Blóðlína follows the story of Magnhild, a female Viking warrior left to take charge of a small trading town after the death of her father. She must overcome opposition from her younger sister, Ingrid, an invasion from the neighbouring kingdom, led by King Ove and woes with her lover, Einar. Blóðlína focuses on what it means to be a leader, grief, patriarchy, feudalism and family.

 

What makes our musical unique is the fact that the percussive elements of our songs will be created by the clashing of swords in the fights on stage. We feel this will be an impressive spectacle  and one that will stick in the minds of the audiences at Edinburgh.

 

In September 2019, in a small Colchester living room. Marcus, Nathan and Vicky met for the first time. Brought together by a love of all things Viking, we chatted over mugs of tea, and rifled through the mountain of research Vicky had been collecting for a few years on female warriors throughout history. Inspired by their tales, and one caffeine fuelled piano jam session later Blóðlína: A Viking Fight Musical was born.

 

We parted ways and started to build the foundations of the show. We wrote our first song, marked out the plot and then... 2020 happened. Whilst the pandemic floored our plans to meet, in some ways it was the catalyst for the story coming together. With nothing else to do, we created songs and wrote out dialogue right into the heart of each night until we had a completed a first draft.

 

Fast forward a year and a half, and we were finally able to meet together again, putting together all of the pieces we'd collectively been developing over Zoom calls, Google drive documents and frantically garbled voice notes. When 2020 turned into 2021, we remotely gathered volunteers for a demo album, script read-throughs, and we had a more concrete idea of what the show would look like.

 

Blóðlína made its first live appearance to a masked-up audience at a scratch night in May 2021 at The Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch and from that reception we knew that it had legs. As the world came back, and we steadily released songs, we were talking to producers and finding out how to take our show to the next level. We also created some 'Proof Of Concept' music videos as we realised that our show sometimes can't be communicated through words alone.

 

Now after two and a half years of development, we are ready to share our creation with the world.