The eras of “The Odyssey” and the Vikings happened about 2,000 years apart so how did a Viking longship end up with a starring role in this year’s blockbuster movie?
Because the IMAX camera was very focused on him and me in the background dodging the debris, “I thought that would be my big scene,. Look to director Christopher Nolan, and his obsession with bringing spectacle to life with real props, real scenes. For the film, though, Draken had to be stripped of the dragon figurehead at its bow typical of the Viking era, from the 8th to 11th centuries as it sailed for the cameras in Greek, Italian and Scottish waters. “We took the crew, and we put their crew all in our costumes. They became part of the movie crew, as it were. And Odysseus’ guys, the actors, joined in with them, and they figured out how to raise the sail, how to rig it, how to row, all of this stuff. For months, the longship’s crew of seasoned sailors rubbed shoulders with Hollywood star Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus on-screen, and a host of professional actors.
“We found a Viking ship that had been built exactly according to those ancient specifications. And it was very much the whole shape and the rig that we needed to do a Bronze Age ship,” Nolan told US television last month. But I didn’t see that particular scene in the film,” he told AFP when the Draken and its crew made a recent visit to Oslo. “Most of the scenes would be completely different if it wasn’t for us being there, doing the real thing with the real ship and the real crew in the real ocean and real weather,” said Emanuel Persson, expedition director for Draken.
