I’ve just watched the first season of Norsemen (2016-2020) I loved it. But then I’ve been watching Viking sagas since Kirk Douglas starred in The Vikings (1958), a very bloody film filled with Norse vengeance. I loved it. Norsemen is not that kind of series, not at all. Here’s a short synopsis from Wikipedia:
Norsemen takes place in 790s Norway, with various characters taking leading roles as the series develops. The story covers the life of Vikings in the village of Norheim, with day-to-day happenings and strife of varying comedic degrees. As the series progresses, disputes with neighboring villages, including a rival tribe led by the ruthless Jarl Varg, and the efforts of a Roman slave, Rufus, to modernize Norheim's culture, result in ongoing conflicts.
What that doesn’t tell you is that the series is a comedy. And much of the humor is grounded in the grim violence that is standard is so many Viking sagas, with the raiding, pillaging, and raping by barrel-chested men with scraggly beards.
The series opens with a shot of a Viking longship making its way up a fjord. There’s a shot of a clean-shaven curly-headed man yawning, then a caged chicken, then a close-up of a blond woman at one of the oars – a woman, rowing a longship!? Then a shot looking toward the stern of the ship, where we see a typical barrel-chested scraggle beard. He calls for our attention, at which point curly-head complains that they haven’t been served water for over twelve hours, “That’s ridiculous.” The scene continues in that slightly cockeyed fashion. Then we cut to a group of a half dozen old men clambering around atop a precipice. They’re naked except for loin cloths. They’re accompanied by a middle-aged man, fully clothed. He’s a slave, charged with leading them to the site of a ättestupa, a ritualized suicide. The men are supposed to throw themselves to their deaths on account of their old age. They are, understandably, reluctant. But our slave manages to cajole one into jumping off by convincing him that it’s a matter of honor. We hear a thud. “Wow.” And so it goes. Back on the ship curly-head complains about not being paid (he’s a slave), the information flow on the ship is not very good, and a taller scraggle-beard punches him in the nose. Back to the precipice where the other old guys decided that no, this jump-to-the-death is not for them.
And so it goes.
It turns out that curly-head is from Rome, where he was an actor. This that and the other happens and he is charged with starting a theater Norheim, a strange idea for these eighth-century Vikings. Things don’t go as planned. And that ruthless Varg mentioned in Wikipedia? Yes, ruthless, but not barrel-chested and scraggly. He’s slender, bald, and wears a tight-fitting black tunic and seems modeled after Yule Brenner. He loses his hands with a stroke of a sword from the blond we saw in the opening scene. And it’s funny! Don’t ask me to explain, it would take way too many words and not be at all convincing, but on the screen, funny. Much of the humor is like that, comic violence. But not all of it. It’s tough to explain. On the whole, hypermasculinity is being thoroughly lambasted.
From Wikipedia:
The Guardian gave the show a glowing review, and described it as "Monty Python meets Game of Thrones."
That’s about right. Monty Python wins.
ADDENDUM: I’ve been rewatching the first episode and noticed that some of the satire seems directed at the social welfare aspects of contemporary Norwegian society. I detect that in some resonances from Lilyhammer, another Netflix series that it bought from a Norwegian production company (some of the same actors as well).
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