Viggo Mortensen’s favourite books of all time
The cinematic achievements of Viggo Mortensen are rather staggering. After coming through in the likes of Carlito’s Way and The Portrait of a Lady, the New York-born actor set the world alight with his portrayal of Aragon in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy of the early 2000s.
Mortensen followed up on that success with collaborations with David Cronenberg in A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method before going on to receive Academy Award nominations for Captain Fantastic and Green Book.
While Mortensen certainly has a claim to have made some of the best movies of the 21st century, he also has a link to some great works of literature, through the likes of the Cormac McCarthy adaptation of The Road and The Lord of the Rings movies, and the actor is no stranger to the glory and wonder of the act of reading.
In a feature with One Grand Books, Mortensen named his ten favourite books of all time, saying, “The following are ten books I’d take with me if I were literally stranded indefinitely on a desert island at this time. We need to broaden our perspectives and our points of view to see what other people think—to consider the arguments of people we instinctively don’t agree with.”
The list goes heavily on classic written works, beginning with Charles Darwin’s 1859 book The Origin of Species, which is considered the foundation of evolutionary biology. Mortensen said of the book, “Darwin’s visionary study of the evolution of living beings on our planet is a crucial guide to our understanding of why we are here and what we might do to live in harmony with our environment.”
He follows up with one of the most significant works of classical philosophy, Plato’s The Republic, which concerns justice, order and the ideal state. Mortensen feels that the United States’ notions of such issues “that function to a better or lesser degree as nation-states with variations of democratic, representative government as their political systems would not exist without Plato’s work.”
There’s more philosophy in the form of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and Bertrand Russell’s The History of Western Philosophy before Mortensen turns his attention to fictional texts, starting with the complete works of William Shakespeare, of whom the actor said, “There are many poets that I might have included in this list of books, but, to my mind, Shakespeare is the greatest of all in terms of the breadth of his knowledge, his lyricism, humour and the universal applicability of his work.”
Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, Jose Hernandez’ The Gaucho Martin Fierro and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust: A Tragedy also make the cut with Mortensen saying of the latter, “A great work of literature and an extraordinary cautionary tale; this story has much to teach us about psychology, politics and history. More than ever, it can allow us to look at ourselves and our rulers with open eyes.”
The list is rounded off by Danmarks Kronike by Saxo Grammaticus, “the best book for understanding the early history of society, literature and politics of Northern Europe,” and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which Mortensen thinks would improve the United States if every citizen read it.
Viggo Mortensen’s favourite books:
- The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
- The Republic by Plato
- Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
- The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
- Comedies, Histories and Tragedies by William Shakespeare
- The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
- The Gaucho Martin Fierro by Jose Hernandez
- Faust: A Tragedy by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Danmarks Kronike by Saxo Grammaticus
- A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
