How To Train Your Dragon

How To Train Your Dragon is an animated movie that gives notable reference to a time period largely misrepresented in popular culture as well as the cinematic fantasy world. The Viking era is a time period that most people think of when they see horned helmets or spears with leather wrappings. Most people place images of dragons in the Viking era as well or perhaps even ships that actually do resemble a type of ship that was used in the Viking era like the Oseberg Ship represented below. With that said however, most people have no idea what that time frame actually looked like and thus their imaginative world is populated with images of Odin and large brutish people that spoke in rough English (maybe with a Scottish accent?), drank too much, and killed things. How To Train Your Dragon portrays that image beautifully.
The movie represents the life of a group of Vikings that are at odds with a sizable population of dragons that attack and destroy their settlements and food supplies. The goal and purpose of being a Viking in this movie is to kill dragons and take care of your family. To be strong and courageous and do what you're supposed to do; namely, kill dragons and protect your family. All seems wrong with the main character of the movie, Hiccup, as he seems to value things much differently than the cookie cutter version the vikings hope him to be. Hiccup finds him self unequipped to follow the Viking way of killing dragons and providing for his family as he is abnormally small and gentle. When faced with the opportunity to kill a dragon, Hiccup fails to follow through and actually ends up befriending the dragon instead and thus the chaos of the conflict between Hiccup and the rest of the Vikings dominates the rest of the movie.
The movie though entertaining, bases very little in actual historical fact and plays more to the common perception (misconception) of the time period that all are more comfortable with and hold high expectation to see. Examples of this are found throughout the movie from their helmets (Viking helmets actually didn't have horns), their accents (Vikings weren't Scottish...), their daily activities (Viking were more concerned with the growth of their rule and wealth), etc. If you place the images of How To Train Your Dragon next to anything else in history, you'll find more connections with the Norse gods than you will with any other physical reality (an image of Odin and his ravens is provided for your reference below). The weaponry, clothing, housing, hobbies and personalities seem to come from Norse god folk tale than they do from actual historicity.
With this critique in mind, the movie never claims to be historical non-fiction and thus takes liberties with elements of the movie (the most outrageous has to be their accents... I mean come on...). The movie is quite entertaining and supplies a beautiful movie but a terrible history book so watch it to feel the human emotion within and not to study for an exam!
  

References

How to Train Your Dragon. Dir. Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders. Perf. Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, T.J. Miller, Kristen Wiig, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Dreamworld, 2010. 

How To Train Your Dragon. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2017.  

Oseberg Ship. Digital image. Feminae. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2017. 

Odin. Digital image. Fandom. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2017.