I do not think this is quite true. The Northman was a *horror...
T. Greer@Scholars_Stage
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Jan 06, 2026
~1 min read
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I do not think this is quite true. The Northman was a *horror story* as the old Icelanders would have told it. It does not match the ethos of actual Icelandic sagas, whose heroes experience revenge not as a primal drive, but as something that must be calculated precisely to match the offense given. A hand for a hand, and eye for an eye—or however much money money a man might forfeit to keep his eye or hand. no more and no less.
The Northman is the story of a man so mutilated by hate that he cannot mete what he was measured—a man who his sunk beneath or above man proper: he acts less like a man than like a beast, divine force, or perhaps a woman (it is a trope in the sagas that women, not men, demand revenge beyond its rational bounds and goad their men into blood feuds that end up destroying their own families). One of the characters of the Icelandic sagas would look at the protagonist of the Norseman with horror—a horror they would recognize, but a horror none the less.
The Northman is the story of a man so mutilated by hate that he cannot mete what he was measured—a man who his sunk beneath or above man proper: he acts less like a man than like a beast, divine force, or perhaps a woman (it is a trope in the sagas that women, not men, demand revenge beyond its rational bounds and goad their men into blood feuds that end up destroying their own families). One of the characters of the Icelandic sagas would look at the protagonist of the Norseman with horror—a horror they would recognize, but a horror none the less.
Martyr Made@martyrmade
@romanhelmetguy Whatever its faults, what made Northman interesting is that took Norse morality and meaning on its own terms.
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(in this sense IMHO it is closer to something thr like AGAMEMNON or one of Seneca’s plays—Greeks and Romans did not look at the characters in these plays as heroes to be lauded, but rather as case studies in sick passions. I think this is more or less what the Northman is trying to be).
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I wrote an essay a few years back on Norse notions of honor and revenge for those interested: scholars-stage.org/vengeance-as-j…
