone who comes along, so, you know, maybe you could join me.  No St. Crispin’s Day speech there!

 

The movie does have action.  Multiple fights showcase flying sword strikes, spinning arrow dodges, leaping archery, bear-wrestling, and plentiful blood.  Of course, the fighting has no resemblance to the actual tactics of the era.  I was astonished at how few shields there were.  When there was a shield wall – a standard tactic that is shown in the Vikings TV series on History – they use kite shields rather than the large round shields.  The axes are not Viking axes.  The swords are not Viking swords.  It is as if no one even cracked open a single history book on the subject; perhaps that is how Thor got cast as a villain.  On the positive, I would have loved this movie when I was twelve.

The Road of Azrael

This Robert E. Howard story opens with Kosru Malik in the camp of an aspiring Persian leader named Muhammad Khan. However, a clash with a hated foe among the camp followers leads to Kosru's hasty flight. He hides from a small caravan headed toward the camp and is surprised to see a Frankish girl among them. He continues his flight and meets Sir Eric de Cogan, an English knight. Normally, Kosru was not fond of `Franks' but Sir Eric was different. Ten years earlier, Sir Eric had saved him during the sack of Jerusalem (1099 AD) so Kosru gladly pledges himself to his service. Moments later, he discovers that Sir Eric is chasing after Ettaire de Brose, the Frankish girl, who was sold to Mohammad Khan. Seeing only death at the end of such a quest, Kosru nonetheless guides Sir Eric.

The pair manage to snatch the girl in the night but are soon caught by Ali bin Sulieman and his band of 500 Arabs. While Eric and Kosru were busy tracking Ettaire, Muhammad's Kurdish cavalry was herding Ali and his men into a trap. Sir Eric convinces Ali to join forces in order to escape the trap; he has just been in the enemy camp and has key information. Ali grudgingly accepts. The early morning battle of Ali's Arabs vs. Muhammad's troops soon turns into a route after Ali bin Sulieman is cut down. However, Sir Eric, Kosru, and Ettaire escape.

Fleeing south and east, the trio soon comes to the Persian Gulf. Surprisingly, a mixed band of shipwrecked Vikings and Saxons confront them. They are led by King Harold Godwinson, who supposedly died when William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066. Both the Saxons and the Vikings want to leave the trio to their fate but King Harold decides otherwise for the sake of Ettaire. The epic final battle finds Muhammad leading his 500 men against the 100 Saxons and Vikings. Sir Eric chose the ground well so that the battle is all afoot and King Harold's shield wall proves to be death for men used to fighting on horseback.

When Kosru slays Muhammad in battle, the Persians retreat. Only a handful of Harold's men remain but another Viking ship lands on the beach. Kosru sees that the unconscious Sir Eric and Ettaire are safely on the ship before he rides off. He traveled the Road of Azrael and lived (Azrael is the Angel of Death).

This is a fun and lively story, told in first person from Kosru's point of view. There is plenty of action, entertaining chases, and great atmosphere. However, it has some serious problems. The idea of King Harold Godwinson being on a Viking ship in the Persian Gulf at the age of 87 is ludicrous. First, he died in 1066. Well, the story says he lived. But then, why would he be here? His sons both sought to reclaim their father's kingdom but Harold remained `dead' through that? I did like that he had only one eye since it is reported that he took an arrow in the eye during the battle. How is it that he is fighting in the shield wall and survives? 87 back in 1109 is downright ancient and wouldn't be able to last an extended battle. Also, as he did in Spears of Clontarf, Howard has put horns on the Viking helmets; there were no horns. Lastly, and perhaps most egregious, how did the Viking ships get to the Persian Gulf? They would have to have found portage for their ships across the Suez into the Red Sea and then sailed around the Arabian Peninsula. For what purpose? Obviously, to be on hand should some unfortunates need to be rescued. That is just crazy.

Spears of Clontarf

This Robert E. Howard short story tells the tale of Conn the Kern (light infantryman) in the days before the battle of Clontarf (1014 AD). Conn was an outlaw in Ireland and while trying to flee, he was enslaved by Vikings. The Vikings sold him in the Faroe Islands which is where the story begins. Conn kills his owner and escapes by boat, miraculously washing ashore in Ireland after his boat was sunk by a storm. Here he meets Dunlang O'Hartigan who is traveling to join King Brian Boru in a battle against the Vikings. Conn gladly joins Dunlang and presents himself to the king. King Brian muses aloud about hanging the outlaw but agrees that it would be best to let the kern die in battle the following day. The battle proves particularly bloody, ending the careers of a great many Irish heroes, including Dunlang. Conn avenges himself by killing the Viking who enslaved him and sold him in the Faroe Islands.

