The Making of the 13th Warrior

Right: Buliwyf (Vladimir Kulich, left) and Herger (Dennis Storhoi, right) as they enter the caves of the Wendol.

As the sun sets on the 2nd millennium it's fascinating to look back to the end of the first. In our own time people fear unknown evils, poised to strike as one millennium sheds it's skin and the next emerges. Monsters, real or imagined, continue to exist. Y2K, a case in point. Touchstone Picture's long awaited release "The 13th Warrior", deals with a tenth century enemy so terrifying that it's name is rarely spoken aloud. The enormity of the challenges faced down and conquered by the production crew of "The Thirteenth Warrior" is a tribute to the Œwarrior spirit' that has lived on through the centuries and brought highly detailed to life in the film.

The story is adapted from Michael Crichton's best-selling novel, Eater's of the Dead. Crichton drew his inspiration for the story from parts of a historical account written by Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan. "In the tenth century, Ibn Fahdlan was traveling in Central Asia and came across a group of Norse warriors," says novelist/producer, Michael Crichton. "Fahdlan is well known as a historical commentator because he is one of the few who wrote detailed eyewitness accounts of these people. The manuscript he wrote showed he was an astute and accurate observer of these travelers, who he describes with a very unblinking eye and a kind of honesty and curiosity." Crichton assembled Fahdlan's information from pieces of the manuscript and from different translations from around the world and used that as the basis of the first three chapters of the story.

Baghdad, at the dawn of the second millennium, was the center of highest civilization. "Even in that time period, they [Baghdadians] were probably the most cosmopolitan people around," continues Crichton. "They had extraordinary knowledge and wealth and they traded with other people. You can see how fascinating it would be for a person of that background to come across these gigantic warriors who sleep with their weapons, who are laughing and humorous and also crude and rough by comparison."

"The way Fahdlan described the Norse warriors was very compelling and it led me to learn more about them," Crichton notes. "They were, in fact, a very remarkable group of people. Extraordinarily courageous, doing amazing exploits. They had wonderful spirit, great humor and a profoundly developed philosophy of life. How we think about them today is, in a certain way, the result of centuries of Anglo-Saxon propaganda. They sacked all our ancestors, you know," he adds with a smile.

The story begins with Ibn Fahdlan, played by Antonio Banderas, sent from Baghdad as an ambassador to a distant land. In the middle of Central Asia he and his manservant, played by Omar Sharif, stumble upon a camp of Norsemen. The Norse are called back to help their countrymen battle a terrorizing foe, known as Eaters of the Dead and because of a prophecy calling for a thirteenth warrior, not from among the Norse, Ibn is kidnapped and taken to the northern end of Scandinavia. "I liked the mystery in the story," says Antonio Banderas, discussing his attraction to the project. "These guys are fighting against an enemy and through circumstances that puts them together as one group. They are from different races and have different opinions about life, and I think that is one of the greatest themes that comes through in the story. I also liked the fact that this is an action movie, and that, even within the action, the story deals with concepts of life and friendship that are part of our everyday lives. At the beginning [Ibn] is an immature man and is always upset with everything, over-reacting to circumstances. When he meets up with these warriors he later has a humbling look at himself. The journey becomes an initiation process for Ibn into being a man and into being a better person. I think it's good for him and makes for an interesting story as well." The film is filled with details of Norse life and customs, punctuated by the contrast of Ibn's Islamic view.

The film's director, John McTiernan, director of action films, "Die Hard" and "The Hunt for Red October", sums up his interest in Crichton's version of the tale. 

Left: Novelist/Producer Michael Crichton (left) discusses a sciene with actor Dennis Storhoi.

"I liked the notion that we could do an action film with a different background. When I was a kid, one of the things that I always found fascinating about going to the movies was the way it could take you to a world you didn't know, to time periods that you can't visit in any other way. Particularly as the world becomes more homogeneous, it pleases the child in me to be able to go to some genuinely different places."

