Breaking the ice
Six-part drama Hildur brings Satu Rämö’s surfing and knitting detective to the small screen. Writers Matti Laine and Margrét Örnólfsdóttir, director Tinna Hrafnsdóttir and executive producer Eero Hietala unpack how they made this ‘Nordic blue’ crime series.
Move over Nordic noir. Almost two decades after a wave of darkly brooding crime series led by Forbrydelsen (The Killing) and Bron/Broen (The Bridge) took the world by storm, there’s a new kind of detective drama coming out of the region.
Hildur, inspired by the novels by Finnish author Satu Rämö, promises to be the first ‘Nordic blue’ series, with the creative team putting as much emphasis on the characters and community at the heart of the show as the crimes the title character works to solve.
“We have seen so much Nordic noir that we are calling this Nordic blue,” head writer Matti Laine tells DQ. “There are key drama elements, which are as important as the ‘who did it?’ plot.”
Set in the remote, picturesque Westfjords region of Iceland, surrounded by stormy seas and towering mountains, Hildur is the story of a woman whose two sisters disappeared on their way home from school when they were children. Twenty-five years later, Hildur Rúnarsdóttir, now working as a detective in her home town, is drawn into the investigation of a baffling series of crimes.
Accompanied by unlikely allies Jakob, a Finnish trainee officer seeking a fresh start, and Florian, a German recruit mistakenly assigned to the team, she begins to uncover long-standing mysteries while it becomes clear they are on the trail of a cunning serial killer.
Ebba Katrín Finnsdóttir (Húsó) stars as Hildur, with Lauri Tilkanen (Deadwind) as Jakob and Rick Okon (Das Boot) as Florian. They are joined by Nína Dögg Filipusardóttir (Prisoners, Valhalla Murders), Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir (Black Sand, Darkness), Oddur Julíusson (The Minister) and Oona Airola (Helsinki Syndrome).
Cineflix Rights is distributing the multilingual series, which is coproduced by Take Two Studios for Nelonen Media’s Ruutu in Finland and Sagafilm for Siminn in Iceland. Laine and Margrét Örnólfsdóttir wrote the scripts, with Tinna Hrafnsdóttir (Vigdis) directing all six episodes.
Its launch on Ruutu on January 26 will mark the culmination of a three-and-a-half-year journey since Take Two CEO Eero Hietala first acquired the rights to Hildur in a hugely competitive situation, partnering with Sagafilm’s Kjartan Thor Thordarson to develop an international drama – with a budget of €1m (US$1.2m) per episode – based on Finnish author Rämö’s Icelandic detective. Helsinki investment firm IPR.VC also supported the project as a financing partner.
“There were plenty of other producers lining up for the rights. I’ve never experienced such a competition for rights,” Hietala says. “Satu was living in Iceland and writing the books about Iceland, but these books have been wildly popular in Finland.
“We decided even before we had secured the rights that we must make this a Finnish-Icelandic coproduction. I knew Kjartan, and then it was us together competing for the rights. That seemed to be something that gave us an edge in this competition.”
Finnish writer Laine (Bordertown) was drawn to Rämö’s characters, as well as the Icelandic setting. The novels also touch on themes of nature. “I tried to take all the good parts, all the details that were already working, and bring them with me into the script.” He even created a new main character, German Florian.
“We did a lot of stuff, but still, we tried to keep the atmosphere from the books,” he continues. “We were thinking a lot with Eero and Sara [Norberg, Take Two chief operating officer] about the key elements that make people love these books and how to keep them in the scripts.”
Örnólfsdóttir (Prisoners) highlights the fact the series follows two investigative storylines, the first being the bodies that stack up in the Westfjords. “Then there is this mystery thread, which is what happened to Hildur’s little sisters who disappeared, and that’s much closer to home for the community and personal for Hildur,” the Icelander says. “This undercurrent of the past mystery was an extra flavour.”
The writers had the trust of Rämö to take her characters in any direction they wanted, and the series quickly centres itself on this surfing, knitting detective living in harsh but picturesque surroundings.
“That’s the image that we wanted really to push forward, to make people understand that this is something a bit different,” Laine says.
“I had to look it up: can you actually surf in the wintertime in the Westfjords?” Hrafnsdóttir adds. “I didn’t really believe it. It turns out there are a handful of very brave people who do it.”
As a detective, “Hildur is very special, because she is a lone wolf,” Örnólfsdóttir says. “She has a deep wound [inside her] but she’s still sociable. She has decided to put [the past behind her] and not dwell on the drama. But of course, that also makes her interesting because it’s something that is really impossible to do, if you have such big trauma. In the end, she has to face it, but she’s a really tough cookie and she has chosen to live in this special place that we Icelanders know, which even for Iceland is very remote and very harsh. So she is very brave, but she has her own secret world of sorrow, which makes her a vulnerable but also complicated and sympathetic character.”
“This mystery around Hildur’s family, that is the big arc in the series,” Hietala notes. “Currently in the novel series, there are already five books, and the mystery around Hildur’s family is the thing that has hooked the readers – and, I believe, will also hook the viewers.”
