Werwulf(s) in Robert Eggers' The Northman
Obsessed fans of Robert Eggers don't need to wait until Christmas 2026 to see his take on Werewolves
If, like me, you met news of Robert Eggers’ latest project Werwulf, about 13th century lycanthropes stalking across medieval England, with a fist punch to the air, then you might fit into the obsessive, cultish following the American horror filmmaker has cultivated online. In the wake of his masterful love-letter to F. W. Murnau’s fairy tale, Nosferatu, interest in Eggers’ esoteric work has never been higher - and as a loyal fan and student of medieval history my excitement for this upcoming film is barely contained.
The qualities which perhaps most capture audiences’s loyalty to Eggers, and certainly mine, are his endeavours to authentically recreate the past as it was actually experienced. From the faithfully sourced uniforms of New England ‘wickies’ in The Lighthouse, to the archaic spoken English of The VVitch, Eggers leaves no historical material untouched to produce an authentic atmosphere to his films.
However, this attempt to the convey past as it was is not a simple backdrop, nor a mere convention expected of costume drama. Instead, what Eggers does on the silver screen is delve into the very minds of his subjects. His work is defined by his obsession, and his characters’ obsession, with folklore, mythology, and the paranormal. As he’s commented to the New Yorker, ‘as much as I am, like, totally in love with the verisimilitude of the tangible world, it’s getting into the mind’.
So, The Lighthouse becomes a phallic, Protean fever-dream and The VVitch is a puritan’s nightmare. Both films are marked by monstrous sexual desires and anxieties fighting it out in weird and wonderful wildernesses. Nosferatu himself, as Ellen Hutter’s night-terror, declares that he is naught but “an appetite”. The result is, as the Germans say, unheimlich.
I can wax lyrical about Eggers for ages, and through this Substack I intend to do precisely that. But for now, it is safe to say that in these films, we see an attempt to faithfully recreate historic imaginings of the supernatural; the witches, vampires, and even mermaids, of his characters’ minds as they would have experienced them if they were real, breathing people of the past. It’s no surprise then that his next subject is another creature in the pantheon of traditional horror: the werewolf.
Given what we know about him, we can be sure that his depiction of the wolfman is going to be a far cry from the norm but don’t be misled by my praise of his authenticity. I’m not saying he’s going to recreate a big medieval dog or even a just a very hairy man reminiscent of Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf. I’m not certain what he will do - though it will be a surprise no doubt - but if we turn to one of his previous films there are clues about how he might do this in an historically authentic way.
As a medievalist who’s spent rather too much time on the landscapes of Icelandic sagas, The Northman is my clear favourite of all his work to date. In this retelling of Saxo Grammaticus’ tale of Amleth, the Danish prince whose birthright was stolen from him by his fratricidal uncle, Eggers strives for verisimilitude through historically sourced clothing, weaponry, housing, transportation, and even in its ‘bowel-shuddering’ soundtrack composed with contemporary instruments - which I’ve listened to too many times that I’d like to admit.
But in this fast-paced revenge flick we once again see Eggers play with perceptions of the paranormal backed by meticulous research but this time with specific faithfulness to Norse mythology. Neil Price, a Viking Age historian and consultant on the film whose ideas on the gender ambiguity of the cult of Óðinn and feminine Norse magic parallel the director’s own themes of sexuality, joked ‘[Eggers] really does an enormous amount of background research. I sometimes wonder whether he needs advisors’.
The Northman’s Middle Ages are consequently replete with events and beings that are wholly unreal (if not hyper-real). From Amleth’s battle with mound-dwelling draugr (which almost line-by-line mirrors events in Grettir's Saga), to the celestial climb with the valkyrja, there is a huge amount of historically sourced paranormal content which I intend to chew over on Substack. However, for this post, the focus is on the berserker ritual (berserkr sing. and berserkir pl. in Old Norse) and this is where we see Eggers’ first werewolf.
Differing from the original story of Saxo Grammaticus, and its other most recent cinematic adaptation, The Prince of Jutland, Amleth, powerfully acted by Alexander Skarsgård, doesn’t fake madness to escape his uncle’s betrayal but adopts a new identity. The first time we see him as grown man he has become Björnulfr, an Old Norse name meaning Bear-Wolf.
The action has moved to the Land of the Rus, modern day Ukraine, and we learn that Amleth has joined an elite warrior group of berserkir. At night, he and twelve companions, in various degrees of nakedness, participate in a bestial ritual dance by a large campfire under the cover of dense woodland. They wear bear and wolf skins on their shoulders and backs. The dead animals’ muzzles can be seen drawn over their heads. Amleth the Bear-Wolf is bare-chested and wears a bearskin with a wolf’s head. They are preparing themselves for battle and are led by an old cloudy-eyed priest (Magne Osnes) who wears a horned helmet.
The opening shot of the horned priest leading the wolf-skin warriors as the ritual begins.
The priest chants in Old Norse and the companions grunt and hit their shields in response. As he invokes Óðinn he commands the berserkir to ‘transform their skins’ and ‘become slaughter-wolves’:
Your bear minds burn in the bodies of men
Sons of the wolf Fenrir break free from your flesh
Wolves will howl in the storm of Ódinn
Warriors will fall as the Bear claw strikes
We will fight to Valhöll!
‘Til we return to human shape
Fearless, we shall drink blood from our enemies’ wounds
Together we will rage in the battlefields of corpses!
