Against the Ice is now streaming on Netflix and is led by Game of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen as he explores Greenland in an attempt to disprove the United State’s claim to the northeast section of the country.
“In 1909, Denmark’s Arctic Expedition led by Captain Ejnar Mikkelsen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) was attempting to disprove the United States’ claim to Northeast Greenland. This claim was based on the assumption that Greenland was broken up into two different pieces of land. Leaving his crew behind with the ship, Mikkelsen embarks on a journey across the ice with his inexperienced crew member, Iver Iversen (Joe Cole),” says the synopsis. “The two men succeed in finding the proof that Greenland is one island, but returning to the ship takes longer and is much harder than expected. Battling extreme hunger, fatigue and a polar bear attack, they finally arrive to find their ship crushed in the ice and the camp abandoned. Hoping to be rescued, they now must fight to stay alive. As the days grow longer, their mental hold on reality starts to fade, breeding mistrust and paranoia, a dangerous cocktail in their fight for survival. Against the Ice is a true story of friendship, love and the awe-inspiring power of companionship.”
ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Against the Ice writer, producer, and star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau about its extreme weather causing him to be stuck on a glacier, the beauty of Greenland and Iceland, and much more.
Tyler Treese: Nikolaj, congrats on the film Against the Ice. It was wonderful that you guys didn’t use much green screen, it just looks amazing. I know you wrote the script with Joe Derrick and you previously wrote Wildside. So as a creative that also produced this, how fulfilling was it to work on this film from all these different angles?
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau: It was incredibly fulfilling and I’m very, very proud of the movie. From the beginning, we wanted to do everything in camera, on location in the Arctic for a bunch of reasons. But most importantly, because we think it looks better, it’s more authentic. You can look at the actors, you can see the cold, you can feel it. Obviously, we had to use VFX, there’s a polar bear attack that I didn’t wanna risk with a real polar bear, and other little bits, but everything is on location. I’m glad that you like it. I think it looks [great] and the D.P. did an incredible job. There are shots in this movie that I don’t think anyone has seen before, just in terms of having the dogs being on the sea ice in Greenland. It’s special. I’m proud of it.
I guess the downside to not having that green screen is that you wound up getting stuck on a glacier during filming. That makes for an amazing story now, but how were you feeling when it happened?
We had a storm and we were told that the weather was gonna get better. Then it just got worse and worse and worse. Then suddenly to get told that we had to evacuate, I was kinda laughing because it was so intense and it was so extreme to suddenly you find yourself in a tiny cabin with a hundred people. We had to roll call because in case someone was missing, we had to have a search and rescue team sent out. I never had that happen on a movie before.
Oh, mind you, I never had on day one of the shoot, everyone had to have a whistle on you at all times in case you fell into a crevice. Never had that happen to me before, and there was a lot of firsts I’ve never had to travel two hours, when we were in Greenland, on a snowmobile to go to set. I’ve never shot in negative 28 degrees. There were a lot of firsts, but I also have to say there was not a single day on this shoot, I think we shot 60 days, where I didn’t enjoy it, where it wasn’t fun, where it wasn’t spectacular, and where it wasn’t cold.
It’s such a uniquely shot film and you’ve been this amazing ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme. You’ve done a lot of work raising awareness for global warming. In this film, like you were mentioning, we see these beautiful landscapes in Iceland and Greenland. Just being out there in the wilderness, did that really underscore how important it is to preserve the environment?
That is important. There’s no question about it. In this film, dogs are very important and as they are in Greenland now and the northwest of Greenland that is still the way you get around in the winter. That’s how they find food, they use the dogs to go out and hunt. When we were shooting on the sea ice, it looks and it feels so enormous, but when we talked to the locals, they said, “Well, just 30 years ago, at that time of year, it would be three meters thick, and now it’s less than a meter.” That’s just in 30 years. It’s a real problem that the world is heating up.
These worlds will change, the whole way of life in that part of the world is gonna change, which is bad enough for them. What’s also bad for us, of course, is that the ice cap of Greenland is melting. I know we are not talking about this, but there was just a report that came out the other day from the U.N. on climate change. It basically says that, which every report has done over the last 20 years, that what we thought was worst-case scenario five years ago… Well, it’s worse than that and we have to act. So, yeah, thanks for mentioning that, but climate action is very important and obviously we live in a world now where there’s a lot of horrible things happening. It’s difficult to take it in, and something like climate change has such a long timeframe. It’s difficult to keep the attention to it for so long, especially when you have wars breaking out, but it is a real threat to all of us.
You mentioned working with the dogs and I know animals can be a nightmare on set.
Also, I should say because I’ve been asked about this, I can say no animals were hurt during the making of Against the Ice. Just to put that out there.
How was it like working with them?
They’re amazing. These dogs are incredible. I mean they love what they do. They love the work. You can see the excitement when they go out and when they pull on those sleds. They’re so powerful. They’re so strong. Obviously, especially in Greenland that we were working with the local hunters and their dogs. They’re not pets. Some of them you can pet, but you should not. You don’t just approach a sled dog without permission from the owner because it might literally bite your hand off.
Yeah, we got pretty serious in this talk, but to lighten it up a bit, you’ve played characters that have done some amazing feats in the past, so how do you think Jaime Lannister would fare in the Alabama expedition here?
He wouldn’t. He would just be stuck. His golden hand would suddenly get frozen, then he would get stuck. That would be it. He would be done. No, I don’t know. I have no idea. Probably some magical dragon stuff would happen and I don’t know. He’s too far north of the wall here.
Mikkelsen had this amazing career as an explorer, but he is not super well known. Looking him up and talking to his family. How did that impact your portrayal as an actor?
Oh, it had a huge impact also on the writing. We spoke with the family. We had to get the rights to his story from the family, and then we spent some time with the great-granddaughter of Ejnar Mikkelsen. She told me invaluable information. We knew that he got married a year after he returned, but he doesn’t write about this woman in the book at all. He doesn’t mention her. It was kind of a secret, but she told me that they were dating and he carried her picture in a locket, and we used that in this movie. Just hearing her talk. She remembered him from when she was a kid and that was really, really helpful.
It was also one of the things when we showed the film, we screened the film for the family two weeks ago. I was really nervous because of course this means so much to them. We wanted to honor him, but also we wanted to make an entertaining movie. There are things in the movie that we [created]. All the dialogue, of course, is something we came up with. After the screening, the [director of photography] was there and he told me he was standing and suddenly this little lady [Mikkelsen’s great granddaughter] comes out and, she’s not that young anymore, but she jumped into his arms and just screamed “Thank you!” That made us all really happy and really proud.
