"The Vikings are Coming." That's the name photographer David Yarrow gave to his shoot of the Norway national squad — and he wasn't wrong about the timing. Before a single ball has been kicked in their first World Cup since 1998, Norway may have already produced one of the tournament's most memorable images.
The photos feature the entire squad posed on a beach in front of three longships, dressed in the kind of apparel their ancestors actually wore. Yarrow, the Scottish photographer who also shot Team Europe in prohibition-era suits ahead of the 2025 Ryder Cup, clearly has a type: iconic sports teams, theatrical settings, images that travel.
This one traveled.
Haaland looks born for this
Yarrow shot Erling Haaland individually in Viking dress back in 2023 at an Oslo fjord — that image was the seed for the whole team concept. The full squad version reportedly came together after Yarrow lobbied coach Ståle Solbakken and captain Martin Ødegaard, who squeezed the shoot in around a packed club schedule at Arsenal.
"Making him look like a warrior was one of the easier tasks of my career," Yarrow wrote of Haaland. That's not flattery — at 6'4" with a physique built for destruction, Haaland in Norse garb barely requires suspension of disbelief.
The wider context here matters more than the photos themselves, though. Norway hasn't been at a World Cup since France 1998 — 28 years of qualification misses, near-misses, and irrelevance on the global stage. Now they arrive with arguably the best squad in their history, grouped with France and Senegal in Group I, opening against Iraq on June 16 in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
More than a PR stunt
Yarrow described this squad as "one of the most fancied teams in the tournament." That's not empty promotion. A forward line built around Haaland, a midfield anchored by Ødegaard, and nearly three decades of World Cup hunger behind them — Norway's World Cup odds deserve genuine attention going into the group stage.
France remains the clear favourite in Group I, but Norway advancing to the knockouts is entirely plausible. How far they go after that depends on Haaland staying fit and clinical — which, given his 2024-25 club form, isn't much of a gamble.
The photoshoot will be forgotten the moment results start coming in. But right now, before a whistle has blown, Norway have announced themselves to a global audience who had largely stopped paying attention. That's not nothing for a team returning from a 28-year absence.
