ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD EXPLAINS HOW HIS ENTIRE CAREER HAS LED TO THIS POINT: PLAYING A MAD-EYED VIKING PRINCELING IN ROBERT EGGERS’ BONE-CRUNCHING EPIC, THE NORTHMAN.
WORDS AND INTERVIEW BY HANNAH STRONG ILLUSTRATION BY TAVO MONTAÑEZ
When Alexander Skarsgård was a child, his family used to spend their summers on the idyllic Baltic island of Öland. Sweden’s second largest island is coincidentally home to their royal family’s summer residence. In a manner, the Skarsgårds form a dynasty of their own, with patriarch Stellan one of the most recognisable Swedish actors of all time, and four of his eight children – Alexander, Gustaf, Bill and Valter – also pursuing careers in film and television. In fact, it was a friend of his father who gave Alexander his first acting role at the tender age of seven, in Åke and His World (he played Kalle Nubb, the eponymous Åke’s best friend). But during his childhood holidays on Öland, he was more interested in the runestones that littered the island’s landscape.
“I remember looking at those runestones, and the inscriptions were telling tales of Viking expeditions down to Constantinople, and it just fascinated me tremendously,” he recalls down the line from Stockholm, where he’s spending time with his family before embarking on the press tour for The Northman. “Since then I nurtured this dream of one day looking at a great epic Viking movie.” With its ambitious scale and classic tale of betrayal and revenge, The Northman is the product of that whim, but it wasn’t the most straightforward path for Skarsgård to realise his simple childhood dream.
After playing the lead in a Swedish television movie as a teenager (Hunden som log aka The Dog That Smiled) Skarsgård found himself uncomfortable with being in the public eye, and told his parents he didn’t want to act anymore. He stayed out of the spotlight for seven years, completing his Swedish national service and, eventually, moving to England, where he attended Leeds Metropolitan University and studied English for six months. “I intentionally wanted to go to Leeds because I wanted the quintessential British experience,” he explains. “A lot of my friends went to London, and I knew that if I were to go to London I’d end up hanging out with tons of Swedes. Leeds was changing when I was there but it was quite a provincial town 20 years ago, and that was something I wanted. I didn’t want to go to a big cosmopolitan city, I wanted something very British.”
Yet the acting world proved a draw once again, and after his time in Leeds, Skarsgård moved to New York to study theatre. He returned to Stockholm six months late
