Screenwriter Michael Hirst of Vikings fame says that a camera is an incredibly transformative and transcending medium as it notices things that one can’t pay attention to. By Team Viva

What’s the most challenging part of shooting the whole series?

Practically, the most difficult thing is getting the boats on water. They’re very well made but they’re not inherently stable. I try not to limit myself when I’m thinking about the script. I want to give them challenges, I want to push the show as far as we can. I remember coming across descriptions of how, if they were blocked from going upriver for some reason with their boats, the Vikings would dismantle them and carry them over the mountains and put them down on the other side. I said to the production designer, Mark Geraghty, I’d love to show it but I know we can’t. I thought maybe there was some other way of doing something similar. Well, two months later, we did it, I was up there in Wicklow mountains watching a Viking boat being hauled up the cliff-face and then being pulled through a forest for a scene. It was just unbelievable. So I don’t put any limits on what I can write or what we can do.

What’s the appeal or the fascination of writing about the medieval or ancient times as opposed to contemporary times?

I have written a couple of contemporary things but I don’t feel as comfortable or as excited by doing that. William James, the philosopher, once described a baby’s experience of life as a buzzing, booming chaos, and my sense of contemporary life is just the same. I prefer to have perspective and context when I write.

I have an academic background, so the research part of my job is something I delight in. It’s out of that research, reading, thinking and noodling that the ideas and characters start to emerge.

Is there more creative freedom in some ways because the Vikings is set so far back in history?

I’m supposed to feel tired when people say, “Is it accurate?” But yes, I think it frees up my imagination because there’s so many occasions where you think, “I couldn’t have made that up.” It’s so surreal to think that the things that happened in the series actually happened in the real life. If you’re inventing stuff just from your own head, you’re very limited to the things you have in your head. And if you haven’t had certain experiences, then you don’t know but you can read about other people having those experiences. And so it is liberating.

You are retelling history but you say that you’re a storyteller as well. Are there any last-minute plot changes or scenarios that you’ve had to change to keep it factual?

The process begins with reading and noting of some event. And remember, this is the dark age. There’s a lot of speculation. I feel that Justin, the historical advisor, is immersed in this world and has access to many more facts than I do. I need reassurance from him. I can’t remember any sort of last-minute things but yes interesting issues come up. I knew this place called Uppsala in Sweden where there was a pagan temple, which is recorded and written about by an Arab trader. He had described some of the pagan practices around the temple which he found quite disgusting. And it was clear there were human sacrifices. But it was my idea that the Vikings would volunteer to be sacrificed. There’s no recording of that. It is possible that they simply sacrificed slaves who were worthless to them. But what’s the point of offering the gods a worthless sacrifice when you could have a meaningful sacrifice? So, I invent things like that but they are rooted in a real sort of process.

How did you decide on Ivar’s disability?

I needed a lot of drama. The most dramatic route would be to have a famous Viking warrior and chief who is crippled. Who could imagine that? It offered such a challenge to the actor and to the production, “How do we get this guy around?” There’s a couple of accounts of Ivar being carried into battle on a shield and you wonder. It suggests that he had difficult mobility. But having decided that he had brittle bone disease, we then did research on it and met people with that disease and noted their descriptions of what it was like. The whites of the eyes turn blue if they are in danger of breaking a limb. So we used that, because that was very dramatic.

When you started, did you know that it would be such a long story and they would fill so many seasons?

You never know. It’s in the lap of the gods. It depends on if the audience is liking it or not.

How many episodes were commissioned at the beginning?

We were commissioned nine episodes. Nine is a magic number. But I had an idea of where I wanted to take the story. I was desperate to do the attack on Paris because I knew how spectacular that was and how extraordinary it would be to recreate.

And I wanted the Vikings to get to North America, which I knew would be a long process. It was wishful thinking on my part because more than half of new shows are cancelled.

The Vikings seems more like modern theatre production versus a regular TV show. What is the difference?

One of the differences from a writer’s point of view is that you can’t change the text of the play, if the writer is insistent, has written a play this way, you don’t normally get a discussion among the people who are making it. My work is totally collaborative. I’m changing things all the time. The show evolves and gets changed even in the cutting. A good editor will change the entire episode, the meaning of it and can put things in a completely different order. So it’s very fluid. But there is something, of course, stagy about it. It is on a stage. We talk about it being on a stage. The only significant difference I realised is that you have your set and it’s dressed and it looks nice. Then the actors come in and they’re rehearsing the scene. So they are on a stage, they have their lines and everything.

Just one or two years ago, the director of photography, said, “Do you want to look through the camera, Michael?” I looked through the camera. It changes everything. It creates a magic space. The camera notices things you haven’t noticed. It pushes some things away and it brings other things in focus. It’s the most incredibly transformative, transcending medium. That is what is different from theatre. It’s the camera. A good director and a good cameraman are totally vital. Don’t do anything just for the sake of it. Just forget about the journey. Just get them there if something interesting is going to happen. For me, that’s always been the magic of this medium.

What is the most important thing to consider when making casting decisions?

One of the things that I prefer to do is to cast relatively unknown people, because I don’t like people coming into a role with past acting experiences. They remember those experiences from other things and then compare their performances. I prefer they live in this character, they become this character. That means you are always taking a risk.

We’ve taken people, really good actors off the stage. It’s been wonderful. We’ve got an amazing cast. But the leads, that was a big change. We took a chance on them. The most amazing thing happened when we were casting the boys, the sons of Ragnar, as grown-ups. We had quite a lot of people coming in and Alex Høgh was one of them, but he wasn’t going to read for Ivar. It was clear from his first audition, what he rehearsed, that he was very good and absolutely clear. I said, “Can we just get him to read for Ivar?” He hadn’t prepared for that role so we gave him a few minutes to acquaint himself with the lines. Before we started, Alex came in and said, “I’ve got one question. Is Ivar in pain?” I said, “I think he’s in pain most of the time.” When he came in, we weren’t seeing the pain in his performance, so the cameraman asked him to perform in front of the camera and when we watched his performance later, we could see the pain in his eyes. I knew it then, that Alex was the right person to play Ivar. He has been absolutely spectacular to watch.

(Vikings airs at 11 pm on AXN.)