As I sit, anticipating Robert Eggers’ new version of Nosferatu, it felt the right time to revisit his earlier films. I am a huge fan of The VVitch and The Lighthouse and I really did enjoy the Northman but had only watched it the one time at the cinema.
Rewatching the 2022 film I noticed (remembered more so) that within the story of Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård, True Blood), whose father King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke, Daybreakers) is murdered by his Uncle Fjölnir the Brotherless (Claes Bang, Dracula), there is a vampire genre trope. Having escaped from his Uncle, he grows to be a berserker and then discovers that his Uncle, who has lost his stolen kingdom, is in Iceland.
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| draugr |
Infiltrating as a slave, he aims to avenge his father and rescue his mother (Nicole Kidman) and is directed by a he-witch (Ingvar Sigurdsson) to a specific sword in a barrow. That sword is named as Draugr. Of course “the typical Scandinavian revenant, at least in the medieval period, was the reanimated corpse, or draugr, of a deceased individual” (Keyworth, 2007, p. 28). There might be some debate to their vampire nature (though not that they are restless, troublesome corpses). They are mentioned in detail within Bane’s Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology and, more classically, in the 1886 edition of Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, by Sabine Baring-Gould, there was reference to vampires (rather than use the word draugr) within the saga of Grettir. The draugr is often guarding a treasure or seeks to gain revenge and in this we see both the guarding of treasure and the desire for revenge.
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| The Mound Dweller |
The guarding of treasure in this is by the Mound Dweller, an undead giant who holds the sword and who Amleth has to fight to gain it (though the fight may be hallucinatory as, on being defeated, the Mound Dweller reappears in his seat. It needs mentioning, however, that the film has a lot of Norse mysticism layered into it). The Mound Dweller is defeated by being paralysed by moonlight, allowing Amleth to behead him. The sword itself is, of course, the actual draugr (with the name being said to mean undead) but is used by Amleth for revenge fulfilling one of the purposes of a draugr. The sword can only be drawn at night or at the Gates of Hel and will not be drawn from its sheath during the day – giving it a curiously vampiric nature by having it hidden from the sun.
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| Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth |
The story of the sword suggests that it is immortal (it never dulls) and the blade had to be quenched in human blood, in fact Amleth says that he “will enjoy feeding Draugr… …in everlasting night.” So, there are vampiric tropes around the blade and that, for me, makes the film of genre interest.
The imdb page is here.
On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US
On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK
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