Seed of the crime
Sogn Murders blends cosy crime with stunning scenery – and apple farming – to bring Norwegian literary detective Ole Vik to the screen. Writer Kathrine Valen Zeiner and producer Sigurd Mikal Karoliussen tell DQ how they did it.
Game of Thrones star Kristofer Hivju first partnered with writer-director Kristoffer Metcalfe and producer Sigurd Mikal Karoliussen for 2019 drama Twin, which told the story of a man who is persuaded to take up his identical twin brother’s identity following his accidental death.
Now the trio have reunited for Sogn Murders, an adaptation of Jørgen Jæger’s novels that will star Hivju as police investigator Ole Vik.
Set in the picturesque, fictional fruit-growing village of Fjellberghaven in Norway’s Sognefjord region, the series finds Ole in charge of the local police station. A merging of police districts threatens the station’s very existence, but it has so far survived thanks to Ole’s “determination.”
The community peace is threatened, however, when Cecilie Hopen (Eili Harboe) arrives in town. Posing as a police academy student on a placement in the village, she is actually an undercover officer from the National Criminal Investigation Service and is on the trail of a criminal network. Then when a suspicious death is discovered, Ole and Cecilie must come together to solve the case, as Cecilie’s true identity threatens to be revealed.
Produced by Nordisk Film Production, where Karoliussen works in the Oslo-based production team, Sogn Murders is set to debut on Norway’s TV2 this Easter – the latest drama to air in the country’s tradition of Easter crime series. It is also a coproduction with ARD in Germany and TV4 in Sweden, and has been acquired by MTV in Finland and DR in Denmark.
The show was created by Metcalfe, who wrote the scripts alongside Kathrine Valen Zeiner (Made in Oslo). Together, they had some 15 of Jæger’s novels featuring Ole Vik to draw on, though the author was “extremely generous” in allowing them free rein with their four-part adaptation, which will air in Germany as two 90-minute TV movies.
“Our focus is to create a community here where we have the time to be with the police characters, to have them be our gang and our anchor in this story, and to have them be a group of people we would like to return to again and again,” Zeiner tells DQ.
“We have worked to give this series a strong sense of a bright, Norwegian setting, placing it in the most gorgeous apple-farming area in Norway. Sognefjord is known for growing berries and especially apples, and we’ve tried to include that in the story, but not just as a nice background. Ole moved there because he wants to live the dream of having his own small farm – he’s actually become a prize-winning cider producer with his own apple orchard – so we see him in the fields working with the apples.”
Across the show’s first season, which is set over a couple of months during the apple-growing season, Ole and Cecilie must face up to the threat against the local police station, while there are individual cases for them to investigate in each pair of episodes.
Material for the series has been drawn from two books, with Zeiner mining further novels for a potential second season, which is already in development but has not yet been fully commissioned. The series won’t be sticking too stringently to the source material, however. “As you go along, you create your own storylines,” she says, “and your characters become themselves in the series and need their own personal lines, and you have to follow up on that.”
“Another thing about the books,” Karoliussen notes, “is that Jørgen is taking the readers to different places, and we think that for the show, it’s very important to stay in Sognefjord, just to have everything happening there. I think the viewers would like to go there. If you all of a sudden went to Taiwan or Florida with the characters, you’d lose the core of the series.”
“In some of the books,” Zeiner adds, “he also goes a bit into more organised crime. We’re going for the more heartfelt and the more passion-driven crime stories.”
The series originated with Metcalfe, who started development with Karoliussen. Hivju then boarded the project at a very early stage, and was a key voice in the writers room. “He’s really enjoying having a Norwegian production that could go on and on,” Zeiner says of the actor. “He’s got a lot of stuff going on abroad, but I think he likes to be grounded in Norwegian productions as well.”
Hivju plays a “fair and generous” leader in Ole, a safe and trustworthy police officer who also maintains a certain disregard for the rules, owing to his powerful position in the small community where he lives and works.
