The Northman - Tumblr Posts
"Ride with me, Daughters of the North Wind!
Carry me and mine to the shores of my children’s forebears.
There I’ll grow you a forest of birch, fathomless branches to dance your tempest with, raptured by your most righteous breath!"
Olga's pleading to the Valkyries, The Northman (2022), dir. Robert Eggers.
ROMANCEGIFS 10K FOLLOWERS CELEBRATION → FAVORITE MOVIE COUPLE PER MEMBER AMLETH & OLGA from THE NORTHMAN (2022) - Meg (@redbelles)
My fate brought me to Iceland to carry out my pledge of vengeance. But my fate did not ready me for finding you. I thought I must always shield my heart in stone. I could not think I would open it to a Northman. You sacrificed yourself that I could flee. And you came back for me.
The Northmen thoughts
something about The Northman that people are missing is that it's not about who is right or wrong, who is the hero or isn't. is toxic masculinity the problem? is it the hubris of men? none of it matters because that's not what the movie is about, though that's a valid lense of analysis we can adopt.
(spoilers underneath)
The Northman is not about what should happen, it's about what ought to happen. what has to be for a greater good that is not the choice of anyone but The Nornes themselves. The Nornes spin and weave everyone's destiny, and Amleth finds himself tied in their thread. It is not his choice, and he doesn't fully understand the thread's direction until Olga is with child, and still he does not fight it.
he does not fight destiny, he does not fight the Nornes, he complies with it because trying to escape throws him right back into it.
This is a recurring theme in the Sagas; destiny has to be fulfilled. it's there and it won't leave you, it might hide in the corner but that doesn't mean it's leaving you, it's waiting for the right time to show itself.
In the Volsunga saga Sigmund lived in peace for a long time after avenging Sinfjötli, but then his lands are attacked and he fights Odin himself [in disguise], who destroys his sword in shards, shards that will be passed onto Sigurd, his son. His fate was to die, so his son could have his sword's shards and create from them a new weapon that will then slay the dragon Fafnir.
The individual destiny fulfills two goals, essentially:
healing or bettering your ancestor's line.
making sure you pave the path for the next generation.
In The Northman, at the end, his destiny is fulfilled because he made sure his lineage could continue, whilst also ending the cycle of violence that was plaguing his bloodline. What does that make him? right? wrong?
the movie is not trying to make a moral point, nor it's trying to tell you who to side with, though it chooses to tell Amleth's story. all the movie is doing is adapting an epic story in a visual format, a work of translation from written to visual form. it presents to you in a straightforward way Amleth's story, a story that is written exactly like it would have been told by the skalds of his time with a focus in the themes relevant to his time.
as this post says this is not a story for us, it does not live in our world and while we are tempted to drag it here it will never fit.