Watch Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America For Free

Very disappointing...

Pretty Good

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Yes they do. 10 minutes of guys with beards and no shirts chopping wood - really? The dialogue is close to non-existent, the sound quality appalling and the 'story line' completely absent. I might have to make it my personal mission in life to destroy every copy of this ever made and thus prevent other people from feeling the same sense of pain as I did after viewing this total garbage. One scene in particular is irrevocably burned into my memory, despite 6 months of therapy - please see title of this review and be warned! Myself and the friends that watched this together still talk about how bad it is, several years later. Utter and complete drivel.

Well I wouldn't be nearly as brutal as some of the reviewers. I actually ended up liking this movie quite a bit. I didn't bail out on the initial shaky cam beach scene once I started recognizing this as an art statement more than anything. The movie is quite haunting if you allow yourself to feel what these poor lost vikings might have really felt in such a distant forlorn place. The sense of desolation is something I empathize with (I'm a big Alaska tourist fan) and the medieval history is also something I'm quite fond of. So yes, maybe your average movie goer is probably going to quickly bail out on the viewing. For me, the movie is quite a different experience, shows brutally honest depictions of some natural acts, and ends on a complete note of frustration as it should. I felt the writer/director had a complete sense of the psychology of this historical experience that I enjoyed watching.

As a huge fan of viking stories, I watched Severed Ways with hopeful eyes, but it seems that no-one but Hrafn Gunnlaugsson is ever going to get close to capturing anything that is close to what those days might have been like. The basic setup for the story is fine, but the lack of a script becomes a problem right away. Being from Sweden I was very annoyed with the few speaking parts - the director has stolen dialogue/sound from what seems to be an old Bergman film, and put subtitles to it that has nothing to do with what is spoken. That was just weird. I doubt that it is even legal. Chopping down trees right, left and center in the woods seems illegal as well, not to mention the killing of the chicken. This film obviously had no budget, so I doubt that Tony Stone had permits to do that. Burning down a church to the tunes of Burzum was a kick in the nuts to authority as well, as Varg Vikernes is in prison for doing just that. And still I kind of like this film - anybody can go out and capture what they want with a digital video camera, go nuts and produce something that is not that bad. I give kudos for effort - and the poop scene had me gagging for days;)

I just saw this movie... It appears to be dubbed (to Swedish) and the subtitles did not match anything they said. Also, the acting isn't that good - and the story progresses rather slowly. The highlight of the entire movie was watching one of the vikings defecate. If you can call that a highlight...Steer clear of this film. It's nothing more than a waste of your time. No historic facts what so ever..I didn't hear any Greenlandic or old Norse, only Swedish. Don't know if the version I saw was deliberately destroyed by evil saboteurs, or if it was intended to be this flawed.The movie also contained a lot of Norwegian Black Metal (Dimmu Borgir, Burzum, etc.) - that in itself is cool, but combined with headbanging vikings it's just annoying.