We watched Argentina take on Austria; Lionel Messi scored two goals. The men were delighted. Messi, who is thirty-nine, remains the sport’s singular player. “They’ve been talking about who’s going to take the throne from Messi for ten years,” Kristjánsson said. “There’s ‘New Messi’s who’ve retired.” But, eventually, his time would be over. Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi’s great rival, who is forty-one and diminished, showed the danger of staying too long. “He reminds me more and more of Joe Biden,” Kristjánsson said. Of the new class of superstars—Kylian Mbappé of France, Lamine Yamal of Spain—Haaland, who is twenty-five, is unique. Messi is a short-king soccer genius who dominates the ball. Haaland is big and physical and goes long stretches without any touches. He usually scores in quick, lightning-strike attacks. His physicality obscures preternatural vision and instincts. “I once saw him celebrate before he scored,” Mørch said. “It was an easy tap-in, and he was, like, Oh, right, I have to do the goal first.”
Norway has leaned into Haaland’s Viking thing. The team staged an official photograph at the mouth of a fjord, with three longships and the players dressed like Norse warriors; Haaland held a sword. The government sent the team off to America with three hundred kilograms of Atlantic salmon and whitefish and a hundred kilos of Norwegian cheese. Norwegian fans have done the “Viking Row”—in which everyone sits down, someone bangs a drum, and everyone shouts “Ro!” and pretends to row, as if on a longship—in Times Square and on an escalator in Boston, where the team played its first game. It seems like an old tradition, but it was invented a few months ago, partly as a nod to Leif Eriksson’s reaching North America centuries before Columbus did.
Not everyone was happy with the Viking shtick. “There was a big debate,” Mørch said. “The critics said it’s cringe and right-wing coded, and associated with the Nazis.” Kristjánsson has met the complaints with eye rolls. “When Charlie Kirk was killed, Kash Patel said, ‘See you in Valhalla.’ That was weird because Kash Patel is Indian American, and Charlie Kirk was really, really Christian. No one is going to Valhalla there,” he said. “But it just happens to be our actual history.”
At MetLife Stadium, we went to a Norwegian Fan Fest at the horse track. Mørch and Kristjánsson were hounded. Kristjánsson signed someone’s soccer jersey. Mørch took constant selfies. I’ve known Mørch for years, but he’d never let on that he’d become a celebrity—folkelig, I guess. It was raining, but spirits were high. Bud Lights were bountiful. One guy had ripped off the horn from a plastic Viking helmet and was using it to chug beers. Two others hopped into a giant muddy puddle and did the Viking row. Everyone chanted, “Ro!”
The game began amid a drizzle. In person, a proper soccer pitch is surprisingly vast. It’s much bigger than a football field. The players look like tiny ships on a sea. Haaland almost appeared normal-sized. The Norwegians, in Viking style, went on the attack, but they weren’t organized defensively. They looked nervous. Periodically, the drum sounded, and we broke into the row.
At the hydration break, it was 0–0. Haaland had barely touched the ball—ponder and toil. Mainly, he lurked. Haaland can call to mind a shark circling dark waters. Mørch said he thinks of the pulsing strings from “Jaws.” In the forty-third minute, Marcus Holmgren Pedersen, an injury substitution from Hammerfest, a city above the Arctic Circle, scored a surprising goal: 1–0 Norway. Moments later, Haaland suddenly made one of his almost demented charges, at Senegal’s goalkeeper. He won the ball and shot from a tight angle but hit the post.
