10 Robert Eggers’ The Northman: Imagining and Marketing Vikings in Popular (Anglo-American) Culture

Viking seems to be a word … that has expanded and developed to fill a gap, to give a name to a phenomenon which previously had no name but needed one. Viking medievalism has been a topic of popular interest ever since Sir Walter Scott's The Pirate , a novel published in 1822 and set on Shetland. Scott's novel does not mention the word ‘viking’, but it does distinguish between the savage ‘Bersarkars’, ‘who used to run like madmen on swords’, and the noble war-leaders, ancestors of the Shetlanders, ‘the old Norsemen, who swept sea and haven with their victorious galleys, established colonies, conquered countries, and took the name of Sea-Kings’; this distinction between the good and bad Viking is intrinsic to later medievalist imaginings. In the nineteenth century, the most popular and best-known Icelandic saga was the late romantic Viking tale of Fridtjofr: Fridtjofs saga . Adapted in poetic form as Fritjofs saga by the Swedish bishop Esias Tegner in 1825, the saga relates the history of the noble Viking and his beloved Ingibjorg, his daring sea-voyages and his implacable enemies and quickly became very popular in both Germany and England. George Stephens translated it into English in 1839; this was, in fact, the first complete translation of an Old Norse saga into English. Fritjofs saga was an early example of transmedia medievalism and medievalism–tourism; set in the scenic Sognefjord, the story was instrumental in the establishment of the Norwegian tourist industry.