In the film How to Train Your Dragon, the Vikings are at war, fighting for their institutions and peace against their existential threat, the Dragons. The Vikings operate in a society in which institutions reflect their historical struggles and have shaped them to be closed to peaceful interaction with the Dragons. Thus, in How to Train Your Dragon, the institutions available to the Vikings represented what Rousseau saw as a society with a social contract of self-interest of the majority. This causes alienation between their civilization and the Dragons. The Vikings end up forming a new social contract, in which the Vikings and the Dragons represent Rousseau's general desire for equality in the most rational way possible given that the Dragons are not on the same intellectual level. The Vikings were a society whose institutions caused a loss of compassion and were focused on self-interest. Institutions being: “The organizational structure through which political power is exercised” (116). Rousseau believed “that all of society, and not just political society, is corrupt” (58). This moral corruption that exists is caused by the formation of institutions that lay the foundation for a group identity and beliefs, the Vikings. Group identity is “the degree to which members identify with a group” (56). This identity leads to alienation among those who are outsiders. Institutions promote the use of collective action: “coordinated group activity designed to achieve a common goal that individuals acting alone could not otherwise achieve” (42). This collective action is what the Vikings are pursuing to destroy the Dragon population. The Vikings viewed dragons as “pests” who stole their food and destroyed their lands (How to Train Your Dragon). Thus, the middle of paper ......tutions he creates “forces people to focus on their individual desires, deprives them of compassion, and promotes inequality” (58). There is evidence that the estrangement that developed between the Dragons and the Vikings was due to the formation of the institutions of society, as they destroyed the image of the Dragons and set the social expectations one should have for part of the Viking cultural identity. The friendship that developed between Hiccup and Toothless destroyed the beliefs and practices of Viking institutions, which believed that dragons were only evil and must be destroyed. This destruction of institutional credibility led to the new social contract between the Dragons and the Vikings. This represented what Rousseau believed to be a "perfect world" in which the general will is sovereign and is "a government which governs for everyone at the expense of no one ».” (58).