Creator

Viking Ship and the Midgard Serpent

A 3-in-1 that quietly punches way above its 9-plus age label.

Brick Rated Score

4.2/5

Set 31132 · 2022

Pieces1,192

Minifigs4

Year2022

Set number31132

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The verdict

This one won me over slowly.

It arrives looking like a kids' pirate-ish boat and then hands you proper SNOT curves, a serpent that actually coils, and a longship worth putting on a shelf. It's a Creator 3-in-1, so you do have to demolish everything to try the wolf or the house, and that's the catch that'll decide it for you.

Best for: Norse-myth fans and 3-in-1 lovers who want grown-up techniques at a friendly price

The full review

Some sets sneak up on you, and this is one of them. On the box the Viking Ship and the Midgard Serpent LEGO® set looks like a cheerful boat aimed squarely at nine-year-olds, and then you open it and the longship starts asking you to build sideways. The hull isn't a molded shortcut. You shape those swooping ends yourself out of curved slopes and brackets and plates turned on their sides, and the result is a graceful little clinker-look ship with a yellow dragon figurehead at the prow and rows of removable round shields down the flanks. Your Vikings can actually pull those shields off and carry them, which is the kind of small thing that makes a set feel alive. It's a Creator 3-in-1, so there are two more builds waiting: Fenris, the great wolf of Norse myth, and a cozy Viking longhouse. But make no mistake, the ship and the serpent are the reason this set exists.

And the serpent is a delight. Jormungandr, the sea snake that circles the whole world in the myths, gets hinges and ball joints running down its tail, so it coils and rears in ways the box art doesn't even show off. Rear it up over the ship and you've got a proper diorama with real menace to it. Here's where I'll be straight with you though. This is a 3-in-1, and that format has a built-in ache: to build the wolf or the house, you have to completely take apart whatever you made first. There's no keeping the ship on the shelf and casually assembling Fenris on the side. And honestly, the two alternate models don't match the headline. The wolf is fun and the longhouse is charming, but both feel noticeably simpler and quicker than the ship you fell for. So most people build the boat and the snake, love them, and never look back at the other two.

On value, this landed at 119.99 dollars for 1,192 pieces, three models, and four minifigures that are all exclusive to the set, which is a fair deal by any reasonable math even if the cost per brick runs a touch higher than some other 3-in-1 boxes. It retired at the end of 2023, so you're now shopping the aftermarket, where sealed copies have crept above their old retail price. If you love Norse mythology, or you want a set that teaches genuinely grown-up building on curves and angles without a grown-up price, grab it. If the idea of dismantling a ship you spent an evening perfecting makes you wince, or you were hoping all three models could coexist, you'll want to know that going in. For me it sits comfortably in the very-good range, with the 3-in-1 teardown as its one real tax.

The community landed around 4.0 out of 5 across a couple hundred ratings, which feels about right: a genuinely liked set with one structural quirk everyone agrees on.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

The ship is the whole experience, and it builds like something aimed a few years older than the 9-plus label. You start with a plate-and-bracket foundation, then spend real time turning slopes sideways to fake the curve of a wooden hull, with studs-on-the-side bricks doing a lot of quiet work. It's not hard, but it teaches you SNOT properly, and watching a rounded prow appear out of angled flat pieces is deeply satisfying. The serpent is the opposite kind of building: the front stays rigid while the rear tail links together with technic click hinges and ball joints, so the fun there is in the posing once you're done rather than the assembly itself. Fenris and the longhouse are the quick, tidy palate-cleansers after the main course.

There are no brand-new molds here, which is fair for the price, but the parts mix is lovely for anyone with a spares drawer. You get a generous pile of reddish-brown for the hull and roof timbers, plus dark blue and bright yellow slopes, log bricks, and the round shield elements that double as great parts for other builds. The four minifigures wear new torso prints for their light Viking armor, and one of the women sports long yellow hair under a winged coronet, with a spare dark-orange beard tucked in the bags. One honest gripe from builders: the Viking helmet, borrowed from older collectible minifigure lines, grips heads more loosely than it used to, so expect it to pop off now and then. As a bag of useful, recolor-friendly parts for 1,192 pieces, it's a solid haul.

Fun facts

01The set is a modern re-imagining of 7018 Viking Ship from 1978, one of the very first entries in LEGO's original Vikings-era boats.
02The Midgard Serpent is Jormungandr from Norse myth, a sea snake said to be so enormous it wraps all the way around the world and grips its own tail.
03Fenris, the alternate wolf build, is the monstrous wolf of Norse legend prophesied to break free and devour Odin at Ragnarok.
04Designer Jonathan Robson gave the 9-plus set full SNOT hull construction and a hinged, ball-jointed serpent tail, techniques usually reserved for older age grades.