4 Lgberg-Heimskringla Friday 2 June 2000

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The White Viking

Thomas Martin
BEDFORD, NY

-Hrafn Gunnlaugsson at his best

had been an .Icelander living today, he would perhaps I have created a masterpiece like Hrafn Gunniaugsson's 1991 film The White Viking ("Hvti Vkingurinn"). Actor and director Orson Welles, when asked who had been his major inspiration, once replied smartly, "I learned everything I know from the three masters: John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford." Certainly when it comes to films on the Vikings, Hrafn Gunnlaugsson is a master in his own right, capturing for the genre the excellence that his idol Ford had for the American western. Like the American, Gunnlaugsson is obviously in love with his landscapes. Few films have ever captured the magic of the Icelandic terrain with such loving eyes as his have, and nowhere is this better displayed than in his epic, The White Viking. The film, a collaboration of contributors and artists from all the five Nordic nations, opens in the fjords of western Norway in the year 999. As if by magic the viewer is immediately back in a medieval world of adventure, intrigue, and romance. The storyline is based on a screenplay that Swedish Dramatic Institute graduate Gunniaugsson wrote and painstakingly brought to life. Gunnlaugsson uses a tried and true recipe that is a real crowd-pleaser, and again, not far removed from his western's role model Ford. Set in a time of intense political and social change, two attractive teenagers fall in love and are predictably and violently isolated by a despotic and power-hungry King Olaf Tryggvason (played by Icelander Egill lafsson). Askur, the shining star of the film, is played by a seventeen-year-old Gotti Sigurarson, handsome, bold, and determined to return from his forced

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Left: Egill lafsson as King OlafTryggvason missionary journey to his natal land, Iceland. He must successfully bring an official proclamation of Christian conversion of his people to free his beautiful young bride, Embla, from the clutches of the greedy Norwegian king who has himself fallen for the young woman. The story is played out in both Norway and Iceland, in some of the most beautiful scenery since Rogers and Hammerstein's Sound ofMusic, but be warned, the film does contain some graphic violence. And the heathen themes of the film seem to gently underscore a romantic illusion that in the days before Christianity, Icelanders were a peaceful lot. Occasional breaches in accuracy reveal this underlying sentiment. For instance, Thorgeir (Helgi Sklason), the illustrious lawspeaker, is portrayed as both literate and interested in reading Irish law books, yet he is pagan. Gunnlaugsson fails to inform his audiences that it was only with Christianity that reading, books, and written laws come to Iceland. Apart from this and a few overtly anti-Christian offences, Gunnlaugsson is given an absolution. Emba, the stoic heroine of the film is portrayed by Mara Bonnevie, a sixteen-year-old Norwegian who earns

in The White Viking. Right: director Hrafn Gunnlaugsson.

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your respect as a powerful young actress. Her ardent loyalty to the pagan satr help convey the deep division that must have plagued Norse society during the period known to scholars as the "Transition Era," when the two belief systems were held by large numbers of people. The plot deals primarily with several struggles simultaneously. The drive on the part of Norway's King Olaf to extend his political might to include all of Norway and the Viking West along with Iceland. The next struggle is the superficial attempt on the part of Olaf to convert the Norse people to Christianity. Here Gunnlaugsson is correct in showing the political motivation that lay at the bottom of Olaf's empire building masked as evangelization. The film follows the basic storyline one can interpolate by combining the Old Icelandic source materials from Snorri's Heimskringla, Kristnisaga, Njla, and Saga of Olaf Tryggvason among other sources. At times there is a total departure from the Old Icelandic written materials and it is here often that we see Gunnlaugsson's creative genius at work. Olaf, like all good villains, is accompanied by his loyal but perverse sidekick, the Saxon cleric named Thangbrand. Thangbrand, Olaf's chaplain, who the sources tell us kept a pretty young Irish concubine, was no saint, having killed a member of a prominent European court for merely gazing on his fair Colleen with too much lust in his eye. In the film we meet an equally strange yet fictional Thangbrand who appears a self-appointed bishop, played by Swedish stage actor Tomas Norstrom. This fellow is accompanied by no young maiden but seems more interested in sadomasochistic rituals with a local nun. This unnecessary subplot of the film is a bit tawdry, smacks of anti-Catholicism, and adds nothing to the plot, besides being completely

fictitious. This fly in the soup is thankfully not enough to spoil an otherwise brilliant main course. Somewhat predictably our two young lovers, Askur and Embla, are reunited in the end. This film is a delight from the very opening and in all of its 119 minutes will have your heart racing. While it is by no means historically accurate, it does give a viewer one man's interpretation of what could have happened one thousand years ago this June when Icelanders officially accepted Christianity. Because of its violence and occasional explcit bedroom scenes it is not a film for youngsters. It is on the other hand unequivocally the most awesome and stirring film made for mature audiences on the Viking Age. The film has won several awards and is now available in NTSC video format with English subtitles. Copies can be obtained by - contacting Filmeffekt in Oslo (phone 47-2-690378) or Hrafn Gunnlaugsson's sales office in Reykjavk (phone 354-5881-706) for approximately 4990 ISK. The fact that Kalle Jlusson, the costume designer, was an Icelander using only indigenous materials and that all the dialogue is in Icelandic, the closest thing to Old Norse, gives viewers an unparalleled experience. Don't be surprised if you find yourself watching this film over and over again. Hvti Vkingurinn is to Viking films what John Ford's The Searchers is to westerns, and no matter how many imitators may come along, it is destined to be both a classic and a standard. Thomas J. Martin is a doctoral student in Viking Studies. He worked for Time Magazines, Inc. as a journalist for five years and was also a contributing editor to Norway Times for several years. Contact: P.O. BOX 780, Bedford, New York, 10506, USA, Telephone: (914) 244-1945

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