I'm liking the suggestions so far. I second the "no women in fur bikinis" rule. Viking women were pretty darn hot already, or so I've read.... ;)

I think you also need a good hall-burning somewhere in there, along with a sea-battle against two Viking jarls and their berserkrs and wolfskins in the mist!

I am certainly not against an epic story that is not completely historical, but I do hope that it at least "feels" real. As someone who studies the language and poetry of these times, putting in some kennings as was suggested above would greatly contribute to this (for me at least). Also, I'm sure you are already going to do this, but having accurate swords and other weapons and armour helps greatly. The story can be as epic, mythic, or historical as you want, and as long as it has a grounding in something that is truly "Viking," I would be quite pleased. If you haven't read Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Series, I would at least pick up the first book. His series isn't completely historical either, but I just love his portrayal of a variety of Vikings and Viking themes, some stereotypical and some not, and most very exaggerated and entertaining. :-) As a big fan of literature and mythology, I am certainly not against some good exaggeration in a tale, as long as everything is done well! There is so much crap out there about the Vikings, that it will be refreshing to see something even a tiny bit more "correct" (I'll say that rather than "accurate") available to the public.

Edited to add:

On the mythic side of things, I assume you're probably already familiar with the Eddas, but just in case, I would pick those up and at least be familiar with them. Some good retellings of Norse Mythology stories can be found in Kevin Crossly-Holland's "The Norse Myths." These are very entertaining and enjoyable to read!

As for the sagas, I don't think you need to read every single one all the way through to be inspired. However, reading maybe just one, or part of one, might be a good idea. The dialogue in the sagas can be really dry and funny. I like the first part of Egil's saga, especially the description of his exploits during his Viking years. Just a suggestion, as you might have already read it. :)


I am literally just about to head out to my Old Norse class in a few minutes, so maybe when I get back I'll have a few more specific suggestions for you. :D

Hi Anders,
Haven't come across the comic version of Red Orm, but again a bit OT, I do have in my Library an interesting comic, Dark Horse publishers, that is an 'Alien' / Viking tie in! Good artwork, quite accurate vikings, armour and weponary. Quite cool, I kept it because some of the artwork reminded me of friends...er no, not the Alien.

best

Dave

Things I'd like to see:
-Short intence fights rather than the long drawn out pesh that you usually see in movies.
-Norse laws in practise (for instance a good hanging).
-Blood feuds between families.
-Sea battles. After all, vikings are known for their expertise at sea.
-Dramatical landskapes. It's the best type of commercial for Skandinavia :D

Please avoid modern sentiments (like Michael mentioned) and avoid modern political statements etc. I hate it when people in period costumes preach about equality between sexes, races and social layers. That belongs to the 21st century, not the viking age.

Sounds like an interesting and fun project, Anders!

Cheers,
Henrik

Anders,

Some kennings..
Shield:The Sun of Battle, The Board of Victory, The Sun of the Sea Kings, The Hal l-roof of Odin, The Battle Shelterer, The Burgh of Swords

Spear; Serpent of Blood, The Flying Dragon of the Fight, The Sounding Fish of the Armour, The Snake of the Corpse

Sword; Odin's flame, The Ice of Battle, Serpent of the Wound, Dog of the Helmet, Battle-Snake, Battle-Fire, Fire of the Shields, Torch of the Blood, Snake of the Byrnie, Tounge of the Scabbard, Widow-Maker, The Byrnie's Fear

Arrow: Corpse-Twig, War-Sleet, Hail of Battle, The Swift-Flyer,

Axe: Wound's Wolf, Fiend of the Shield, Battle-Witch,

Byrnie: Odin's-Webb, Net of Spears, War-Net

best
Dave
.

Ok, I have another addition to your suggested reading list. Sorry to overwhelm you, but I was reminded of this particular saga today during one of my seminars. You must, at some point, read the Eyrbyggja Saga, or at least a summary of it. Its set in Norway and Iceland, and has some of the most absurdly humorous beginnings to a feud I've ever read, and its just full of weird and wonderful happenings. If you're looking for a basis for adding supernatural events and figures into a Viking story, this is the reference. The saga has everything: Vikings, both evil and noble and in-between, Berserkrs, Thor-worshipping priest, feuds, battles, ghosts, undead Viking-zombies.....its so great. :D

So, anyway, since it fits the theme of the thread I can reveal that I saw Beowulf (the CGI movie) today. I liked it a lot more then I thought I would; It had a nice running theme throughout the whole story and the changes they made to it ended up actually adding to the original legend rather then simply diverting from it.

