Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.09.2016, Page 42

NORDIC DESIGN FOR CHILDREN
FROM 1900 TO TODAY
OPEN EVERY DAY
FROM 11AM–17PM
CENTURY
OF THE CHILD
Sturlugata 5, 101 Reykjavík
www.nordichouse.is
“Most authentic Viking film ever,”
proclaims the DVD of ‘When the
Raven Flies’ (1984), available at
a Puffin Shop near you. If any
modern film can be said to be an
“authentic” account of the Norse
way of life and death around the
beginning of the 10th century, it
may as well be writer-director
Hrafn Gunnlaugsson’s curious,
passionate and grimy film, a story
of unending cycles of revenge, pa-
gan belief, blood ties, loyalty and
betrayal.
“If you see older viking films,”
Hrafn (whose name means “Ra-
ven”) told the Grapevine in 2005,
“you notice that they’re more or
less like a Wagner opera—people
wearing horn helmets with chick-
en feathers, Valkyries with spears
and enormous tits, screaming. […]
Those times were more cruel and
primitive than the romantic way
of seeing them, the swords were
like clubs.”
Hrafn’s convictions spring
from a lifelong fascination, fed by
stories his older relatives told him
when he was a boy, and spurred
further by his work as a teenager,
on the set of ‘The Red Mantle’, a
campy and unsuccessful Viking-
sploitation film shot in Iceland
with a European cast and crew in
1967. Hrafn went on to study film
in Stockholm, and returned to Ice-
land to begin his directing career
at the national tv station—he be-
came the first Icelander to adapt
Laxness when his short film ‘Lilja’
was broadcast in 1978, the year be-
fore the foundation of the Icelandic
Film Fund. For ‘When the Raven
Flies’, he went deeper into history;
his attention to period detail—as
well as his other international cin-
ematic influences—ensured this
original Saga-style tale a lasting
following at home and abroad.
(The portentuous “heavy knife”
exchange is quoted to this day.)
Critics have called ‘When the
Raven Flies’ and Hrafn’s later vi-
king films “cod westerns,” nod-
ding to their similarity to Sergio
Leone’s spaghetti westerns. When
the Raven Flies’, like ‘A Fistful of
Dollars’, indeed concerns a name-
less stranger who arrives in town
one day to pit opposing factions
against each other, for mysteri-
ous reasons (its Morricone-esque
score is also unafraid of far-out
modern-sounding instrumenta-
tion). But the violent, laconic man
with a harsh, uncompromising
moral code is hardly a figure that
originated with Clint Eastwood.
Here, the Man with No Name is
an Irishman come to Iceland to
avenge himself on the vikings
who killed his parents and ab-
ducted his sister some decades
before. The historical background
is Harald Fairhair’s unification of
Norway, and the settlement of Ice-
land by his foes; Old Norse pacts of
brotherhood and conventions of
hospitality are violated, and Odin
is invoked, as the violent “Guest”
kills his enemies with single blows
from a dartlike dagger, dropping
pearls of deadpan, dubious wis-
dom like any number of larger-
than-life Saga heroes.
The film’s locations, black sand
beaches and cliffside stone huts,
are plainly in the vicinity of Vík—
it’s appropriate that the locations
are so recognizable, since today’s
prosaic farmsteads really were the
staging ground for legendary his-
torical narratives. The filmmak-
ing itself is raw and direct. Much
of the film’s “authenticity” can be
ascribed to its modest budget: the
natural lighting does evoke the
“dark ages,” particularly in the
windowless interiors; costumes
are simple and faces are grimy.
Even the small cast and circum-
scribed geography feels appropri-
ate to the story of a few clans in a
new country—a simple narrative
growing to a legendary scope, pop-
ulated by a few farmers with old
weapons from their raiding days
always close at hand.
How to watch: I.L.M.’s Icelandic
DVD, with subtitles in English and
several other languages, is sold at
many Reykjavík locations, and avail-
able from many libraries around the
capital region.
SHARE:
gpv.is/rvn14
Words MARK ASCH
'When the Raven Flies'
Vikingsploitation
Movies Saga of Icelandic Cinema
483-1000 • hafidblaa.is
5 minutes from Eyrarbakki
at the Ölfusá bridge
open daily 11:00-21:00
483-3330 • raudahusid.is
10 minutes from Selfoss
Búðarstígur 4, 820 Eyrarbakki
open daily 11:30-22:00
Traveling the south coast or Golden Circle?Reykjavík
Eyrarbakki
Keavík
International
Airport
Vík
42The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 14 — 2016