— AURORA, “Queendom”

What if Hamlet’s Ophelia had not lost her wits and died? Robert Eggers explores a potential answer to this question in his 2022 film, The Northman. The story follows Prince Amleth the Bear-Wolf on his journey through the North to avenge his murdered father and reclaim his stolen kingdom. Yet throughout this patriarchal adventure of men attacking each other with arrows, axes, spears, and swords runs a theme of women wielding their own weapons—manipulation, metaphysics, cunning, and even love.

In this flixtape, I set The Northman—a Viking tale rife for feminist interpretation—against a playlist of songs performed by Nordic female artists or acts with female leads:

• Björk (Iceland)

• ABBA (Sweden)

• Ace of Base (Sweden)

• AURORA (Norway)

• Ane Brun (Norway)

• The Concretes (Sweden)

• The Cardigans (Sweden)

• First Aid Kit (Sweden)

• Lykki Li (Sweden)

• Nightwish (Finland)

• Agnes Obel (Denmark)

• Emilíana Torrini (Iceland)

A recurring voice on the playlist belongs to Björk, who also cameos in The Northman as a seeress who speaks her motivation for guiding Amleth to his fate: “For where your path of ashes ends, another will begin her journey. A maiden king.”

To enjoy this playlist according to design,

1. pause The Northman 4 seconds after the “Perfect World Pictures” title screen goes black (on Amazon Prime, the sync time is 0:00:30, but sync time may vary by streaming service)

2. mute the film (and disable subtitles, if active)

3. simultaneously press play to start the playlist and press play to resume the film. You must press play on the playlist and film at the exact same moment

Note: Once the playlist and movie are playing in sync, do not pause either at any time before the playlist concludes—or all will be lost.