How the World of How To Train Your Dragon Has Changed

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Some movies have epic worldbuilding. Others have a better plot but hardly any world development. I have come across movies that have both, but one particular trilogy has built a fascinating world and shows how it has changed as the series progressed.

The How to Train Your Dragon trilogy is set in a fictional Viking world where dragons and Vikings fight with each other. After a young Viking named Hiccup meets and trains a Night Fury named Toothless, they team up to prove that dragons and Vikings can coexist.

As a long-time fan of the series, I've always been excited to see how much the world of HTTYD has changed since the last movie. As the season’s change, so does the world - let’s journey there to find out how it has changed!

Life on Berk: Before and After Dragons Moved In

"This is Berk. It's twelve days North of hopeless, and a few degrees South of freezing to death. It's located solidly on the Meridian of Misery.” - Hiccup, How To Train Your Dragon

The Isle of Berk, also known as Berk, is a small island located in the Barbaric Archipelago and has been inhabited by the Hairy Hooligan Tribe for seven generations. It's got a lot of dense woods, waterfalls, streams, and cliffs.

In the first movie, the main character Hiccup says that “it snows nine months of the year and hails the other three," which means that Berk suffers from perpetual winter most of the year. While the way Hiccup describes the weather is not directly seen, we can assume that heavy storms and snowfall hit the Isle of Berk very hard.

The island may be old, but the architecture is relatively new and well built. The image above shows the village of the Hairy Hooligan tribe that suffers from constant dragon attacks.

Because of the dragon fire, the Vikings living there have to repair their homes and buildings.

Through the acts of Hiccup and the other Dragon riders in HTTYD1, Berk became a place where dragons and Vikings could coexist.

When the dragons came to live in Berk, structures were constructed to meet their needs. These structures, such as the Dragon Stables, which was designed to house the numerous dragons on Berk, are a significant example of how Berk changed after the events of the first movie.

It seems like dragons have a nice home on Berk. There are feeding stations, a dragon wash, and even more amenities.

There's also dragon racing! Wow!

Life for Vikings and dragons on Berk is definitely better, with all the facilities that dragons can enjoy, and plenty of Vikings caring for and training them.

 

Dragon Utopia and the Hidden World

Berk has improved a lot over the series, becoming more than a home for dragons and Vikings - by the third movie, it has become a Dragon Utopia!

Hiccup has fulfilled his great dream of creating a happy home where dragons can live peacefully. He and the riders also bring new dragons to the island.

The more dragons who come to Berk, the more overcrowded it gets. It's not necessarily the problem of dragons living there. It's the problem of how big some of them are and how much space they take up.

Having so many dragons on a small island could pose a problem, so to solve it the series introduces the Hidden World.

It's a gateway to the world of dragons, where they all come from and live in secret from the outside world. Apparently, it's located at the edge of the earth, a place with coral and bright, shiny crystals hanging from massive cave ceilings. It is really a beautiful place for dragons to live in and raise their families there.

We’ve travelled so far, we've seen so much. Will you return to the world of HTTYD again someday?

Seeing the world of How to Train Your Dragon changing as the series progressed showed me how my world can change over time, and how change can affect the people living there. I think it’s a very cool tip to have, readers!

Watch the movies if you're interested in finding out more about the worldbuilding. If you want to know about the books that inspired them check out author Cressida Cowell's website!

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Ashley Lalonde

Ashley Lalonde is a student at Algonquin College. In her spare time, she enjoys watching Asian dramas, playing video games, and writing her own fanfiction and original stories.

It’s getting hot in here – You might want to peel off some layers!

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My aunt G gave me a Karen Marie Moning (KMM) paperback for my birthday a while ago. I haven’t properly thanked her for the umm, addiction. Aunt G is only eight years older than me. She has been my role model for defiant habits like dying my hair, smoking pot and getting tattoos but mostly for being kickass. I guess you could say I’m the Danny to her MacKayla.  

The cover of Beyond the Highland Mist, KMM’s first novel in the Highlander series, ought to have clued me in that aunt G was passing on a kind of substance. I smoked through the whole series like a flash fire. I’m not sure I paused long enough to crease the spines!  

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The blaze got to me on a deeper level in the Fever series.

I had to plan rest breaks to make it through. I have an appreciation for hot people, and this series is full of them. I’m also a dreamer, and the WORLDBUILDING begged me to slow down, to notice. The virtual world morphed with every page I turned.

The New York Times Book Review called KMM’s worldbuilding “extensive” and “inspired.” I couldn’t have said it better! In an earlier post, My TOP 5 all-time favourite worlds, I stated that I wouldn’t want to BE literally in this Fever world, but I recant that. Maybe the months of social distancing for the coronavirus have made me crave some otherworldly adventure. It’s been a long pandemic. I’d pay to “sift” into High Voltage right about now.

The world of the Fever series is like recurring dreams I’ve had. It’s uncanny. Holes show up in the ground out of nowhere, rooms relocate themselves, and I don’t quite know where I am. Are these universal human nightmares? I’m beginning to think they are.  

As a reader, I felt as disoriented and anxious as the protagonist, MacKayla Lane, seemed to be. Despite continual shifts to the physical world, it all held together convincingly. I can’t help wondering if KMM knew what she was building when she jotted her first notes. 

Building blocks from the Highlander series exist in the Fever series, although the action moved from Scotland to Ireland. The MacKeltar clan, the compact between races, the Celtic mythology, the Druids, the Fairy, the POWER all carried forward – and then some.  

Sex is a huge part of this world, but so is survival. Fighting for life is primal, and this series is on fire with primal energy!

One place that’s dripping with heat is Chester’s Nightclub. I could dance until I died at that club. Between you and me, I would totally go snooping around between songs. I want to know what’s happening on all those other levels? What’s going on in the private rooms? And what mysteries Barrons and Ryodan are hiding?

Of course, if I survived a night at Chester’s, I would head straight for Barrons Books & Baubles in the morning. I don’t move as fast as Dani “Mega” O’Malley, but I wouldn’t waste a minute before checking out every notable location in this series. I would be so dead. Curiosity killed the cat, and I would be a dead cat.  

I like how Karen Marie Moning built worlds inside many of the characters. During the series, MacKayla’s insides expand downwards to a dark lake, and Dany goes to a place in her head that makes her move “mega” fast. Each book in KMM’s series is like stepping into a mirror in the Hall of All Days - worlds of their own yet somehow connected.  

I will read this series again and again. I like getting close to the fire!

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Kingdom of Shadow and Light – coming 23 February 2021  

Hey, KMM fans! Are you as psyched as I am for the next installment? 

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Marsha Masseau

I’m Marsha, an avid virtual-world-traveller! Digging into the fictional worlds – in books, plays and films – of other writers has become a passion. To my mind, every story fits a broader context, and I want to understand what makes them work or not.