The Father of War commands us – Transform your skin, brothers
Slaughter-wolves, Berserkers, become your fury!
The weather deteriorates and as lightning strikes the warriors drop to the ground. They enter a trance, screaming in pain and then anger as they adopt an unstoppable frenzy. The camera ends the scene panning directly to Amleth’s face, his eyes rolling back into his head as he screams with frenzied rage.
As the translated words of the priest make clear, this scene is intended to depict a transformation. Whilst nothing explicitly paranormal happens on screen, we’re left with the impression that Amleth and his peers believe they have become animals. Their howls and twisted bodily movements in response to the priest’s chants reveal they perceive themselves to be under a mysterious spell rendering them wolfmen.
In the subsequent scene showing the raid on a Slavic village, the camera is positioned above the warriors as they prowl forward in one long shot. We first only see their animal-skins. It’s almost as if they have become predators now stalking their prey. Later on, Amleth viscously tears at the neck of one the villagers, wolfishly howling to the sky as blood dribbles down his beard. This harks back to the priest’s words when he declared ‘[un]til we return to human shape, fearless we shall drink blood from our enemies' wounds’. The fact that the very next shot nonchalantly shows Amleth soon walking around the aftermath of the battle normally, un-frenzied, and in discussion with his colleagues as if having a normal day at work, does imply that in his mind at least he’s returned to human form.
In an interview about her work as an advisor on the film, Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir says that Hrólfs saga kraka was one of the main inspirations for the berserkir. Whilst a precursor text may have existed, the earliest form of this saga dates to the 15th century and it clearly influenced the decision to show the grouping as a small elite warrior-band of only twelve men, devoted to Óðinn, who likened themselves to dogs and wolves.
Interpretation is more open on other aspects of their depiction. Focusing on the etymology, the word berserkir suggests shirt (serk) with either a bear- or bare- prefix. Icelandic Saga-author Snorri Sturluson preferred ‘bare’ but may have been responsible for a misunderstanding with his interpretation of the warriors going into battle with no armour and consequently being invulnerable. Eggers plays with this ambiguity as reflected in Amleth’s bear moniker, his repeated insistence that no blade can harm him, and the warriors’ keenness to throw off their bear and wolf pelt garments when fighting. Eggers has also teased in interviews that ideally he’d have shown the warriors completely naked but the film studio wouldn’t allow it without uprating the viewing age restriction.
Some historians have now taken the bear- connection to be more relevant in understanding the berserkir as an animal-cult and they are increasingly discussed as indistinct from the úlfheðnar (wolf-coats). Through a paranormal lens, it’s not difficult to identify these shapeshifting warriors with more modern ideas of werewolves.
There are clear parallels to this in other medieval sources. In Völsunga saga, one of the oldest of the legendary sagas, it gives us an account of Sigmundr and his son Sinfjǫtli going wild in exile, howling like wolves and wearing magical wolf-skins. In Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, another poem found in the Poetic Edda, Sinfjǫtli is more explicitly accused of being a werewolf.
The suggestion of a similar magic wolfish bond between father and son is referenced in earlier parts of The Northman. Whilst Eggers describes the canine coming-of-age ritual with Amleth and his father Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) as his ‘most unrealistic’ scene it is authentic in sense that it builds on what is understood from literary sources. Archaeological evidence also further cements this with an inscription found on a runestone in Istaby, Sweden. Dating to the Vendel Era, it proves a pattern of animal-warrior names across three generations of a single family. Anne-Sofie Gräslund has suggested these lycanthropic monikers are indicative of ritualistic practices and religious wolf-symbolism used in the initiation of young warriors to a hereditary cult.
The shamanic figure leading the ritual, and who is identified in the script and credits simply as ‘Berserker Priest’, plays another important role. His magical commands repeat this strange bear-wolf ambiguity, transforming them before battle: ‘your bear-minds burn in the bodies of men, sons of Fenrir break free from your flesh’. Interestingly, this priest is wearing a horned headdress which appears to end in the form of two birds. This copies an Oðinnic motif found in archaeological sources, from the Sutton Hoo helmet to the Torslunda plates, as the horns are thought to represent Óðinn’s ravens, Huginn and Muninn (Thought and Memory).
A Vendel era Torslunda plate found in Öland, Sweden. Historians have thought it depicts a one-eyed Óðinn leading a wolf-pelt wearing berserkr.
The implication here is that the berserkir were associated with a cult dedicated to this one-eyed god of wisdom who granted them their strange transformative powers. Amleth’s own repeated invocation and visions of Óðinn throughout the film indicates that his worldview was equally premised on this foundation.
So, in The Northman, whilst it isn’t ostensibly paranormal to the film’s audience, we have a series of scenes authentically reproducing an historical mind which believed in a world where men could become werewolves. In Eggers’ own comments to film critic and author Simon Abrams, whilst some viewers might interpret the ritual scene to think the warriors are ‘doing mushrooms or tripping out’, his actual intention was to recreate the berserkir belief that they had lost their humanity to become literal invulnerable beasts with insane rage.
All of the above points in the direction where Eggers might take us with his Werwulf. Whilst I expect we will see a much more explicit transformation, and we can be sure to see actual wolves on the screen, it will nevertheless be a fascinating trip into the medieval mind much as The Northman proved to be.