Photographer David Yarrow waited in the wings as Norway's captain Martin Odegaard sprinted from Arsenal's Champions League final parade in north London to a solo shoot, racing to complete a vision that would unite 26 football players in Viking dress. It was an unconventional way to prepare for the World Cup, but it spoke to a photographer's obsession: creating a portrait where a player worth £200 million occupies exactly the same amount of the frame as a third-string goalkeeper valued at £250,000.
The idea had roots in an earlier moment of inspiration. During an international break in 2023, Yarrow shot Erling Haaland alone in Viking costume, waist-deep in an Oslo fjord. As Yarrow himself noted, Haaland required little embellishment. "If you had to choose one sportsperson in the world that doesn't need much hair and make up to look like a Viking, it's Erling Haaland," he said. "And so it was easy to shoot with him." That solo image resonated so powerfully with the Norwegian Football Association that four months before the World Cup, they approached Yarrow with a bold proposal: photograph the entire squad in the same epic style. Haaland, described as "the unofficial voice of the team," championed the idea.
What followed was a logistical puzzle worthy of a military campaign. Odegaard, the Premier League champion who would become the shoot's anchor, was in Budapest when the rest of the squad gathered. Yarrow waited until after the Arsenal parade, then captured Odegaard separately in conditions that matched the original shoot—cloudy skies over Oslo—so his figure could be seamlessly woven into the larger frame without technical compromise. The meticulous approach reflected Yarrow's deeper conviction about team portraiture.
"The one thing that was important about that picture is if, in the Norwegian squad, you've got someone that's worth £200m and then you've got Watford's goalkeeper that's worth £250,000, the third-in-line goalie – that they both occupy the same amount of the frame," Yarrow told BBC Sport. "That's very important for me. That it was not seen to be Haaland and Odegaard and 24 others – it was important to foster a sense of team."
The final portrait now hangs beside a table tennis table at Norway's base in Greensboro, North Carolina. It joins a growing gallery of Yarrow's historically inspired work: before the Ryder Cup last September, he photographed Team Europe in prohibition-era suits and fedoras in front of the Manhattan Bridge. That image raised more than a million dollars for Irish charities and became a talking point for golfers as they successfully retained the trophy against the United States.
Yarrow, born in Glasgow, attended Norway's 3-1 warm-up victory over Sweden as a guest, watching Jorgen Strand Larsen and Antonio Nusa find the net. He left convinced of the team's depth. "People think it's a team of two people and it's so not," he reflected. "It's a seriously good football team, from their wingers to their backs, and I think they'll go quite far in the tournament." For Yarrow, the portrait wasn't simply a photograph—it was a statement about collective strength, where every player, regardless of their market value, belonged equally to the frame.