Sigurd Drakedreper

"The Littlest Viking" is about a boy in his early teens named Sigurd who is a Viking prince. His royal father and older brother love nothing more than to kill. They joyfully recount tales of all of the people they have slaughtered and Sigurd's dad wants nothing more than for him to become a mighty warrior as well.

This is yet another peculiar little film where nothing much ever happens. Sigurd is rather clumsy and wants nothing to do with fighting. He spends his time loitering about his very small village. Occasionally, some bored warriors, who apparently live nearby, raid the village and kill some people and burn some homes before becoming bored and riding off again. There is more than one such scene and they are poorly choreographed.

When these battles occur, the invaders are all adults except for a teen similar in age to Sigurd. Every single time they show the other teen, he is ALWAYS staring at Sigurd. It's somewhat odd. Our little Viking hero also has a strange love/hate relationship with a slave boy. Sigurd tattles on the boy when he does nothing more than steal a little something to eat. Later, the two of them are naked together on the beach acting like the best of friends. Perhaps I'm missing something...

This film goes to great lengths to show that "war is bad" but it takes an awfully soft stance on slavery. Sigurd thinks owning slaves is just great as long as they aren't beaten. How progressive of him. Of course, the Viking days can't be held to a modern moral standard and maybe they were just trying to be realistic. All I know is that Sigurd is difficult to warm up to and his parents and older brother are royal jerks.

When a movie has no humor, no love story, mediocre acting and very little action it's awfully difficult to keep a viewer entertained. The message that it is bad to always be fighting and killing others is simplistic at best. I watched this video with two of my friends' kids and they tried their hardest to watch the entire film. However, they couldn't take the tedium anymore and walked off with about twenty minutes left in the movie. I don't blame them...perhaps I should have joined them. 1/10

A rather good movie depicting how a viking society might have, indeed probably did function in the viking era. It shows the vikings from all their sides, as battle thirsty raiders and warriors, as leaders of their own men, as traders, and as hunters and farmers. While there is a "morale" with the movie that war and bloodshed is not always the solution, the movie does not go so far in it's attempt to impose proper modern morales as to hide the darker parts of viking history. Slaves, or thralls, were usual those days, and while they were considered the property of other humans, this movie also shows that a certain friendship could arise between master and thrall, despite conflicting expectations of the master from others.

All in all a rather good display of viking culture and society, despite somewhat lacking Norwegian acting. A very good movie for anyone that has an interest in the viking era.