Valhalla Rising

Valhalla Rising is a 2009 English-language Danish period adventure film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, co-written by Refn and Roy Jacobsen, and starring Mads Mikkelsen. The film takes place "most certainly during the twelfth century of our era" and follows a Norse warrior named One-Eye and a boy as they travel with a band of Christian Crusaders by ship in the hopes of finding the Holy Land. Instead, they find themselves in an unknown land where they are assailed by unseen forces and dark visions. Shot entirely in Scotland, the title is derived from the combination of Kenneth Anger's films Scorpio Rising and Lucifer Rising with a Viking theme. While the film garnered generally positive reviews, it only made back about $731,613 of its $5.7 million production cost. Plot In the Scottish Highlands, a mysterious mute one-eyed thrall is held captive by a Norwegian chieftain from Sutherland and forced to fight to the death against others. He receives his meals from a young thrall boy, who seems to sympathise with him. After dreaming of finding an arrowhead in a pool, One-Eye actually finds it when bathing. Using the arrowhead, he breaks free, kills the chieftain and his entourage and impales the chieftain's head on a nithing pole. As he sets out across the land, he realizes that the boy is following him. 'One-Eye' takes him in and has a vision of them travelling on a ship. They reach a small group of Christian Norsemen who are persecuting the heathens of Scandinavian Scotland. The leader of the group asks the boy about the man's origins and he answers that One-Eye came from Hel. 'One-Eye' and the boy agree to sail with them to the Holy Land on a Crusade. The expedition soon encounters thick fog and gets lost in the North Atlantic. After many days, with supplies dwindling, land is sighted.