Why The Northman Score Sounds So Viking (...and The Power of the "Non-Score")

One of the most badass things a composer can do is choose not to compose. Or, at least, not compose in the way you’d traditionally expect.

Most people associate film scoring with sweeping melodies, structured phrases, and orchestral themes written on paper by the piano. But some of the most exciting, visceral music in modern film and television right now isn't based on melody at all: it stems entirely from sound design.

Understanding where music ends and sound design begins is becoming the definitive skill of the modern composer. In the run up to Robert Eggers' next film Werwulf, there is no better case study to demonstrate this than the brutal primeval score for his epic, The Northman.

Robert Eggers' Werwulf trailer is a great excuse to revisit how The Northman uses music and sound to build its world.

The Creative Minds Behind the Noise

The score for The Northman was handled by Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough (...a special shout-out to Seb, who comes from right here in Bristol, England - the very same city where I base my own music production and composition work!)

What makes this pairing so fascinating is that neither of them are traditional, classically trained film composers. Instead, they come from the cutting edge of the electronic music scene, producing avant-garde, exceptionally modern electronic textures.

This exact background is what made them uniquely qualified to tackle The Northman. They didn't approach the film looking for places to insert pretty tunes, but rather they approached it looking to build a sonic blueprint for the piece.

The Post-2010 Shift: From Melody to Sound Design

To understand why this approach works so well, we have to look back at the landscape of film music around 2010. This was the era where the mainstream transition from traditional music to pure sound design truly exploded.

While synthesized and texture-heavy scores have always existed, it was the heavy hitters of this era who pushed it into the Hollywood mainstream. Led by the Hans Zimmer school of thought, composers stopped focusing purely on what notes were being played, and started focusing on the sonic impression the sound made on the audience.

The Inception Effect

The sound, really, is that I put a piano in the middle of a church and I put a book on the pedal, and these brass players would basically play into the resonance of the piano. And then I added a bit of electronic nonsense. — Hans Zimmer, in an interview with Vulture

Consider the definitive "jump the shark" moment for modern film trailers: the infamous Inception "BRAAAM" sound.

Where a traditional composer would spend weeks scribbling on manuscript paper and refining a melody at the piano, for Inception, Zimmer took a different approach. He used his resources to put a full brass orchestra into a church, had them blast notes directly into a piano with the sustain pedal propped down, and captured the resonating chaos.

By spending time sculpting an entirely new acoustic texture rather than writing a traditional motif, he accidentally - and very intentionally - blew up one of the most widespread 'memes' in film score history.

(Though there is some debate around the origins of the true 'BRAAAM' sound...)

Breaking Down "Storm at Sea"

Carolan and Gainsborough took this concept of the "sonic impression" and pushed it to its absolute limits in The Northman. Let’s look at a key cue from the score: "Storm at Sea."

For the first 11 seconds of this track, there is no melody. There is no harmony. There is only a single, lone drone accompanied by the primal thud of drums—which act throughout the film as a recurring symbol of raw rage.

The track relies almost entirely on two traditional Scandinavian instruments:

The Hurdy-Gurdy: A bizarre, mechanical stringed instrument where the player cranks a wheel that rubs against the strings like a violin bow that never stops. It features drone strings that output a continuous pitch, while keys on the side alter the pitch of the melody strings. It is the definitive, inescapable sound of Viking media.

The Hardanger Fiddle: A traditional Norwegian fiddle that possesses a distinctly iconic, resonant timbre. When you hear it, you can practically hear the physical breathing of the bow hair catching on the wood.

But unlike the more pristine, magical world-building you find in orchestral fantasy scores like the Rings of Power, these aren't being played with textbook precision...

Leaning Into the "Horrible"

What makes the use of these instruments so brilliant in The Northman is that the composers leaned heavily into the fact that the world of the vikings was rough, brutal, and unpolished. Naturally, the instruments of the time would be too - which is a recurring theme in Eggers' work.

Instead of capturing clean, pristine takes, they embraced dodgy, inconsistent, and broken playing techniques.

Throughout the track, you can hear the players intentionally over-cranking and under-cranking the hurdy-gurdy wheel. The pitch bends awkwardly, refusing to hold a steady tone. When the fiddle enters, it sounds uncomfortable, scratchy, and violently abrasive.

To put it bluntly: it sounds horrible. But it is supposed to.

By allowing the track to close out with the instruments just fading away into a mess of harsh, uncomfortable harmonics, they created an atmosphere of pure, unfiltered dread.

The Power of the Sonic Leitmotif

It would have been incredibly easy for a traditional composer to show up and write a sweeping, thematic melody and assign it to the main character as a standard leitmotif (a classic cinematic approach I discuss heavily in my Schindler vs. Basterds analysis)

But a melodic theme makes you think about a character - where a raw, unhinged sonic texture makes you feel the world they inhabit. When those grating, heavy textures hit you in the cinema, they trigger a visceral, physical response that standard orchestration simply cannot replicate.

There is just as much power in a leitmotif of pure sound as there is in a leitmotif of music -a philosophy I embraced completely when scoring Night Shift and building its dystopian world through sound design and heavy bass.

If you haven't yet, go immerse yourself in The Northman - while it isn't Eggers' most prominent work, it is a masterclass in how letting go of traditional musical sanity can result in something entirely unforgettable.

This post is adapted from a video essay I published online in 2022. The complete analysis is available here: This is Why THE NORTHMAN Sounds So Viking