The 30 page story is not one of Howard's best. He is so busy covering the actions of the many historic figures that he forgets about Conn. Moreover, there are so many characters that I quickly lost track. This is a story for someone intimately familiar with the Battle of Clontarf. The tale leaps from this Irish chieftain facing this Viking leader to the next chieftain against another Viking. As an aside, his Vikings have horned helmets which grated on me. Conn is often not even a bystander for some of these engagements. It is as if Howard initially meant to write the story from Conn's perspective but then couldn't help himself from drifting onto the history of it.

In the buildup to the battle, we meet Eevin of Craglea, a Pictish girl who is described as particularly petite with black hair and a green gown that seemed like scales – Conn almost thought she was a mermaid. Eevin has the gift of sight and accurately predicts the outcome of the battle and the deaths of both King Brian and Dunlang. Also, she seems to have magical powers of stealth since she confronts both King Brian in his tent and Queen Kormlada in her castle. She seemed a strange character to include for historical fiction.

Also of note, Broder the Viking had been told by a diviner that if he fought the following day, he would lose but King Brian would die also. Any other day, he would still lose but Brian would survive. He chose to make sure Brian died. Of course, with that sort of divination, you would think he might avoid battle and stay within the castle walls.

This is one of many stories that features the hero Turlogh Dubh O'Brien, who appears in several other tales. I was surprised by that since I had hardly noticed Turlogh (since he was one of the two Turloghs mentioned). Shouldn't this guest star have loomed a bit larger? The story ends with Turlogh cutting the slave collar from Conn after the battle is done.

Vikings

The History Channel has a new show about the famed raiders of Scandinavia. It premiered last week and the 2nd episode was last night (March 10, 2013). So far, I'd say it is quite good compared to other efforts at Viking fare. The central character is Ragnar Lothbrok, an experienced raider who longs to raid richer lands to the West. Earl Haraldsson, ruler of the region in which Ragnar lives and owner of the raiding ships, refuses Ragnar's suggestion. Thus, Ragnar commissions a ship to be built and sets sail. He lands at Lindesfarne in 793, the traditional starting date of the Viking Age.

The look of the show is good. There aren't horned helmets and swords are scarce; only a rich man can afford a sword. These Vikings use axe and shield. The long ship is very cool. On its voyage across the North Sea, it is run through its paces and shows how the men lived, navigated, sailed, and rowed.

That said, the show has its faults. The writers do not seem to know Viking law. Vikings didn't have a death penalty that an earl would impose. In the first episode, a man is accused of murder and found guilty. He is beheaded the following day. Viking law would have sought a wergild - a man price - to compensate the murdered man's family. Failing that, a man was likely to be declared an outlaw. Outlaws could be killed on sight without fear of retribution.

On another point, Ragnar's wife, Lagertha, is declared to be a shield maiden. Previews of future episodes have her in the shield wall (fighting formation) with all the men. Though Nordic women had much higher standing that their fellow European sisters, they were not generally on the front lines of battle. Shield Maidens are more legend than history and doubtless related to the Valkyries who carried valiant dead to Valhalla. It seems no historical era can exist on film unless there are women warriors. If this was airing on anything other than the HISTORY channel, I'd probably be less annoyed by the bow to that current fad.

Lastly, the grand coincidence that makes Ragnar's journey to England possible is grating. He has recently come into possession of two navigation aids, both given to him by `a wandering traveler.' We learn nothing more of this wandering traveler so the items are otherwise inexplicable. Then there is Floki the shipbuilder. Apparently, his is the ship design that is now widely known. He is a genius shipbuilder who can build a ship alone in a short period of time. The shipbuilder was like a foreman who guided the building, but Floki chops the trees, cuts the planks, and all the rest. He seems to have no assistance. So, it wasn't that Ragnar was the first to dare a crossing; he was the first to even have the tools to make the crossing.

This may be History's answer to the successful Game of Thrones on HBO. I am quite hooked on that show and they both air on Sunday night. I'll be watching both.

