What Viking Game Amleth Plays In The Northman
Warning: this article contains spoilers for The Northman.
Amleth is forced to play a bizarre and brutal sport in The Northman, and there's a real history behind the game. The Northman is a Viking epic from visionary director Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse) with a stellar cast that includes Alexander Skarsgård, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, Willem Dafoe, and Ethan Hawke. Throughout his filmography, Robert Eggers crafts his stories with meticulous historical detail to immerse the audience within the worlds he creates — the game played in The Northman is one such detail.
In the movie, while Amleth poses as a slave on his uncle Fjölnir's farm, he is coerced into competing in a ball game. The game consists of two teams of five players, each player with their own stick. The sticks are used to combat opposing players and to hit a hardball against the opposition's post. It would appear that the objective is to hit the ball against the opposition's post until one team reaches a winning score or time runs out. In The Northman, however, the game Alexander Skarsgård's character plays does not reach a defined conclusion as Fjölnir's youngest son interrupts to get the ball and is hit by Thorfinnr (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson of Game of Thrones.) The game stops and Amleth comes to the rescue of the boy, beating Thorfinnr to a pulp.
Related: Why The Northman's Reviews Are So Positive
Like so many other aspects of Eggers' films, the sport is based on historical evidence and is called knattleikr (which translates to "ball-game"). Originally played by the Vikings of Iceland, the ball game was referenced in numerous Icelandic sagas, such as the Grettis and Eglis sagas. Eggers and his co-writer, the Icelandic poet and novelist, Sjón,
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