If you mix
SF and Vikings, surely you can't go wrong?
Outlander
I'd really like to know how the writers came up with this one (cough-Beowulf-cough, cough-Beer-cough) but if you've missed the setup of it, it's like this. In 704 AD alien human Kainan crashes with his starship on Earth, in the Trondheim Fjord area. Coming along with Kainan is evil dragon-like alien Moorwen, but Kainan of course after using his Advanced Technology to download Old Norse to his brain proceeds to lose his gun and is captured by brave Viking tribe led by aging king John Hurt, sorry, Hrothgar or whatever name Vikings in Hollywood always have. These Vikings worry abour Rus and Franks and have a Christian Missionary among them, and according to the Rule I believe onyxrising once mentioned there is of course a Scottish-accented one but the only one seemingly speaking anything Norse-sounding is Kainan before he's meeting the Vikings. Plus, Trondheim doesn't look like it does, and that's because this is another Canadian Viking movie! Oh no! It does look slightly less ridiculous than the British-Columbia ones, because this is shot in Nova Scotia. (Don't ask me why the miserable Pathfinder which was set in Nova Scotia or so was shot in British Columbia). Anyway, Vikings are the only really tough and honorable culture in Earth's history, the only ones who actually are capable of fighting dragons, alien or not, without being sissies, so it is lucky Kainan crashed among them. He becomes their friend after a while and in love with the tough Viking princess, and together they try to kill Moorwen using boiling oil and swords fashioned of spaceship scrap metal.
Now, this might sound like a ridiculously bad movie, but given the general state of quality of Viking movies and the impressively funny setup in this one I'd say that it isn't quite as bad as it could be. Compared to Pathfinder this is an outright gem. Of course it isn't a good movie but between stupid accents, lava fields (in Trondheim?), dubious takes on Viking history and so on it does have some fairly brain-dead entertainment value. Seriously, you have Anglo-Celto vikings led by the guy who had the lead in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ hunting an alien dragon with odd weapons made from a sunken interstellar ship. And Ron Perlman wears war paint. It is hilarious, if you're in the right mood. It doesn't even have to try to be intentionally funny, it is funny anyway.
Of course, I'm confident there is little way non-Scandos can make a good Viking movie and I fear to read non-Scando Viking fiction for the same reason. So until Nordic film industry gets a truckload of cash...
Outlander
I'd really like to know how the writers came up with this one (cough-Beowulf-cough, cough-Beer-cough) but if you've missed the setup of it, it's like this. In 704 AD alien human Kainan crashes with his starship on Earth, in the Trondheim Fjord area. Coming along with Kainan is evil dragon-like alien Moorwen, but Kainan of course after using his Advanced Technology to download Old Norse to his brain proceeds to lose his gun and is captured by brave Viking tribe led by aging king John Hurt, sorry, Hrothgar or whatever name Vikings in Hollywood always have. These Vikings worry abour Rus and Franks and have a Christian Missionary among them, and according to the Rule I believe onyxrising once mentioned there is of course a Scottish-accented one but the only one seemingly speaking anything Norse-sounding is Kainan before he's meeting the Vikings. Plus, Trondheim doesn't look like it does, and that's because this is another Canadian Viking movie! Oh no! It does look slightly less ridiculous than the British-Columbia ones, because this is shot in Nova Scotia. (Don't ask me why the miserable Pathfinder which was set in Nova Scotia or so was shot in British Columbia). Anyway, Vikings are the only really tough and honorable culture in Earth's history, the only ones who actually are capable of fighting dragons, alien or not, without being sissies, so it is lucky Kainan crashed among them. He becomes their friend after a while and in love with the tough Viking princess, and together they try to kill Moorwen using boiling oil and swords fashioned of spaceship scrap metal.
Now, this might sound like a ridiculously bad movie, but given the general state of quality of Viking movies and the impressively funny setup in this one I'd say that it isn't quite as bad as it could be. Compared to Pathfinder this is an outright gem. Of course it isn't a good movie but between stupid accents, lava fields (in Trondheim?), dubious takes on Viking history and so on it does have some fairly brain-dead entertainment value. Seriously, you have Anglo-Celto vikings led by the guy who had the lead in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ hunting an alien dragon with odd weapons made from a sunken interstellar ship. And Ron Perlman wears war paint. It is hilarious, if you're in the right mood. It doesn't even have to try to be intentionally funny, it is funny anyway.
Of course, I'm confident there is little way non-Scandos can make a good Viking movie and I fear to read non-Scando Viking fiction for the same reason. So until Nordic film industry gets a truckload of cash...