The Viking (1928)

The Viking is, I think, more interesting on a technical level than as an entertainment. It’s an historical/melodramatic/romantic epic and, like a disappointingly large number of h/m/r epics it can be pretty rough going at times. But this one does have one moment that comes as something of a shock.

Donald Crisp stars as Leif Erikson, LeRoy Mason is Alwin, Pauline Starke is Helga, and Harry Lewis Woods is Egil.

On a Viking raid down the coast of England, Lord Alwin is captured and taken away as a slave. At the slave market he catches the eye of Helga, a Viking maiden who can sail and plunder with the rest of the boys. It’s a scene that has proven popular in several movies—hero reduced to slavery and purchased by a superior woman who takes a fancy to him. When he later attempts to escape, Helga recaptures and whips him, he stripped to the waist and she in her leather harness. It’s a fetishist’s dream.

Egil is the Norseman who loves Helga (she just wants to be his pal) and soon he and Alwin get into a fight. The honorable Leif Erikson sees this and asks that Alwin be given to him. Alwin soon becomes his head slave, right hand man, and, to the degree that it’s possible for a slave, his friend.

Before setting off on an exploratory trip westward across the sea, just to see if he’ll sail off the edge of the world, Erikson returns home to Iceland to say farewell to his father, Erik the Red (Anders Randolph), and to marry Helga himself. The distaff vikingar now has three guys on the spear.

We discover at Erik’s court, where “hard, stubborn paganism still held sway,” an absolute disdain for this new Christian religion. He orders one man to be killed simply because he is a Christian. We actually see blood on the axe. This may make some viewers uncomfortable, but it gets worse. When Leif arrives he tells his father that he has converted. We sense trouble on the rise, but before Leif sails ol’ Dad lets him know that he’ll always be welcome home even if he is a Christian. Leif sails off and all is well.

But wait a minute. We’ve shockingly seen a man chopped to death because of the god he worships, but everyone else forgives and forgets just that easily? 

On the voyage, Egil’s jealousy lead’s him to mutiny. “It was all—for love—of Helga,” he gasps.

The movie’s technical interest lies in the fact that it was the first feature film shot in Technicolor’s Process 3, with the color looking remarkably good most of the time, and the movie includes a soundtrack of music and noises,. The music was composed by an uncredited William Axt, with equally uncredited assists from Richard Wagner and Edvard Grieg. George Cave was the cinematographer, and the picture was written by Randolph Bartlett (titles) and Jack Cunningham, based on the novel The Thrall of Leif the Lucky by Ottilie A. Liljencrantz. Roy William Neill directed.

Star Donald Crisp is one of the irreplaceable men of the movies. His career began with The French Maid in 1908 and ended with Spencer’s Mountain in 1963. His soft-spoken British/Irish/American accents graced over 75 talkies and he appeared in around 90 silents, with 72 director credits tossed in. He was educated at Oxford, won a Supporting Actor Oscar (How Green Was My Valley), knew Winston Churchill, and played General Grant in The Birth of a Nation. Two of the films he directed were Buster Keaton’s The Navigator and Douglas Fairbank’s Don Q, Son of Zorro. And yes, you’re right, I am in awe.

One quick historical note. The movie tells us that Leif Erikson did, for sure, land in America, and offers proof in the form of a lighthouse he built in Newport, RI. They even show it to us. Recent carbon dating indicates that it was actually built, perhaps as a mill, 600 years after the time of Leif Erikson. Makes a great story, though.