The Cast of ‘Vikings: Valhalla’ Takes Us Behind the Scenes of “The Bridge” Battle

Netflix’s Vikings: Valhalla delivers wall-to-wall action from its opening sequence, but one battle will thrill you like no other. In Vikings: Valhalla Episode 4 “The Bridge,” young Leif Eriksson (Sam Corlett) leads a small team of Vikings, including new friend Harald Sigurdsson (Leo Suter), on a daring mission to bring London Bridge falling down. With King Canute (Bradley Freegard) leading the attack on horseback and Olaf Sigurdsson (Jóhannes Jóhanesson) holding the long ships in the Thames for just the right moment, the Vikings pull off what might have been seen as impossible. And it was just as tricky for the cast and crew of Vikings: Valhalla to make it come together behind-the-scenes.

Created by Jeb Stuart, Vikings: Valhalla is the next chapter in the uber-popular Vikings franchise. Set about 100 years after the exploits of Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel) and his friends, frenemies, and family, Vikings: Valhalla imagines a version of history where Greenlander explorers like Leif Eriksson and his sister Freydis (Frida Gustavsson) battle for honor and glory alongside warring Norwegian princes like Harald and Olaf.

In Vikings: Valhalla Season 1, Leif joins up with Harald, Canute, and Olaf on their mission to invade England to help atone for his sister’s murder of one of Olaf’s men. (The dude had it coming as he raped Freydis.) After almost dying on a reconnaissance mission that turns out to be a trap, Leif comes up with a bold idea to conquer the English stronghold of London. They will use London’s miraculous bridge against them. Leif and a small group, including Harald, will sneak into London under dead of night and work on destabilizing a key section of the bridge. Later Canute will coax the new king, Edmund (Louis Davidson), across the bridge and Olaf’s ships will pull the weakened part of the bridge down. Sounds complicated, right?

According to Netflix, it took “about four months to build multiple versions of the London Bridge and strategically plan all the elements needed to achieve the big battle and collapse scenes.” When Decider spoke to Vikings: Valhalla cast, they revealed that shooting the complex sequence took weeks and was wildly surreal to experience on set since they were all shooting on different versions of the same bridge at totally different times.

“I love that [sequence] ’cause it’s a huge battle, but it’s a really unconventional battle,” Vikings: Valhalla star Leo Suter told Decider. “It’s a medieval battle but it’s also got like so many mechanical elements to it. There are insert shots of arrows landing in the right place and strings being tied which is integral to the whole plan working.”

In the scene, Olaf and his men hold their boats in the Thames until just the right moment. They see the whole battle from the ships. That was far from the experience on set for actor Jóhannes Jóhanesson. “The thing about it, the whole bridge is in four different parts. The sequence on the boats? I don’t even see the bridge when we’re filming it. So it’s amazing when you see the whole thing cut together because obviously you’ve read the script and you know what you’re aiming for,” Jóhanesson said. “But it’s quite lonely when you’re filming it because you’re just by yourself out on the boat.”

Bradley Freegard joked it was just as difficult for King Canute’s unit to picture the full scope of the scene: Yeah, and for us on the bridge, looking out over a field trying to imagine Olaf on his boat.”

Sam Corlett was less bothered by what he couldn’t see than by what he had to keep physically doing during the shoot. “I had to chop that wood for a good 45 minutes non-stop. And we kept on taking different angles of it and it was just, ‘Keep on going, keep on going.’ So that was pretty funny,” Corlett laughed.

“It was kind of interesting because a lot of our stuff was in one area and to finally see all the elements come together in the final cut of Episode 4, it was quite incredible,” Corlett said.

“It’s really rare that you read something that epic on a script and what appears on the screen is very much how your imagination sees it because often you embellish so much in your mind’s eye but it just looks great, doesn’t it?” Freegard said.

Watch Vikings: Valhalla on Netflix