(Also, I could understand some of Grendel's funny Germanic-Scandinavian language, which was a nice touch.)

The Uncanny Valley ran rampant, though, and some of the costumes (specifically the armor of the warriors) sort of left me sort of wondering.

Shamsi Modarai wrote:

Ok, I have another addition to your suggested reading list. Sorry to overwhelm you, but I was reminded of this particular saga today during one of my seminars. You must, at some point, read the Eyrbyggja Saga, or at least a summary of it. Its set in Norway and Iceland, and has some of the most absurdly humorous beginnings to a feud I've ever read, and its just full of weird and wonderful happenings. If you're looking for a basis for adding supernatural events and figures into a Viking story, this is the reference. The saga has everything: Vikings, both evil and noble and in-between, Berserkrs, Thor-worshipping priest, feuds, battles, ghosts, undead Viking-zombies.....its so great. :D

Well, damn. :surprised:

You had me at "weird and wonderful happenings" but "undead viking-zombies" really nailed it. :lol:

Hope this works:

Vikings travel somewhere and find an island, they explore it and they find a cavern with some treasure. They continue to explore the cave, when a sudden earthquake seal them inside the cavern.
So, they continue their journey, only to find some specters who want to kill our vikings, soon they realize that they stepped into one of 7 Hades´ entrances (Or Hel, to be more accurate)

So Will our vikings be brave enough to escape from the terrible jaws of Hel?

And so you can include that they can travel where trolls lie, or the aid of the valkiries after someone prays to Odin or someone else.

I don´t know, its very fantastic, but i hope it helps.

Or, instead of a travel, they are killed in any historical battle and they want to escape from Hel, so, they kick some asses, but when they are going to escape, they are killed, but they were so brave that Odin takes them to Valhala. (I don´t know how accurate this can be compared to Norse religion)


Hope it helps!

(And then your imagination can take your vikings into a fiery battle against Fafnir´s dragon soul or something like that)

Anyway, about modern sentiments, its not bad at all, if they are compatible with the warrior´s code, of if the warrior himself thinks different (Like Kikuchiyo in The Seven Samurai)
Remember that there was a viking king who (If i´m not wrong) prohibited the killing of children when taking a city.

I have seen Beowolf´s new version, and i think that himself is a jackass, poor Grendel, he only wanted to sleep at night and that bunch of jerks were at party all night, and he wanted a dad. :(
Anyway, the director is an anti-christian jackass, it seems that the jerk doesn´t know that most warriors in Valhalla are not vikings but templars, hospitallers, turks, etc...

:) Hi Anders, Firstly I agree with Michael Ekelmanns first comment on inspirational subject matter for your planned work.
Secondly I agree with Ryan Moody about what a good read the Tim Severin "Viking" trilogy is. I also was going to suggest other reading till I read my fellow viking, Dave Huggins' comment. However, I once asked Bernard Cornwell if he had read the Tim Severin books and he replied quite sensibly, that it would detrimentally effect his own creative thought process whilst engaged in writing his own work, not wanting to sub- conciously plagiarise other authors. I agree fully with his logic on this. I suppose it all depends on your own ability to remain detached from a story whilst still enjoying it, and not unwittingly 'recycling' narrative devices, characters, settings etc.
Good luck with that!
My own personal suggestion for a story is perhaps the rather larger than life character of Eric Bloodaxe set in the great city of Jorvik, (you could even call it 'The Last Viking' ). Like Tim Severins stories are fictional, as noted earlier in this thread by Ryan Moody, they are however, based on various historically 'accurate' (or at least accepted) events, locations, characters,etc. For example; settling on Vinland, Grettirs saga, the battle of Clontarf, the Varangian Guard, Miklagard, Jorvik,the battle of Stamford Bridge, Hastings, Duke William of Normandy, and of Course Harry's Godwinson and Hardrada.
I would also agree with adding a 'mystical' element to the story, but , may I suggest that it be in a more abstract fashion than literal. Perhaps better to see the vikings perception of the doings of Thor, Odin, Njord etc. Rather than 'us' the reader actually meeting Thor, Odin etc in the story as flesh and blood. The mere suggestion of these magical happenings is, in my opinion more, powerful than the potential 'anti climax' of a face to face meeting.
Anyway, I wish you the best in your creative venture,
May the Old Gods guide your hand in Your Skaldic voyage.
cheers, Brussi Tjordulf, Jorvik Vikingr.

