How we cre­at­ed The Northman’s authen­tic Viking sets

Despite only hav­ing three fea­ture cred­its to his name, direc­tor Robert Eggers has earned a rep­u­ta­tion for being a stick­ler for detail. The lev­el of his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy on show in 2015’s The Witch and 2019’s The Light­house reach­es even greater heights in Eggers’ lat­est film, The North­man, a mud-caked, rain-lashed Viking adven­ture saga of tru­ly epic proportions.

Filmed across Ice­land, Ire­land and North­ern Ire­land in 2020, the shoot was chal­leng­ing to say the least, with adverse weath­er con­di­tions and Covid-19 mak­ing life dif­fi­cult for the crew mem­bers respon­si­ble for build­ing and dress­ing the sets. Here, set dec­o­ra­tor Niamh Coul­ter gives us an exclu­sive insight into The Northman’s pro­duc­tion, shar­ing some of her per­son­al behind-the-scenes photos.

“We went to great lengths to make the sets as authen­tic as pos­si­ble. We built weavers’ cot­tages, a pig­gery, out­hous­es, slave quar­ters, the exte­ri­or of the long­house, the blacksmith’s work­shop – all based on his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences and cleared with our Viking academics.

“This was a huge build of turfed hous­es for a set­tle­ment at Knock Dhu, about 40 min­utes from Belfast. It was orig­i­nal­ly to be shot in mid-March but with lock­down we end­ed up shoot­ing here in late autumn. It was an incred­i­bly chal­leng­ing set – one very steep and windy access road, com­plete­ly remote, and an exist­ing ancient bur­ial ground with a lot of restric­tions on build­ing, dig­ging, plant­i­ng, etc. The weath­er was atro­cious gen­er­al­ly – you need­ed at least two sets of full wet weath­er gear on the worst days. It was bleak.”

“The ani­mals played a huge part in all our exte­ri­or sets. This is Mable, one of our sows, and we had dairy cows, goats, hors­es, chick­ens as well. All the ani­mals had quar­ters adja­cent to set for the dura­tion to min­imise their trav­el and were brought by our incred­i­ble ani­mal han­dler, Ken­ny Gracey, who also over the course of six months trained this bull, Coolie, to pull the cart for the arrival into Hravnsey at the start of the film.”

“This is the boat lay­out for the Viking bur­ial of Fjolnir’s son, with my assis­tant Pan­cho stand­ing in for scale. We built this adja­cent to the farm set, the struc­ture behind was cov­ered in turf by our amaz­ing greens depart­ment who also laid all the turf roofs on the farm set and upkept them through­out lock­down. It was a very dif­fer­ent set in July when we returned to the one we left in March.”

“This is the props mas­ter offer­ing up a posi­tion to mount the hors­es skulls. All our large scale wood­en carv­ings – includ­ing the enor­mous 6’ x 9’ gods from the tem­ple at Hravnsey – were hand carved in India. The lev­el of detail was unbe­liev­able. They were all based on research and con­cept­ed by us, approved by the schol­ars, with the full-size draw­ings then sent to India where a team of carvers worked on them over a peri­od of months. There were times I nev­er thought we would get them all done and shipped in time but the gods were with us in every sense.”

“Again, the chal­lenge here was to make our wood­en struc­tures trans­portive and cre­ate a lived-in envi­ron­ment. We had a tan­nery, a pot­tery, the ​‘store’, bee keep­ers and a pig­gery. There has to be some log­ic applied when dress­ing big sets like this – what their main­stay is, what they trade in, what would they have. We had the idea that the Rus who lived here were trap­pers, we had skins and hides stripped and hanged to be turned into pelts. The stench was absolute­ly authentic.

“Robert [Eggers] want­ed this set to be as real and as grit­ty as pos­si­ble. We went to huge lengths to get the right amount of mud. This became a bit of a theme – the mud, the rain, the dirt. It all adds to the tex­ture of the film, although it makes for hor­ren­dous work­ing con­di­tions. We were ankle-deep for a lot of the ​‘Land of the Rus’ set. It’s the only film I’ve worked on where we con­sis­tent­ly did not want a good weath­er forecast.”

“At this point in the film the Rus vil­lage and the tem­ple have been burned to the ground, so we dressed the altar with all these offer­ings and gave the set a mid­som­mar flo­ral feel based on our research – then we burnt the hell out of it. This set was used for Björk’s scene as the Slav­ic witch.”

“These are before and dur­ing shots from Hravnsey, which we built at Torr Head on the North Antrim Coast. Anoth­er absolute­ly stun­ning loca­tion – anoth­er absolute night­mare to get into or out of. The build was an incred­i­ble feat giv­en the loca­tion. If you were lucky you might see pods of dol­phins in the bay from the bat­tle­ments where young Amleth sees his father return at the start of the film.”

“All the fur­ni­ture was bespoke, made by my car­pen­ters in Belfast and in Poland by some Viking enthu­si­asts who also made all our tents and Viking-carved tent poles. With the cham­ber dress­ing, I had to keep very close­ly to the script and how the scene would play out. When the dress­ing is effec­tive­ly min­i­mal in terms of options, it needs to be absolute­ly right from the off. Every­thing had a pur­pose and was exact­ly right for the peri­od, right down to the pat­terns, the fab­rics, even the motifs in the carvings.

“If the prove­nance and the authen­tic­i­ty of the design was not 100 per cent cor­rect it didn’t make it onto set. It’s quite a chal­leng­ing way to work; nor­mal­ly you have to be very flex­i­ble as the scene may change at the last minute. But noth­ing is left to chance with Robert – every­thing is so well planned and thought out, there is very lit­tle to catch you unawares.”

“We got through a lot of fish on The North­man – I think we dressed about 1000 kilos of dried fish up the racks that sur­round the com­pound at Hravnsey. We had to spray them all down with bleach to stop the seag­ulls from eat­ing them.”

“All the set dress­ing was based on what has been found in var­i­ous real-life Viking bur­ial cham­bers – the horse being one of the things to be buried along­side. This is our mum­mi­fied horse which we made with our in-house props team. We also had mum­mi­fied dogs either side of the throne. This was a very chal­leng­ing set to dress because it involved stunts and SFX for the fight sequence that plays out in here.”

“We pur­chased a huge amount of skins and pelts for the film – all approved by the Amer­i­can Humane Asso­ci­a­tion. Some­times in the win­ter in Belfast you have to impro­vise with what is to hand when it’s freez­ing in the office!”