Living with Nature in Rams (2015)

Recently I heard Norse writers and directors discussing how their mythology influenced their views of the natural world. One director mentioned the Norwegian film The Troll Hunter (2010), highlighting how the movie accurately presented their belief that trolls turn to stone under daylight, forming their country's many mountains. What struck me about the conversation was how this example and others pointed to the Norse relationship with nature. According to this director, they treasure and conserve the natural world because even the mountains live. Although The Troll Hunter does raw on Norse mythology and folktales, for me, the Icelandic film Rams (2015) more effectively illustrates the connections with nature exhibited in Norse myths.

In Rams, brothers Gummi (Sigurður Sigurjónsson) and Kiddi (Theodór Júlíusson) have severed all familial connections between them, even refusing to speak with one another. The only thing they have in common are the ancestral sheep-stock they raise on adjoining ranches.

It is only when a lethal disease infects Kiddi's sheep that the brothers find a way to reconnect. Although authorities order everyone in their secluded Icelandic valley to cull their herds, so the outbreak can be contained, the brothers ultimately join forces to protect a prized ram and a few precious sheep.

The brothers' strong relationship with nature is illustrated by their devotion to their sheep and to the land that sustains them. But the conclusion of the film most powerfully demonstrates the interdependent relationship they share with the natural world. Desperate to save the remaining sheep,   Gummi and Kiddi leave their anger behind them and herd the sheep into the mountains above their ranches. Together they battle snow, wind, and cold and survive only by adapting icy drifts into a shelter and stripping away all that's left of the civilization they left behind. Rams ends with a tableau highlighting the brothers' reentrance into both the natural world and familial relationships they now needed to live.