Russian Vikings

I knew that there had been lots of Viking settlements in Russia, and even that "Rus" was the name of a legendary Viking, but I didn't know there was a Hollywood movie about them. Tonight's Friday movie was The 13th Warrior, based on a Michael Crichton novel with a very different name, and the story was basically Beowulf (!) while at the same time roughly based on an historical account of an embassy from Baghdad in 920 to the Vikings settled on the Volga. The movie was mostly set in a very familiar looking forest, and sure enough, it was mostly filmed in British Columbia.