Saxo Grammaticus

Prince Amleth is on the verge of becoming a man when his father is brutally murdered by his uncle, who kidnaps the boy's mother. Two decades later, Amleth is now a Viking who's on a mission to save his mother, kill his uncle and avenge his father.

A Danish prince seeks revenge upon the villain who killed the king and his son to usurp the throne.

Seeking revenge against the rival clan responsible for the killing of his father, Hagbard calms down long enough to establish a truce. During a peaceful interlude, he falls in love with Signe, the daughter of the king of the rival clan. However, Hildegisl, who desires Signe's hand in marriage, disovers the young lover's plans to wed and sets out to bring about the end of Hagbard.

With "The Normans," painters Paul Gernes and Per Kirkeby wanted to make a film about the Viking Age, but not a traditional fiction film set in that period. Instead, the film has a contemporary setting, in which a guide shows various historical sites and tries to bring the past to life, even though she has only one interested listener. Within this framework, episodes from Danish mythology are brought to life: King Skjold, Rolf Krake, Regnar Lodbrog, the Battle of Svold, etc. The film mainly follows the account in Saxo's chronicle, but also dramatizes a story by the Arab author Ibn Fadlan. He described the cremation of a Viking chieftain in Russia around the year 900, where, among other things, a slave woman was sacrificed after ritual intercourse. The film is based on a number of historical and archaeological studies. The loose form is intended to emphasize how fragmentary our knowledge of the Viking Age actually is.