A Lord of the Ring kind of tale with historical background

Rating: Null/10 (21 January 2003)

A nice surprise to find a story we all heard of in school so well done on the screen!
In school we read about the Arab who encountered Vikings far away from their homeland, and the film follows his description thoroughly (beautiful but dirty people). After that the film is fantasy, despite some mythological base.
Clothing and settings are more of the modern Icelandic Viking film style than of the old Hollywood one, which is very good (although houses and clothes are a bit fanciful, but at least there are no Viking helmets with horns). They have tried to make Viking behaviour believable and have managed all right there, if you have read Nordic sagas.
In our country we prefer to hear people talk the language they are supposed to speak on the screen, but in a Hollywood production like this we can here at least hear Nordic languages spoken for a time.
I particularly like the way the film showed how the Arab (Banderas) learns the Nordic language.
As a whole: an alright adventure story with a good ancient atmosphere.