 

The show lost me after the second season.  The introduction of King Aella grated.  King Aella didn't take the throne of Northumbria until around 860, but we have already determined that Ragnar landed at Lindesfarne in 793.  Nice screwing with the timeline.  Also the constant betrayal between Ragnar and his brother got old fast.  Of course, it was foregone that this was coming since the central character is Ragnar Lothbrok, who shouldn't even be born at the time of the Lindesfarne raid.

The Saga of Biorn

Finally, there is an outstanding Viking film.  Few Viking films can compete with this epic deathfest. We have dwarves, trolls, Valhalla, and all the stuff that makes Vikings cool. Our hero is past his prime but what a Viking! Best of all, there is brevity:

Valhalla Rising

The movie opens on a frigid moor somewhere in Europe around the year 1000. A one eyed man is locked in a cage. It seems he is a slave who serves his master as a pit fighter a la Conan the Barbarian. One-Eye, as he is eventually called, cannot be beaten even in a two on one fight. For reasons unexplained, no one is allowed to own One-Eye for more than 5 years. So, his master sells him. During transport across the desolate highlands, he makes good his escape, kills his guards, and marches back to avenge himself on his former owner. In the process, only one survives: the boy who brought his meals. With nowhere to go, the boy takes to following One-Eye.

While wandering aimlessly, One-Eye and Boy happen to encounter a band of Christian Soldiers who are on their way to the Holy Land. Of course, the First Crusade is nearly a century away. There was a Norwegian Crusade (1107 to 1110) which would be just right for this gang. Perhaps this is when the movie really takes place. Anyway, Boy serves as the spokesman for the pair as One-Eye is decidedly mute. The soldiers see that One-Eye is formidable and are unwilling to fight him so instead they recruit him.

The intrepid band sets sail and are immediately lost in a mist. There is much tension during this overly-long sequence, allowing for distrust to develop between the crew and One-Eye. The crew believes the mist is on account of Boy and tries to kill him. One-Eye instead kills the would-be killer and tosses the corpse into the sea. Feel the tension! Feel the distrust! Inexplicably, when they finally encounter land, some of the crew wonders if it is the Holy Land. None of them have the slightest idea of how to navigate the ship? As it is never stated where they started it is hard to guess what route they planned to take. However, it should have been relatively easy to follow the coasts, which is what Vikings commonly did, so these guys are just stupid. So, where are they? It turns out that they are in what will one day be called Delaware.

The movie ends with a whimper. The crew dies bit by bit, mostly through infighting though occasionally from arrows fired from unseen archers. Despite the deterioration, the leader of the soldiers announces his intention to claim this foreign land and Christianize its people. The crew, those few who are left, descends into madness. At last, only One-Eye and Boy are left as they try to find the ocean. In the final scene, the natives reveal themselves. One-Eye drops his weapons, walks among them, and closes his eye; the natives commence to beat him to death. Boy is left unharmed, standing on the Atlantic coast. Roll credits.

The movie has almost no dialogue. The main character never speaks a word and his motives are inscrutable. There was a point in the film where I thought One-Eye would be Odin (who notably has only one eye). Here might be a tale of the former Ruler of the Norse Gods fallen from his greatness with the coming of Christianity, reduced to slavery, but now free, wreaking havoc among the Christian Crusaders. No, nothing so interesting as that; he's just some one-eyed mute who happens to be an awesome warrior. The mood is oppressive, the pace plodding, and the plot pointless. The dull parts - which constitute the majority of the movie - are punctuated with gory violence. There are numerous flashbacks and flash-forwards, which prove more disorienting than helpful. Apparently, the director was inspired by some rune stones that were found in Delaware and this is his tale of how they got there. Oh. It all makes sense now. So, yet again we have a Viking movie that sucks. Sigh.

The Secret of Kells

Brendan is a young monk living in the walled abbey of Kells in Ireland. His uncle, Cellach (Brendan Gleeson), is the abbot. Cellach, aware of the encroaching Northmen (Vikings), has put all effort into building walls. Brendan's heart is not in it. An imaginative boy, his thoughts are a jumble of intricate designs, strange beasts, and colorful vistas. His poorly contained imagination is set free by the arrival of Aidan of Iona, a famed illuminator. Aidan is the caretaker of the Book of Iona, a book so marvelously illuminated that it is said a sinner would be struck blind by gazing upon its pages.

