Imagine dragons: why John Powell calls Sibelius crucial to his ‘Train’ scores

One of the most memorable aspects of “How to Train Your Dragon” (2010) is its Oscar-nominated score by British composer John Powell, who credits Sibelius and the 1958 movie “The Vikings” for inspiration. 

Powell has stayed with the franchise, composing scores for its two animated sequels and the live-action incarnation, released this summer. The original film was adapted in 2018 for live-to-picture presentation (which the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will perform Nov. 28-30 at Symphony Center).

Many film-music scholars believe that Powell’s score for the original “How to Train Your Dragon,” with its distinctive use of bagpipes and penny whistles, was Powell’s best ever.

Blending musical styles and instrumentation and drawing on his own Scottish heritage, Powell chose instruments such as bagpipes, dulcimers and penny whistles to evoke the Viking protagonists. Another creative jumping off point was the blueprint of “Scandinavian Scotland,” as depicted in Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon book series, set in a fantasy Viking world (which, if plotted on an actual map, could be traced to Scotland’s Inner Hebrides islands).

“How to Train Your Dragon” marked the first DreamWorks Animation film to be scored solely by Powell. He previously had collaborated with others on “Antz” (1998), “The Prince of Egypt” (1998), “The Road to El Dorado” (2000), “Chicken Run” (2000), “Shrek” (2001), “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” (2002) and “Kung Fu Panda” (2008).

In a 2011 interview with the Wrap, Powell discussed his process of creating the film’s score: "I was certainly trying to get a bit more epic. I just felt the animation and the visuals were giving me a broader palette to play with. As a kid, I remember watching ’The Vikings’ with Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas, and I always liked that score [by Mario Nascimbene]. [The “Dragon” directors] did want size and depth and emotion. They wanted a feeling of the Nordic musical past. You could say the symphonic musical past was Nielsen, the Danish symphonist. Sibelius. Grieg, to a certain extent, although I think he was a little bit more Germanic than he was Nordic."

Above all, the music of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius "was the key. I studied a lot of Sibelius as a kid, and I’ve always adored his music," Powell said. Also crucial, the music of the Icelandic post-rock group Sigur Rós and its lead vocalist, Jón Þór “Jónsi” Birgisson (aka Jónsi). "It was great to have Jónsi do a song at the end of the movie, because I’ve always liked Sigur Rós," Powell said. “They were an influence as well, even though that seems paradoxical. But there is that in a few cues — heavy, dark guitar textures going on at the same time as large orchestration.”

Another important influence was folk music from the Nordic areas. "And I’m part Scottish and grew up with a lot of Scottish folk music, so that came into it a lot," Powell said. “And Celtic music was something that Jeffrey [Dreamworks chief Katzenberg] felt had this very attractive quality to it, and a sweetness, that he thought would be wonderful for the film.”

When writing her books, Cowell drew on the historical reality of Scandinavian Scotland’s Viking past and the Inner Hebrides. The island of Berk is directly modeled on the Scottish islands; the presence of Vikings and their settlements also serves as a key element, reflecting how Vikings raided and settled in Scotland from the 8th century onward, establishing Norse rule. The term “Scandinavian Scotland” reflects the period when Viking culture and influence dominated the region.  

The “How to Train Your Dragon” franchise from DreamWorks Animation consists of three feature films: “How to Train Your Dragon” (2010), “How to Train Your Dragon 2” (2014) and “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” (2019). In 2025, Universal Pictures released a live-action remake of the first film on June 13, with a sequel set for June 11, 2027. The franchise also consists of six short films: “Legend of the Boneknapper Dragon” (2010), “Book of Dragons” (2011), “Gift of the Night Fury” (2011), “Dawn of the Dragon Racers” (2014), “How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming” (2019) and “How to Train Your Dragon: Snoggletog Log” (2019).

Three television series make up the DreamWorks “Dragons” broadcast franchise: “DreamWorks Dragons,” “Rescue Riders” and “The Nine Realms,” for a total of 223 episodes over 22 seasons.

But the original “How to Train Your Dragon” remains a touchstone for Powell. In an interview with the site We Are Movie Geeks, he recalled: "You try your best on every movie — whether it’s a good movie or a bad movie. I give it my all. And that one [the original “Dragon”] I absolutely gave my all to."