The stage was set for a wedding band. What guests at Donnarumma’s reception got was Erling Haaland with a drum.
Footage that circulated widely at the weekend shows the Norway forward on stage, banging out the two-beat pulse of the Viking Row while dozens of formally dressed guests sit on the floor, lean back and forth in unison and chant “row”. At one point Haaland cracks up and pauses proceedings to physically walk one bemused guest through how the rowing motion is meant to go.
The couple, Donnarumma and long-time partner Alessia Elefante, married over the weekend in Locorotondo, a hilltop town in the Italian region of Puglia. The two met as teenagers in Castellammare di Stabia in 2016 and had their son Leo in 2024.
Pep Guardiola was among the guests, as were AC Milan icon Paolo Maldini, Sandro Tonali and Nicolò Barella, according to reporting on the reception. Maldini and Guardiola were seen in extended conversation about Italy’s vacant national-team job, an Italian media staple in any room they share.
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What the Viking Row actually is
The ritual is simple in the way stadium rituals usually are. One person strikes a drum twice; supporters seated on the ground lean back and forth as if pulling on oars, letting out a rising “row” on each stroke.
Norway’s national team borrowed it from their supporters at this summer’s World Cup, staging it with captain Martin Odegaard after their win over Brazil and repeating it through a run that ended in the quarter-finals. Six weeks on, Haaland has apparently decided the drum comes with him even to weddings.
Haaland in a tuxedo, drum in hand
Part of what has made the clip travel is the incongruity. One of the world’s most valuable strikers, in a tuxedo, drumming in front of the man who was still his club manager two months ago, and one of Italian football’s most decorated defenders sat somewhere on the floor.
The guests on the ground commit fully to the rowing. Haaland is laughing.
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Donnarumma, who joined Manchester City from Paris Saint-Germain last year and now shares a dressing room with the Norwegian, sat with his bride and let the goalkeeper’s evening turn into a Norwegian-Italian rowing club.
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