Viking Wolf explained: is the werewolf legend a true story?

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Viking Wolf is a horror movie directed by the Norwegian director Stig Svendsen and released on Netflix in 2023. The film caught some interest among the viewers because it involves the Nurse mythology, similarly to what the movie Troll did some months before. There are werewolves and Vikings involved, and the movie’s beginning tells the legend of a Viking, Gudbrand the Grim, who arrived in Normandy in the Middle Ages and brought back a werewolf in Norway. Is this legend based on a true story? Let’s find out.

You can watch the official trailer for Viking Wolf here on Youtube.

Viking Wolf explained: is the werewolf legend a true story?

At the beginning of the movie Viking Wolf, we follow the story of Viking chieftain Gudbrand the Grim (“Gudbrand den Grimme,” in Norwegian), who reached Normandy in 1050 with his 20 ships and found a dog in a secret room inside an abbey. They brought the dog with them and returned to Norway, but, according to this legend, the dog killed all Vikings in those ships and then hid in the Norwegian woods, starting a bloodline of werewolves.

Although the legend is described in a way that seems founded on real historical facts, the truth is that there is no trace of a Viking named Gudbrand the Grim, or Gudbrand den Grimme, in public literature. Gudbrand is a classic Norwegian name, and there is also a Norwegian folk legend about a man called Gudbrand on the Hillside, but it has nothing to do with the Vikings plundering Normandy. Until the director Stig Svendsen will eventually reveal some Nurse mythology unknown to most of the world, we would therefore have to assume that the legend of Gudbrand the Grim who brought the werewolf from Normandy is not a true story, neither is inspired by a known legend or myth.

Viking Wolf ending explained: does Liv Berg kill her daughter Thale?

As often happens in horror movies, the ending of Viking Wolf doesn’t explicitly show how things went but requests the spectator to draw the correct conclusions based on what we see. In the ending, we see police officer Liv Berg next to the werewolf they caught, knowing it’s her daughter Thale. Liv is dragged by her emotions, trying to reassure her werewolf-daughter that “mom is here.” At the same time, she takes a silver bullet in her hand, loads her gun with it, and closes her eyes, ready to shoot.

We don’t see the shot. But what we see in the last scene is Liv returning home and placing the silver bullet, unfired, on her nightstand, in front of her daughter’s picture. The bullet is unused, and since she seemed to have only one bullet with her at the hospital, the final scene wants to tell us that she didn’t shoot the werewolf.

This may represent an eventual open ending that can allow a sequel, of course. If a second movie will follow Viking Wolf, we will surely pick up the plot from here.

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