As I made my way from the cinema back to my home, I felt like a time-traveller from the past might feel. I wouldn't want to live in the 10th century CE, of course, especially after watching this film, but, at the same time, for all the brutality The Northman shows us, it also places it within a world that was still mostly green, and where natural landscapes were allowed to take whatever shape they pleased, rather than deformed for human use. So, however much I love the city I chose to make my home, on the walk back from the cinema it struck me as ugly and sad, possibly for the first time. I felt mournful at the sheer amount of asphalt that had been poured over a city that was once known to have as many trees as it did houses. People's outfits also seemed absurd, and the devices they held in their hands confounding. I might as well have been the long-dead king the film's hero finds sitting in his burial chamber, come back to life and hating every second of it. Even the heat of the sun felt wrong on my skin.

It took me a while to realign myself with the present.