Aiden's eyesight is now weak and his hands unsteady; he cannot complete the great book and, unbeknownst to Brendan, chooses the youth as the one to complete the book. Brendan thus goes on a quest into the forest, beyond the safety of Cellach's walls, to acquire the ingredients for ink. There he meets a forest fairy, Aisling. It is hard to determine what exactly she is. She is extremely old though has the look of a prepubescent girl with long white hair. She speaks to animals and has the ability to transform into a wolf. She is very strong and has magical abilities that are unlocked through song.

The story is interesting though a bit clunky. It would have been better had the movie been somewhat longer. Of course, the defining part of the movie is its look. Much of the animation and illustration is based on the Book of Kells, a medieval reproduction of the Gospels. Many of the designs seen in the movie are lifted from the book.

Fun and worth watching.

Erik the Viking

Here is one of the great Viking movies. It is strange that a comedy should do a better job with Vikings than most of the 'serious' films I have seen on the era.

Erik (Tim Robbins) is a conflicted Viking. He understands the need for looting and pillaging but has been unable to get into the spirit of raping. On his latest raid, he meets a girl who gets him to question the looting and pillaging too. Back in Ravensfjord, he consults with the wise woman, Freya (Eartha Kitt). It is the Age of Ragnarok and the fighting will continue until the world is destroyed unless the gods are awakened to call off Fenrir the Wolf. Wow, that's some actual Norse Mythology, not some made up nonsense. Cool. So, Erik and his comical band of Vikings set out to find the land of Hybrazil, recover the Horn Resounding, and awaken the gods to end the Age of Ragnarok.

Written and directed by Terry Jones of Monty Python, you know to expect some tongue-in-cheek silliness. Terry stars as the goofy King Arnulf and John Cleese is the villainous Halfdan the Black. The Gods, when finally we meet them, are played by children, which is strangely appropriate.

This wouldn't be an appropriate review if I didn't lodge a few historical complaints. Vikings didn't use double-headed axes. Though a Viking preferred a sword, axes were cheaper. If a warrior could afford a double-edged weapon, he'd buy a sword. Viking longships were not equipped with opening jaws that crunched other ships. Nor did they have harpoons that could be used to reel an enemy ship into those jaws.

The movie is lots of fun. It is entertaining to compare the Vikings of this movie to those of Pathfinder.

 

It looks like my recent viewing of How to Train Your Dragon got me interested in seeing this film again.  There are lots of funny bits and surprising stars.  I particularly enjoyed the repartee between Sven the Berserk and his father.  The seating arrangement on the longship was hilarious.  That Mickey Rooney plays a Viking is too funny.  Samantha Bond has a small but defining role; she went on to become a great Miss Moneypenny for Pierce Brosnan's James Bond and, more recently, Lady Rosamund Painswick in Downton Abbey.

How to Train Your Dragon

Here is a computer-animated movie. Berk is home to a band of Vikings but the island is constantly beset by dragons. Thus, it is of little surprise that the Vikings of Berk are particularly skilled at fighting dragons.

Our hero is a hapless Viking lad named Hiccup. He has attributes better suited to a tinker gnome from Krynn, only his inventions work fairly well. He desperately wants to slay a dragon but, being puny and weak, is always left in safety during dragon raids. However, on one raid, he hurries out with one of his inventions to prove he too can be a dragon slayer. Though he shoots a dragon out of the sky with his netflinger, no one believes him. Thus, he finds the entangled dragon which he is unable to kill, so he adopts him.  Thus begins the friendship of Hiccup the Viking and Toothless the Dragon. It is great fun to see - in 3D - Hiccup and his dragon soaring through the sky.

As with most Viking movies, there are problems. First, the names. Hiccup? Snotlout? Fishlegs? Well, this is based on a kids book so the names can be forgiven. Then there is the Scottish accents. These are Scottish Vikings. The ships and shields are good but the siege engines are out of place. But these are just nitpicky things that really don't detract from the movie, even with a stickler like me.

Highly recommended.

 

I saw this in April 2010.  The cast included the Gerard Butler (Hiccup's father, Stoick), Jonah Hill (Snotlout), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Fishlegs), Kristen Wiig (Ruffnut), and David Tennant (Spitelout).  Though not as well-known as his co-stars, Jay Baruchel (Hiccup) certainly holds his own and proves to be a very effective dorky nerd as epic hero.  The movie had a sequel, the cleverly named How to Train Your Dragon 2, and has a third in production.