Where Was Vikings: Valhalla Filmed? Filming Locations Explained

Netflix’s Vikings: Valhalla shares filming locations with its parent series, History Channel’s Vikings; here are the filming locations explained. Valhalla was created by Jeb Stuart but included Vikings creator Michael Hirst among its executive producers, and it’s the direct sequel of the History Channel series, although the events narrated in Valhalla happened around a century after those depicted in Vikings season 6. Vikings: Valhalla season 1 consists of eight episodes, which will all be simultaneously released on Netflix on February 25.

History’s Vikings focused on the early years of the Viking Age, even depicting the Lindisfarne raid in Vikings season 1, which is commonly established as the raid that marks the beginning of the age among historians. Valhalla is set towards the Viking Age’s end, however, roughly between 1002 and 1066. The defeat of King of Norway, Harald “Hardrada” Sigurdsson by the Saxon King Harold Godwinson in the Battle of Stamford Bridge is the event set as the end of the Viking Age. Hardrada and King Godwinson’s father, Earl Godwin, are both main characters of Vikings: Valhalla, respectively played by Leo Suter and David Oakes. Valhalla also focuses on Leif Erikson (Sam Corlett), son of Erik the Red and the first European to set foot in North America, and Freydís Eiríksdóttir (Frida Gustavsson), his sister, who will become a leader of the Old Norse religion against soaring Christianity among Scandinavians.

Parts of Vikings: Valhalla are set in Kattegat, the same settlement as many of the events in Vikings. Fittingly, then, Valhalla is also filmed in the same location the 2013 History Channel series, being filmed almost entirely in County Wicklow, Ireland. The Irish county is not only the home of Ashford Studios, where the village of Kattegat was recreated, but also to Lough Tay, where the Kattegat settlement was first built before being moved to the studios. As it’s surrounded by the Wicklow mountains, the lake of Lough Tay could easily pass for a Scandinavian fjord.

Unlike Vikings, Valhalla’s listed filming locations on IMDb include only County Wicklow and Dublin, Ireland. Although it was the same for the production of Vikings seasons 1 and 2, seasons 3 and 4 saw some of the filming locations moved to Canada, which became home to the scenes focusing on Bjorn Ironside (Alexander Ludwig) and his quest for independence and his own Viking legacy apart from that of his father, Ragnar (Travis Fimmel). Vikings season 5 and 6 introduced other new filming locations in Iceland and Morocco, with the first used to depict Gustaf Skarsgård’s Floki’s trip to Iceland and the second that served as Sicily, one of the areas visited by Bjorn on his trip to the Mediterranean.

Whether County Wicklow and, more generally, Ireland will continue to serve as Kattegat, Britain, and North America for Valhalla just as it did for Vikings seasons 1 and 2, viewers will surely see more of it. Jeb Stuart confirmed in January that Valhalla season 2 had already wrapped production, despite the series having yet to premiere on Netflix. He also confirmed that Valhalla season 3 was already being worked on. However many seasons of Vikings: Valhalla come to Netflix, they will undoubtedly provide an epic retelling of Viking heroes, just as Vikings did before it.

Vikings: Valhalla season 1 will release on Netflix on February 25.

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