When a movie company contacted the Värmlands Viking Center in central Sweden in late 2024 and said it wanted to hire a replica Viking ship for a project called “Charlie’s Tale,” Peter Olausson, the center’s chairman, readily agreed. It was not every day that the small historical attraction got a chance to play a part in a Hollywood project.
When the ship was returned damaged a few months later, Olausson recalled, he wasn’t that worried. The movie company was contractually obliged to pay for repairs.
Now, “Charlie’s Tale” has appeared onscreen — it is actually Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” which wanted Viking ships despite being set in the world of ancient Greek myth. And Olausson said in an interview that his enjoyment watching that “fantastic movie” this week was a little soured because Universal still owed him $6,000 for the repairs.
That’s “nothing” for a Hollywood studio, Olausson said. “The Odyssey” took in about $264.1 million in ticket sales over its opening weekend.
A spokesman for Universal Pictures did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Although the Vikings are often most associated in the popular imagination with Norway and Denmark, Sweden is equally proud of its Viking heritage.
Olausson, 70, said that in 1993 a group of Viking enthusiasts in Varmland, a region in central Sweden, decided to build a replica ship using traditional methods so that visitors could row and sail just as their ancestors once did.
The group completed the nearly 60-foot vessel, named the Glad av Gillberga, in 1998, and ever since have used it to take school groups and other visitors out on the water. The center also includes a small replica village and museum, Olausson said.
In 2024, Olausson said, the center signed the contract with Charlie’s Tale Limited to use the vessel as one of several modern Viking-style ships used in the film. That company is a subsidiary of Universal Pictures, according to British business records.
Under part of the contract seen by The New York Times, Charlie’s Tale promised to return the vessel “in good condition” and “replace or repair any injury” to it aside from “reasonable wear and tear.”
When the boat returned from filming in the Mediterranean, Olausson said, there was a crack in its hull, parts of the rigging needed replacing and it desperately needed repainting.
Volunteers set about repairing the ship, and last December Olausson sent an invoice to Neil Andrea, his contact at Charlie’s Tale, who was also the marine coordinator for “The Odyssey,” according to IMDb. The invoice was for $6,000 — a sum that Olausson said included materials but not labor, since the work was carried out by volunteers.
In his email, Olausson said he had dropped the requested amount from $9,000 in the hope of getting the matter “settled before Christmas.”
Olausson acknowledged that his contacts might not be in charge of such payments, and said that he had no idea how to go about seeking the money now, aside from discussing the matter with the news media. The need to repair the ship had delayed the use of it this summer, he added, leading to further losses of revenue for the small Viking center.
Despite the troubles, Olausson said that he had loved watching “The Odyssey” at a movie theater in Stockholm. He had seen his boat about 10 times onscreen, he said, largely in early scenes as Odysseus’ flotilla leaves the siege of Troy. “Of course, you can’t see any real detail,” Olausson said, “but for me it was, ‘Ah, there’s Glad! There’s my ship.’”
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