Accuracy is always challenging. "When you approach a period film, you have to recreate everything," explains director/producer McTiernan. "If we were doing an action sequence on a street in Los Angeles, we would just pick the location and fill in the blanks. But with this film we have to fill in every single thing."

"For casting the lead role of Ibn, we had Antonio Banderas in mind from the start," says McTiernan. "He is a versatile and very involving actor, and I think he is someone whom an audience can enjoy and believe in as they take this extraordinary adventure with him. Our approach to casting the warriors was that we wanted to find as many Scandinavian actors as possible. The other criteria for our search was that we wanted to find big and tall men for these roles," McTiernan continues. "I think the average height for the twelve guys is about 6 foot 6 inches tall. Antonio is not a small man, but we wanted him to seem small around all of the other people."

The actors put in four solid weeks of training in swordsmanship and learning to handle and work with the English Shire horses ridden by the Norsemen. They are significantly larger than normal horses . The actors practiced honing the several languages and accents needed. The result is a well portrayed group of unified, skilled warriors.

While extensive research into the time period is evident, filmmakers were also aware that their goal was to create the background for an action feature and didn't always stay strictly within their own research findings. With an aim to create an authentic feel and environment for the story the team took into account contemporary audiences own connotations they bring to the theater with them and stayed as accurate as possible. McTiernan began to scout for an ideal location for the principal environment two years before the shooting began. Today much of Norway is farmland with no original forest left. McTiernan imagined that the Norway of 1000 years ago was not unlike the Pacific Northwest is now. He flew hundreds of miles of coastline and eventually found a spot on the north coast of Vancouver Island, near Campbell River at Elk Bay.

"The location was surrounded by 50 miles of forest in every direction and that was the world I was trying to depict," explains McTiernan. "These human's homes existed in a tiny pocket in the middle of a vast, unknown, frightening and probably dangerous world. There is a humorous expression in the story, ŒThe deeper you go in the forest, the more things there are to eat your horse.' It was sort of a funny way of saying that it is scary out there."

The remoteness of the site presented some mammoth hurdles. Producer, Ned Dowd, recounts the the enormity of the job. "The nearest town was 30 miles away. On one day we had 200 horseman, 300 villagers and 50 Norse warriors and their stunt doubles, as well as the filming crew of sometimes three hundred people. We had to transport them, feed them, clothe them and figure out how it would all work. It was a wonderful challenge." 

Right: On location with Director John McTiernan (center) as he decides the action for the next take.

In order to accommodate McTiernan's plan for filming almost every building on the site had to work as both an interior and exterior set, not simply as a facade of scenery. The film has a far different quality and feel to it than a studio shot film. "Building something amidst all the elements is much more exciting," enthuses production designer, Wolf Kroeger. "The terrain was huge and hard to get a hold of at first, but it also brought everything alive."

The construction of the Great Hall, the main log longhouse took thirteen weeks of work by over 200 carpenters. Wide planks with the bark still on them were needed to complete the structure. Since such planks are not standard supply they created their own sawmill in addition to having two others contracted. The Great Hall is 12,000 square feet. Over 500 tons of wood were used for its construction. Numerous other village dwellings surround the hall on the set.

In addition three ships were needed for the story. At first, in pre-production it was assumed they would take existing boats and put a scenery arrangement around them. However, it turned out more functional to actually build the ships as they had been built a thousand years before. "We eventually built a 95-foot ocean-going vessel, a 95-foot river boat, as well as a 65-foot smaller boat," Ned Dowd notes. "They were all built to scale in terms of the ships of that period, with 18 oars on each side."

Local carvers, including the renowned Native American carver Max Chickite, were hired to carve totem poles for Hrothgars's settlement. Using their own techniques, they exchanged their traditional forms for Nordic motifs, creating stunning additions to the set.

