Against the Ice is Netflix’s latest biographical survival film, which featured the reunion of two major Game of Thrones stars. The film focused on the real-life Arctic expedition of two Danish explorers, Ejnar Mikkelsen and Iver Iversen, in East Greenland. The expedition began in 1909 to bring back previous explorers’ bodies from a prior journey. However, Ejnar and Iver discovered their crew members left without them, and they remained on the island until their rescue in 1912. Their story is also recounted in Mikkelsen’s 1957 autobiography Two Against the Ice.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, best recognized for his role as the one-handed swordsman Jaime Lannister in HBO’s Game of Thrones, portrayed Mikkelsen in the film and also co-wrote the screenplay. At his side, Peaky Blinders actor Joe Cole portrayed his exploring companion Iversen. In addition to Cole, Charles Dance was also added to the cast as Minister Neergard, Denmark’s Council President at the time. This was the second time Coster-Waldau and Dance appeared together in a production, as Dance played Tywin Lannister, Jaime’s dad in Game of Thrones.
In addition to the location of previous explorers’ bodies, the expedition team traveled to Greenland to deny American claim to a certain portion of the country. However, the initial short trip turned into three years. Against the Ice depicted Mikkelsen and Iversen’s various hardships throughout their three-year stint in Greenland’s frigid temperatures before they were rescued. The explorers faced adversities like the deaths of several of their sled dogs and their starvation, which led to their attempt to eat a deceased sled dog’s liver. The pair also survived a polar bear attack and pushed their mental sanity to its limits after their abandonment.
Although it was nothing compared to the hardships the real-life Danish explorers faced, the cast and crew of Against the Ice also had their fair share of obstacles throughout the filming process. They got stranded in remote Iceland during a snowstorm. If that wasn’t enough, director Peter Flinth originally wanted an actual polar bear for the polar bear attack scene, but that proved realistically impossible. Flinth settled and recruited the heavyweight judo champion of Iceland to stand in for the CGI polar bear, but this also wasn’t without problems. “I got a small concussion that day… I let my head go and he really went for it, throwing me around like a rag doll,” revealed Coster-Waldau in an interview with Deadline.
Arguably, this was Coster-Waldau’s greatest role since his tenure as Jaime Lannister on Game of Thrones. Coster-Waldau excellently portrayed how his character’s mental health was affected, especially during the scenes where Mikkelsen hallucinated his love interest, Naja Holms. The scene where Iversen had to take the gun away from Mikkelsen particularly had viewers on the edge of their seats. And while they don’t have many scenes together, it’s cool to see Coster-Waldau reunite with his former on-screen father.
To see Jaime Lannister (sort of) reunite with his father, Against the Ice is available to stream on Netflix.
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