An ‘intense and immersive’ period drama following Vikings has quietly been added to Netflix.
Hitting screens in 2022, The Northman was directed by Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse, Nosferatu).
It was based on the legend of Amleth from Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus and followed a Viking prince who ‘sets out on a quest to avenge the murder of his father at the hands of his uncle’.
Alexander Skarsgård played Amleth, while Nicole Kidman played his mother Queen Gudrún and Claes Bang was his uncle Fjölnir the Brotherless.
The movie also starred Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Björk, and Willem Dafoe.
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In its review, iNews wrote: ‘Robert Eggers’s rousing new film has all the ingredients you’d anticipate in any self-respecting Nordic epic.’
Aidan Monaghan/ Focus Features via AP)
‘Filled with stunning cinematography, the film is an intense, immersive, sometimes surreal, descent into an otherworldly milieu of folkloric horror and medieval barbarism,’ Tampa Bay Newspapers wrote.
‘Violent and powerful from start to finish, The Northman tells an epic, period accurate Viking tale that easily immerses its audience throughout the entire run-time,’ Film Focus Online added.
Fans also called it ‘visually spectacular, brutal and superbly written’ and a ‘masterpiece’.
Although it was critically acclaimed the movie struggled at the box office. Made on a budget of $70-$90 million, it grossed $69.9 million (£53 million) globally.
However, its later success on VOD and home media helped it claw back its losses at the cinema.
This week the movie was added to Netflix, where fans and new viewers can now dive right in to the tale.
Speaking to The Independent at the time of its release, Eggers spoke about once being ‘allergic’ to Vikings – being put off by the ‘machoism and white supremacists misappropriating Norse mythology’.
But when visiting Iceland in 2016, he was taken aback.
‘It was unlike anything else I’d seen. The grandeur, the ancientness, the otherworldliness…it was the most powerful experience ever. And this is awfully embarrassing to say, but I felt like the Norse gods were really there.’
The Northman is streaming on Netflix and Channel 4.
A version of this article was originally published on March 19, 2025.
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