David Yarrow turns Norway’s World Cup portrait into a Viking saga

Norway’s World Cup sendoff looked less like a standard squad portrait and more like a scene from a myth, with 26 players dressed in Viking gear on a private beach near Oslo, longships in the background and Martin Ødegaard inserted later after missing the shoot for the Champions League final. David Yarrow titled the image “The Vikings are coming,” and the whole production was built to turn a routine team picture into a story about crossing the sea for glory.

That story choice is what gives the frame its punch. Instead of lining up the players for a flat, catalog-style team shot, Yarrow used a wider composition so every one of Norway’s 26 squad members felt equally present, from Erling Haaland to goalkeeper Egil Selvik. Yarrow said, “I like to take people outside of how they’re normally photographed,” and the result shows it. The setting, the costumes and the background all work together to make the portrait feel staged, but not stiff.

The landscape matters just as much as the styling. Part of the backdrop came from Viking Valley in Gudvangen, which helped sell the Nordic legend without making the image feel like a simple costume exercise. The beach location near Oslo gave the shoot room to breathe, while the longships anchored the visual narrative. For photographers, the lesson is clear: if the goal is a cinematic group portrait, the location has to do part of the storytelling before anyone even steps into frame.

Postproduction carried the concept across the finish line. Ødegaard, Norway’s captain, was not on the beach because he was playing in the Champions League final, so Yarrow left a space for him and added him digitally later. That kind of compositing only works when the base image is already carefully planned around spacing, sightlines and balance. In other words, the edit did not rescue the picture, it completed it.

The football backdrop made the mythology land harder. Norway reached the 2026 FIFA World Cup for the first time since France 1998, ending a 28-year absence, and FIFA credited Haaland with 16 goals in eight qualifying matches. Norway also finished UEFA qualifying with eight wins from eight and 37 goals, which made the Viking theme feel less like a gimmick and more like a victory lap. Yarrow has already pulled a similar theatrical move before, turning Team Europe’s Ryder Cup portrait into a mobster-style scene in front of the Brooklyn Bridge, a print that helped raise money for charity. Norway’s image fits that same playbook: sports portraiture as branded editorial, where set design, mythology and visual control matter as much as the badge on the shirt.