Janson Media today announced the release of Vikings: Journey to New Worlds to television markets worldwide. This 40-minute Giant Screen Film, recently converted to HDTV, is now available for worldwide television licensing for the first time. The documentary provides a comprehensive portrait of the Vikings, exploring their historical and cultural impact as well as their technological and scientific achievements. Audiences take a cinematic adventure through the lands that the Vikings settled and explored, including Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland.
The Vikings historical ascent is believed to have begun at Lindisfarne, England in 793 A.D. with a raid on a Christian monastery. The image of marauding “heathens from the North” remains the common portrait of Vikings even today. While the brutality of their history is undeniable, the truth about the Vikings is far more complex. This film unveils the dynamic culture and lasting contributions this civilization made to modern society.
Highly detailed computer-generated imagery and maps demonstrate how the Vikings journeyed south and east from Scandinavia, with Swedes conquering lands across what is now eastern Russia and Danes taking what is today Normandy in France and much of the British Isles. Traveling westward across uncharted waters, the film follows the North Atlantic Sagas - featuring the famous Erik the Red and his son Leif Eriksson and their respective travels to Iceland, Greenland, and, eventually, North America. Ever since humankind began to wander from the cradle of civilization in Africa and the Middle East, migration had primarily been toward the east, through Asia and across the Bering Strait into the Americas. At the Atlantic coast, human migration ended - until the Vikings sailed westward into the unknown. Here, after Leif the Lucky leads an expedition in the year 1000 to the New World, humankind finally completes the full circle around the earth.