I think that Norse and Hindu Religion are excellent sources for epic stories. (Just remember Rama´s journey against Ravana, the demon who kidnapped his wife Sita)


Quote:
Anyway, about modern sentiments, its not bad at all, if they are compatible with the warrior´s code, of if the warrior himself thinks different (Like Kikuchiyo in The Seven Samurai)
Remember that there was a viking king who (If i´m not wrong) prohibited the killing of children when taking a city.

Quote:

Well, there's modern sentiments, and then there's common sense. The vikings weren't a bunch of raving, blood-thirsty maniacs; they were just a people living in a world were violence was very common and where you needed a certain amount of strenght, cunning and luck to get by. Quote: I have seen Beowolf´s new version, and i think that himself is a jackass, poor Grendel, he only wanted to sleep at night and that bunch of jerks were at party all night, and he wanted a dad. Well, not much difference from the original there. And I rather liked how Beowulf was a kind of a prideful, pompous braggart and occasional liar. For all his strenght and power, he was still a very flawed man, which was sort of what the story was all about in the end.

Well, surely Vikings were not like Pathfinder´s ones, but bloodthirsty maniacs are everywere, just remember the crusaders. But the bunch of rotten crusaders doesn´t mean that other crusaders (Whose names were forgotten) were people with good an honest feelings, or who thought tthat the crusade was not the correct method to go heaven.
That should not discard the character who could be the one who is very respectful of his warrior code, and or the character who doesn´t give a damn for that code and do whatever he wants.

Well, I'm starting to get a decent idea of what I want now, but the story has yet to take an identifiable shape.

One thing I find myself lacking is proper bad guys. Does anyone here know of any particularly nasty tribe or people the vikings might have fought at some point?

Mikko Kuusirati wrote:

Ah, but in this particular case the actual makers did get "what kind of people the vikings actually were" quite well, indeed. The problem with The 13th Warrior is some bad choices in props and costuming imposed on the makers by the people who provided the money - mere trappings, which I at least find easy enough to ignore (even if I do complain about it a lot). :) That the producers then tacked on some flawed decoration doesn't make it a bad movie, only an imperfect one.

Yeah, but that's sort of my point. It doesn't matter what they got wrong, or why. They still got it wrong!

And honestly, we're not talking about some minor inaccuracies here, but the entire production design. And we shouldn't have to settle for that just because they happened to get the script right.

Quote:

What I'm trying to say is, sure some of the armour is downright ridiculous (incorporating pieces from both over a thousand years in the past as well as five hundred years in the future), but the writing is just right, full of the pragmatic, matter-of-fact attitude and laconic wit characteristic of the classic Norse heroes. "I am not a warrior!" "Very soon you will be."

Well, I do have to admit that Herger the Joyous was all kinds of awesome. ;)

But, well, it's all the little things, you know? Like how King Hrothgar (Sven Wolter. yay!) held court in a run-down hall in what seemed to be the middle of a forest. What about agriculture? What about sea accessibility?

Rodolfo Martínez wrote:

There was a french version of Joan of Arc (I think the director was called Luc Beson), and despite of suffering of 150 years later armours, it was a good movie. Of course that you can think that the movie can be more enjoyable if the characters are accurate, (and i think so), but most people (Who doesn´t know about swords, armours, etc) will be pleased of just seeing gore, blood, very long epic battles etc...

Well, Luc Besson is French, but the movie you are thinking about (The Messenger) was an American production.

I remember reading about that; apparently some thought the portrayal of Joan of Arc in the movie was much too serious. As I recall, many scholars agree that in reality, the girl seems to have had quite a good sense if humor. ;)

Quote:

Anyway, for the viking epic story, you can add descriptions of rheir armours, shields, swords, axes, etc... just to not let the imagination trensform your vikings into a conquistador/Nazgul rider/Cuirassier hybrid :D

Considering that what I'm planning is a graphic novel (otherwise known as a "comic book") that shouldn't be much of a problem. :p

My current aim on the design front is "highly stylized, yet based on historical examples."

Ok, for the bad guy, what do you think about this Guy?

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