What a steaming pile of old faeces this is. You have the entire Viking age which has some fantastic stories in it at your disposal, a massive Hollywood budget and some really talented actors. So you make a film that goes off again and again into quasi-mystical bollocks and a plot that is so fucking stupid it is risible. From an early scene where the (young) Northman and his father are crawling round pretending to be a pair of wolves because no-reasons, they start throwing 10+ minute scenes of utter made-up wank at you.
You then have the accents. They are pissing awful. Danes, Norwegians, Swedes speaking English have an accent but are perfectly understandable but the American actors trying to replicate it just can't do it. I suppose having them ape a Scandinavian accent is better then them acting with a broad American accent (I am looking at you Kevin Costner playing Rahbin Hooood) but it is bad, and they are so focused on the accent they mangle the actual words quite often.
So frustrating, they get so many little details spot on. The warriors sitting on sea-chests as they row their drakkar longships for example. Then they undo it with having the main characters run around virtually naked despite all their opponents wearing mail, or yet another dose of made up quasi-mystical dribblings.
And the plot. Bugger me it is weak.