"The Northman" Is A Gory, Beautiful, Cinematic Experience From The Mind Of Robert Eggers, Director Of "The Lighthouse" And "The Witch"

In fact, it was kind of serendipitous that Eggers ended up making what he refers to as "Viking Hamlet." He told IGN:

"Basically, Alexander Skarsgård and I had lunch, and he said he'd been wanting to make a Viking movie and was developing Viking movies for some time, trying to get something to happen. And I said I had an idea for a Viking movie. I didn't really have an idea for a Viking movie, I had an ending and I knew I wanted it to be a revenge movie. And then I thought, well, Hamlet is a great revenge story. And then, all of a sudden, I realized, oh my goodness, Shakespeare was inspired by Saxo Grammaticus, and the story is an Old Norse story. And so, that led to me writing a treatment based on that. And very quickly, two years later, we were going into production."