Travis Fimmel Quotes

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

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

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.

The Vikings certainly didn't write anything about themselves; it was not a literate, but rather a pagan, culture. So what we get was written later by Christian monks. But there were occasional reportings and recordings of people who had traded usually with the Vikings.

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

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.

I'm very proud of 'Valhalla Rising.'

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

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

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.

With 'Vikings,' I had the task of making these people interesting and, to a point, sympathetic.

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

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

Norse mythology is mystifying and fantastic and totally confusing, but you can draw a lot of inspiration from it.

'Valhalla Rising' is a fusion of my upbringing, basically: everything I grew up loving and wanted to make a film of.

'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of that is, at times, you have to be big and imposing and violent and vicious, and then you have be pulled back and withdrawn and just more layers and more time to portray those layers, too.

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.

I know 'Vikings' isn't really based in magic, but it goes back to Old World spirituality and different religions, and a lot of voodoo.

My novel 'Wolf Brother' is set in northern Scandinavia during the late Stone Age, so I was aware from the start of Norse influences. I used some Norse names, and the soul-eater Thiazzi is based on the Norse storm giant, Thiassi.

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.

'Thor' has got several big battles in it, a reckless, headstrong young hero who has to confront his past and deal with a complicated relationship with his father, it has lots of savage Europeans hacking each other to death at various points, and all of this sounded very much like 'Henry V.'

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.

The Vikings colonized Britain, and a lot of our modern day towns are named after Viking names that settled these big towns.

While there are few records of Viking women participating in battle, they certainly held positions of high status in society as human sorceresses known as 'volvas.'