Thor. Loki. Odin. The Norse gods. If you were a myth-addict (myth, not meth) like me as kid, these names were quite familiar, as commonplace as gods and goddesses of religious traditions popular and ancient. Thor and Loki and Odin are currently enjoying their time in the limelight thanks to Marvel Studios’ Thor and Avengers movies, but, as much as love those characters, those aren’t the folks I grew up reading about. Those aren’t the mythological traditions with which I’m familiar.
Norwegian director Mikkel Brænne Sandemose must have sensed my concerns from across the seas, as he crafted Ragnarok, a Magnolia Pictures film that more faithfully pulls strictly from Norse tradition, while bringing aspects of those tales into contemporary stories for cinema. Set in Norway, Ragnarok follows archaeologist Sigurd Svendsen, who has spent years obsessed with the Oseberg Viking ship, which had been excavated a century ago by other Norwegian archaeologists. The ship bears the runes spelling out “Man knows little,” runes similar to those found by Sigurd’s friend on a stone in northern Norway. Sigurd thinks that the runes are a treasure map that will lead him, his friend, and their expedition to the answers behind Ragnarok, which are the end of days in Norse lore. What they do find, however, is something dark and foreboding, suggesting that some myths need to be left alone and be left as just that: myth.
I had the chance to chat with Sandemose to discuss his impetus to create Ragnarok and why he wanted to bring Norse mythology forward for the 21st century.
FreakSugar: What was the genesis behind Ragnarok? Were you always fascinated by Norse mythology?
Sandemose: I can start on the second question because I have always been fascinated by Norse mythology. Here, it is relatively a large part of our school time in our younger years. But then it becomes mostly forgotten and it’s mostly foreigners who pick it up, who get fascinated by it. And we wanted to take it a little bit back and move it forward. And I think this Oseberg Viking ship, this unique ship, is an inspiration for telling this mysterious story.
FreakSugar: We haven’t seen many mythological films that owe their roots in Norse mythology, but those seem to borrow less to that tradition of Vikings than this film. Was there a desire to find a wider audience for these tales?
Sandemose: I wanted to do that. At the same time, we haven’t made a Norway action/adventure movie. My producer and I wanted to make a film in this genre to show it’s possible to make this kind of film based on our traditional material. And we were inspired by mostly American movies from our childhood, but we wanted to place it here and make it really Nordic but at the same time make it something that other regions knew about – [to talk] about something dull and boring that everyone learns about, this ship that is dry to learn about. We wanted to show that in this world there is a lot of entertainment and we wanted to bring it on to the screen.
FreakSugar: The film seems to cross genres: thriller, horror, action, mystery. I haven’t been the first to see some Spielberg influence in there as well. Was that your intent to update the Norse myths and to incorporate genres you might have loved growing up?
Sandemose: It wasn’t intentional at first. In the beginning, we knew that we sort of had a hybrid adventure movie, and then it sort of became how we should transform the movie, when the characters get to the answer of their quest, when it comes alive, how it can be part of an action/adventure movie without being too much of a creature feature. So all the way I was worked to find this path between an adventure movie and the creature that was so important to the movie. I think, because of that, I picked parts of and was inspired by other movies.
FreakSugar: Sigurd seems to draw from traditions of Allan Quatermain and Indiana Jones. Was that your intent to pay homage to those characters while still creating a unique character to call your own?
Sandemose: For me and for Pål Sverre Hagen, who is playing Sigurd, we were inspired by Indiana Jones and other characters. But we knew that if this was going to be believable in Nordic countries, which was sort of the primary target for the film when we made it, we knew that the character had to be down-to-earth and low-key and someone who struggles.
FreakSugar: The special effects for the monster are fun and menacing. Was that completely CGI or did you use a mix of techniques old and new?
Sandemose: It started with a concern for the kids [in the movie]. When they saw the creature, I wanted it to feel real. And then I realized soon that I had to do every scene out in nature and that they had to feel some sort of presence of the fear and the adventure of what they were going into. So I decided early that I wanted to shoot everything on location and not do any green screen shots or any shots like that. So, in a way, we tried to do as much as possible on set when it comes to explosions or water or interactions with the animal and those kinds of things. But the actual animal is CGI, completely CGI. We sort of had a mock-up head in Styrofoam on a post that we had around and used to run around to give the kids something to look at and made sounds to make them scared.
Ragnarok premieres today in theaters and is also available on iTunes and as VOD.