Hrafnsdóttir felt “very thankful” to be entrusted with directing every episode of the show. “I act, I write, I direct and I always see myself as a storyteller, to gather it all together. Being the one director of the whole series makes me an even stronger storyteller in that sense,” she says.
She read the scripts before opening Rämö’s books and immediately started to visualise what the series might look like. “That’s what makes my heart tick, and then I’m just like, ‘OK, I really want to do this.’ That was my feeling when I read the script,” she continues. “It has been an amazing ride for me. What I also felt was very interesting about this project was that we have this Icelandic setting, and then we have the Finnish atmosphere that comes with Jakob. We’ve been using an instrument in the music, a Finnish harp, so there’s a mixture of culture I also wanted to put into the series.”
That the dialogue combines English, Finnish and Icelandic adds another layer to the storytelling. “It is also a key factor of how people will approach this series when they see it, because it becomes more approachable,” Hrafnsdóttir adds. “Icelandic people, they speak Icelandic between themselves, not English. So I really think that approach was vital.”
In fact, of all the Nordic countries, Hrafnsdóttir believes Iceland and Finland are particularly similar, noting how people “keep to ourselves, but there’s some kind of a humour also, a sarcastic humour. All these little elements, we can identify both in Finnish and Icelandic people,” she observes. Hildur and Jakob also find they can relate to each other through past traumas relating to children in their lives.
“In a way, they’re connected,” Hrafnsdóttir says. “They both have wounds that can be related to children – her sisters, his son. As a director, I wanted to emphasise that that makes them good friends. We don’t have the cliché that they become lovers, which I was also very thankful for. They just become very good friends.”
In contrast, Florian adds a different element to the dynamics at the centre of the show. “He’s listening to German techno, which is not Scandinavian,” the director says. “He has a different energy. He’s always on the move, while Hildur and Jakob, they are more relaxed and dealing with everything from inside.”
“It’s true about the Icelandic and Finnish. We are the outsiders of the Nordic family,” Örnólfsdóttir says. “We are on the edges of the Nordics, and we are not part of Scandinavia. We have languages that the rest of the Nordic countries don’t understand. There’s a lot of nice, common aspects to those two nations.”
“The humour, that’s the key element,” says Laine. “That’s the thing that connects people all around the world, when you find something you can both laugh at. For Icelandic people and Finnish people, we have more and more to laugh at.”
Filming on location in the Westfjords, the production team might have shared a laugh when they discovered that their biggest challenge on set would be finding enough snow to recreate a dramatic avalanche near the town of Bolungarvík. “We were always praying for snow,” says Hietala. “You’re more likely to get snow, but not the whole time. We managed to make it look like there’s snow all the time. That was the main challenge – you can’t shoot an avalanche series without snow.”
The original shooting schedule also included plans to film more in the capital, Reykjavík. “We ended up shooting more than we anticipated in the Westfjords, but the end result, what we got, I’m so happy we did that,” says Hietala. “Even though it might have caused a bit [of difficulty] to the production, the views and the mountains and the snow are just spectacular.”
Just as Hildur will debut in Finland, a stage production also called Hildur is set to start a four-month run at Helsinki City Theatre, demonstrating the appeal of Rämö’s character in the country.
“I hope this Nordic blue take will be interesting to people, because it’s character-driven,” Hrafnsdóttir adds. “This thing about the surfing and the knitting; the unusual elements of the characters will make people more interested in it. I really hope people like it a lot.”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Trapped: In a remote Icelandic town cut off by a blizzard, a local police chief must solve a series of murders as dark secrets rise to the surface and the community grows increasingly desperate.
The Valhalla Murders: A mysterious string of killings connects to an abandoned boys’ home, forcing a female detective to revisit a painful past amid the stark Icelandic winter.
Deadwind: Recovering from personal tragedy, a Helsinki detective plunges into a murder investigation that exposes layers of corruption, secrets and a web of family trauma.
RELATED CONTENT
Playing second fiddle
Finnish dramedy Supporting Actor explores society’s obsession with success through a frustrated actor striving to become a screen star. Producer Max Malka and writer-director Niklas Lindgren tell DQ about their partnership behind the scenes and what they wanted to say about the film and television business.
Cut adrift
In Finnish thriller Isolated, an island community is cut off from the mainland in mysterious circumstances. Oskari Huttu, head of drama at Lucy Loves Drama, reveals how the production team overcame numerous logistical challenges to film the show.
Lighting up The Darkness
Nordic noir goes international in The Darkness, an English-language Icelandic series based on Ragnar Jónasson’s books featuring detective Hulda Hermannsdóttir. Director Lasse Hallström and executive producer Lindsey Martin explain how the show pushes the boundaries of the genre and talk about filming with star Lena Olin.
tagged in: Cineflix Rights, Eero Hietala, Hildur, IPR.VC, Margrét Örnólfsdóttir, Matti Laine, Nelonen Media, Ruutu, Sagafilm, Satu Rämö, Simínn, Take Two Studios, Tinna Hrafnsdóttir