In 1931, Americans George Melford and Lewis Varick Frissell collaborated to make The Viking, a film that would document the lives of Newfoundland seal hunters. The resulting film celebrates regional identity through myth and melodrama. It is a paradoxical work that strives for realism and anthropological authority and yet conversely serves as a heroic fantasy. Seeking to enhance the film with additional footage of the exotic landscape, co-director Frissell would die alongside 25 crew members in a tragic explosion. In this video essay, Stephen Broomer considers The Viking as a work of melodrama with a regional, documental focus, and as a sublime meta-spectacle that, in its final form, exploits the tragedy of its production.