The sheer numbers, in terms of humans in the film is staggering. Many Nordic people in British Columbia were willing to be background players or extras. Some of the largest scenes had 200 attacking horseman. A couple of equestrian schools were set up to train them. Since it was a period film everyone had to be put through make-up, hair and wardrobe. Various crews worked for as much as six hours before the cameras rolled. For the big crowd scenes everyone got dirtied up and goofed up their hair. "We had the best group of extras on this film," notes make-up designer, Jeff Dawn. "They were so eager to work and so excited to get dirty every day. There are actually products, such as Clean-Dirt (trademark sign), to do this sort of thing. They seemed to love it, actually."

Another major element of the film was assigned to costume designer Kate Harrington. She and her co-designers, Sandi Blackie and Nancy Duggan had the enormous task of researching, designing and creating hundreds of costumes for the various cultures depicted in the story. "Every costume in this film was handmade," Harrington says. "Every single piece was started with cloth that would have been available in that time period, and then sewn together by our team. Nothing was purchased from a costume house. All the fabrics were dyed and hand sewn. We even had people making our own chain-mail armor. The shoes the warriors wore were made by a cobbler in the authentic style of the times."

Sandi Beck looks back at the colossal task, "At one time we had over 200 people working in three different shifts going 24 hours a day to prepare, sew and age the materials and costumes for the hundreds of extras and cast members. Multiple copies of the costumes had to be made for stunt doubles and for principals as well. When we finally got into shooting, we were dressing 160 people on a daily basis. One day we dressed 525 people...we did it in four hours and fifteen minutes and we were laughing all the way."

"Even the wools that we got were treated with acids to make the colors correct for the time period," continues Blackie. "We created turbans and flowing dresses, leather skirts, and used gold embroidery, canvases, silks, brocades and every imaginable resource we could find and invent."

Close to sixty craftsman worked under propmaster, Grant Swain. None of the props came straight from a store into production without modification. "The shovels and weapons and hammers and maces were forged by blacksmiths," says Swain. "We created individual saddles and swords and shields for each of the warriors, to make them distinctive and fitting with their characters. The bridles and the tack for their horses also had to be custom made."

Head animal wrangler and trainer John Scott had his own challenges. First of all, he needed close to two hundred head of fjord horses, which are native to Norway. Along with over thirty wranglers he trained the horses to work with riders. But then, he also had to accustom them to seeing fire and torches so they wouldn't become spooked during filming. The horses were fitted with special shoes to protect their hooves from the rough terrain.

"For the setting where Ibn first meets the warriors, we were looking for a sweeping vista that was plausibly out of Central Asia, a thousand years ago," explains McTiernan. What he chose was an area that contains one of the rarest ecosystems in Canada. The grassland area and the riverbank hold significant historic importance to the Native Americans in the area. "We had to work out a way of filming that had a very soft footprint, so that once we were finished, everything would, in effect, disappear," McTiernan notes. There was no road to the area so everything, from construction material, set dressing, props, camera gear, actors, crew, horses and the Norsemen's ships all had to be flown in. Additionally, 25 camels, both Bactrains, with two humps and Dromedaries with one hump, were imported to the site.

"Since they came from zoos and game farms, none of the camels had traveled more than half a mile in a month, so they needed to be conditioned in preparation for filming," explains wrangler, John Scott. "Our camel trainers took them to a race track and started them out with about three laps and eventually got them up to 20 laps. It's like conditioning an athlete. You have to get their respiratory systems and their legs in shape in order to handle the action in the film."

"Technology certainly changes quickly, but the way that people behave within cultures does not change quickly at all," McTiernan notes. "I took an attitude with these characters that they were real people who probably didn't think or behave much differently than most of us. It is interesting not only to see what has changed, but also what has not."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cynthea Cameron is a freelance writer residing in Tucson. She breeds and owns Irish Wolfhounds and welcomes your comments, questions and ideas. Feel free to contact her by mail in care of Chivalry Sports or by email: highlandpeacock@theriver.com

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