Michael Hirst Quotes

I love that Viking era, but also they're a fatalistic people and that dictated their fearlessness in battle and approach to life.

I got interested in the Vikings, and then you realize that there isn't much to be read about them because they did not write their history. It was written by hostile witnesses, by Christian monks and so on. From what I could see and understand, I was really excited about it. I loved their culture and loved their gods.

What is interesting to me about Vikings is that they were failed farmers.

Because the Vikings never documented anything - they couldn't read or write - the history is always gonna be a little up in the air.

There are so many good stories about the Vikings.

If you're in America or Europe, walk for three blocks, and you'll pass about 14 Vikings. Their reach was immense.

I read a lot of Icelandic sagas when I was young. I've always been interested in the Viking culture.

I think Vikings have always been popular, haven't they? I remember being a kid and being in second grade reading a book about this Viking warrior.

It seems strange that almost no other traces of the strong vikings are found in America.

I've always been fascinated by the Norsemen, their lives, history and cosmology. The more we study them the more interesting they become... breaking their own stereotypes. We usually think of them as barbarians, but there were aspects to their society that shows a tremendous level of civilization, sophistication and social advance.

When you're a Viking, you never know when you're going to get the axe.

The Vikings themselves are fascinating creatures. They're human beings, of course, but their ethos are so different from ours. The fact that they live as warriors - their willingness to die for the sake of what they believe in - is quite shocking to us, and it's fascinating to see.

Generally speaking, I don't think people know a great deal about the Viking culture, apart from the label that is usually attached to them, either pillagers or deviants who came and brought back loot to Norway. It was an incredibly sophisticated, complex and layered culture. They had their own laws, many of which protected women.

I'm very proud of 'Valhalla Rising.'

RUNE is another one I'm really looking forward to.

I've always been interested in the Vikings - that's, like, part of my own history.

For us Icelanders, the Sagas are like the Bible, only much better.

'Vikings' has been so many different challenges, and some of that is, at times, you have to be big and imposing and violent and vicious, and then you have be pulled back and withdrawn and just more layers and more time to portray those layers, too.

So much Western storytelling comes from Scandinavia. I've read that in the past, storytellers would travel to Iceland and exchange stories. It's kind of the birthplace of great storytelling.

I'm from Norway, and when kids were reading comics, I was reading Icelandic and Norwegian sagas about the Vikings. The glorification of violence, their mentality, and their way of living - that was part of my own education growing up.

One of the things that I wanted to do post-'Haven' is go after some shows I was a fan of already, and 'Vikings' was on the list.

Up in the north of Scotland, a lot of the villages are completely Viking names. A lot of Vikings came down and settled in Scotland and in Ireland. And a lot of them didn't, but they took plenty of us with them - mostly the chicks.

Since human memory is short and does not suffice for a crowd of things, the authority of those who preceded our age, the divine emperors and kings, has decreed that those things were to be written down which the progress of fleeting time generally removes from the knowledge of men.

Before books, nothing got saved. We don’t know what the cavemen thought about caves even though they tried to write on the walls.

It is impossible to write ancient history because we do not have enough sources, and impossible to write modern history because we have far too many.