The Best '80s Viking Movie Is Nearly Impossible To Stream Today

In our age of myriad streaming platforms, most people live under a false belief that just about every movie ever made is available in some form or fashion. This is simply not the case. There are thousands of lost movies and numerous films that exist in degraded formats sans a decent 35mm print. In the case of the latter movies, short of a pricey restoration, they're always going to look dodgy. And as time goes on, the streaming versions of these films, occasionally ripped from an old VHS release (which was formatted to fit a 4x3 screen), might just disappear (at which point you'll be forced to chase down a pirated copy).

Hrafn Gunnlaugsson's Viking yarn "When the Raven Flies" is currently hanging on in such a perilous state. Released in 1984 and selected to be Iceland's entry for Best International Feature Film (then Best Foreign Film) at that year's Academy Awards (it did not make the cut), this 9th-century-set tale about an Irishman seeking revenge against the Vikings that killed his parents is currently viewable on YouTube in an artlessly cropped 480p presentation. I doubt this is how the 77-year-old Gunnlaugsson would prefer for his film, which /Film has deemed one of the 14 best Viking movies ever made, to be viewed, but, for whatever reason, this is all we've got. And this is a shame because Gunnlaugsson's film is a unique entry in the Viking movie genre.

You probably didn't know you needed a "Yojimbo"-inspired Viking flick, but "When the Raven Flies" is a compellingly brutal companion piece to Akira Kurosawa's classic, as well as Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western riff "A Fistful of Dollars." (Gunnlaugsson's movies were referred to as "Cod Westerns.") Jakob Þór Einarsson stars as Gestur, an Irishman who's traveled to Iceland to play two rival Viking factions against each other as a means of exacting bloody vengeance for their cold-blooded murder of his parents. There's an interesting wrinkle here in that his still-living sister, an unnamed character played by Edda Björgvinsdóttir, was kidnapped by the Vikings as a child and is unwilling to assist him in his task.

Also interesting: the weaponry. There are no epic sword fights in "When the Raven Flies." Instead, much of the combat is carried out with knives, which are often flung (à la James Coburn in "The Magnificent Seven" or Tomas Millian in "The Big Gundown"). I am the furthest thing from a Viking history enthusiast, but this is apparently not historically inaccurate for the era (though the lack of axes, which they did use, is curious). In any event, Gunnlaugsson, clearly working on a low budget, makes the most of this decision, framing the action with keen attention to background and foreground placement of his actors. This is not a polished movie by any means, but Gunnlaugsson has a keen mise-en-scène, which is something I can't say about most digital filmmakers nowadays.

You should give "When the Raven Flies" a looksee on YouTube, if only because you never know when that video is going to disappear. Here's hoping Gunnlaugsson can one day scrape together the funds to get his film restored.