Where Was ‘The Northman’ Filmed?

In early 2020, The Northman output designer Craig Lathrop was ready to strike the ground jogging in Iceland to film considerably of director Robert Egger’s Viking epic. He experienced expended about a 7 days scouting the island nation, generating stops at the Fjallsárlón glacier lake, Laundmannalaurgar’s colorful geothermal pools, lush Þakgil, and Mount Hekla, a single of the Iceland’s most energetic volcanoes. But then COVID hit, and transporting the total forged and crew (which incorporates Nicole Kidman, Alexander Skarsgård, and Björk) to Iceland amid a pandemic was no extended an solution. A masterful pivot ensued, growing The Northman’s filming places throughout Eire and Northern Ireland to bring Iceland to life, some 900 miles absent.

We sat down Lathrop to get perception into how The Northman faked Iceland’s one of a kind and otherwordly scenery, what it was like to establish total Viking compounds from scratch, and wherever vacationers can see the movie’s filming spots for themselves.

What was the investigation method like for this film? What sites have been you wanting at to produce this Icelandic vibe?

There ended up three various vibes that we’re hoping to do: Hrafnsey, which is a fictitious island in the North Atlantic Iceland and then the Land of the Rus, which would be sort of Kievan Rus’—what’s now Ukraine. Rob sent me the script truly quite early, so I experienced a few of months to dig in and do a large amount of analysis and familiarize myself with the interval and the locales. We went on a scouting expedition to Iceland for a week and a fifty percent and that was magnificent. [Iceland] just blows your mind away. So frequently when I am scouting, I get to see items that folks really don’t get to see when they are on trip. And this time it was more that I got to see issues that I could hardly ever even think about. We expended a working day and a fifty percent or two days in the helicopter traveling all-around Southern Iceland, and the landscape there was totally brain-blowing. And I imagine it can be seriously why Robert selected to do the script.

One of the scenes that promptly transported me to Iceland was when Amelth (Alexander Skarsgård) and Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy) land on the black sand beach front. Where by did you film that and what was that knowledge like?

It’s a extensive, humorous tale. COVID definitely messed us up in terms of our Icelandic pictures. We had desired to go to Vestrahorn but what we finished up executing for that scene, mainly because we couldn’t go to Iceland to do what had had to begin with prepared, is taking pictures it at Five Fingers Strand in County Donegal, which is certainly gorgeous on its possess. But most of it we erased as we turned all around out of the h2o, and replaced it with the black sand shorelines that we were being equipped to photograph and map out digitally, so that we could get that beach scene that we needed. It was actually a shame but I considered that they did a superb task. I assume it looks beautiful—and I you should not know that anyone notices. But since of the pandemic, we couldn’t get back again there. We did a good deal of scouting and I will say that I sense totally blessed not only for myself—because truthfully, it truly is the finest holiday ever—but when we arrived to Northern Ireland and we recognized that we had to phony it [more than we had planned], I had a authentic good perception of what Iceland was.