Turned out quite impressive in the end

Rating: 8/10 (4 May 2004)

*Very few spoilers* Yep, that's true. The first thing that impressed me a lot was the beginning, because between the Tartar attack to when the oracle speaks to the prince or new king, the movie does actually follow an eye witness account from 922AD. In that year Ibn Fadlan had come from Baghdad with a 5000 men strong delegation to visit a place nearby. That they met the Vikings at the Volga river was luck, but there he actually witnessed the burial of a Viking king. When he came home he wrote down his experience. So the movie comes with quite some impressive fact at the beginning. The burial was of course not shown in quite so much detail as Ibn Fadlans eye witness account, but it was good enough. It was rather funny to see the washing bowl thing (the bowl they spat in and washed their faces in later) depicted in the movie too! As far as I understand the rest is rather fabricated with a bit of myth woven into the story.
The acting was good and I liked the Vikings language, it sounded rather genuinely old. They could have prolonged the period in which Ahmed learned the language; it would have been a tad more realistic. Also did I see surprisingly few axes in the movie... if any? As far as I know did the Vikings like axes quite a lot! There were a few more things, like where did the enemy get all those horses from and also, why did THE WOMAN have a tropical snake around her neck (at least it looked like that) but I guess like with most more fictitious movies you shouldn't take everything too seriously.
I found the first fighting scene in the village to be an ounce lame, but the later fight (the last stand) was just the more powerful and gripping. I'm normally not so very easily moved but it was actually quite touching and truly heroic.
So, for whatever slightly bad things, there is enough good to go around so that the movie reaches a very nice ending!
I think I actually gave it a quite so deserved 8/10