“He knows everybody and he feels that everything is his business a little bit,” Zeiner says. “Then putting Hivju into that, he’s got this energy. He’s so energetic. But Ole’s a bit grumpier, super direct, but extremely loveable, because he has this care for his community. He takes the threat of the police station being shut down very personally. He’s extremely worried that something fundamental to what he sees as a Norwegian value will be lost if all the important services of a community are too far away or centralised.”
“He has a son, he has a wife he tries to reconcile with, and he knows that his colleagues at the police station really need to be there,” Karoliussen says. “He feels society needs the police station, and he’s talking about all the obligations of a policeman, which are not just solving crime but being there for people, which is actually very true when you talk with the real police in Norway. It’s called the ‘service’ – it’s not being just the lawmaker; it’s about helping people.”
Into the mix comes Cecilie, who appears to be a police academy student arriving to complete a placement. “Then we realise she has something else going on,” Zeiner says, “and we’re having a bit of fun with that. Having to look like you don’t really know what you’re doing when you’re actually probably the most professional police person in the group is kind of fun.”
The competing interests within the series meant Zeiner found writing the scripts “tricky.” As well as creating multiple crime stories that test audiences without being so complex that they can’t be wrapped up in 90 minutes, the writers had to build the sense of community that was integral to the show from the outset.
“It’s really rewarding being in the editing room with season one while we’re writing season two,” says Karoliussen, “because we know more about how complex the crime can be so people don’t lose track, while at the same time not being too simple so people get bored because it’s so easy to understand who’s done what. That’s the trick.
“It has to be paradise, but it has to be trouble in paradise. The level of trouble is not too gritty, but it should be scary.”
In fact, the writers envisage Cecilie’s story arc being completed across eight episodes, taking them to the end of the potential second season. During S1, meanwhile, Ole starts to pick up clues that the young student isn’t quite who she claims to be.
“He kind of guesses it because of things that happen along the way,” says Karoliussen. “In the second season, they have this silent understanding of him saying, ‘OK, you’re asking me this question, it’s got to be about your thing, right? But you can’t tell me, but maybe I can help you and you can help me.’ It’s kind of charming, actually, but also she learns to love the way Ole works – working with all his heart, making decisions on behalf of everyone [in the community].”
Filming took place over 42 days in two blocks between August and October last year, taking in some of the stunning sights around Lærdal, Balestrand and Årdal that lent themselves to the fictional Fjellberghaven.
“The people out there were such generous and fantastic collaborators, and we’re really looking forward to going back again,” Karoliussen says. “It’s very important to have as much filming there as possible, so that you feel the whole show is done there – because half of it, of course, is done in Oslo.”
It was in the capital city that interiors and scenes at the police station were filmed, though the series strives to be outside as much as possible. In particular, the production team wanted to capture the area’s ripe orchards before the apples were picked, and faced a race against time as production was pushed to the end of August.
In any case, “it was very smooth,” Karoliussen says. “We had no bad weather. We had no illness from the cast or crew.”
Now, as they prepare to launch a new crime drama into a crowded international field, both Zeiner and Karoliussen believe Sogn Murders’ “lovable characters” will mean viewers quickly warm to the series.
“We really want to be like shows like Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory or Friends, back in the day, where you have new friends in a show and you would like to be there with them,” Karoliussen says. “Shows like The Beast in Me or Task, those are more one-offs. They’re fantastic shows, but it’s not like you want to go back every season to hang with them. For our show, it’s very important to really get to know the characters, care for them and really be invested in everyday life and their struggle as human beings.”
“For me as a nerd,” Zeiner adds, “the focus on the apples also gives it some kind of texture. Somebody said, ‘This show smells of fresh apple,’ and I like that somebody felt that from hearing about it, because getting specific makes it unique and also makes it interesting to dig into, because there are always new areas to dig in.”
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Morden i Sandhamn (The Sandhamn Murders): A lawyer-turned-investigator on the Stockholm archipelago solves small-town murders with warmth and wit.
Wisting: A seasoned detective navigates a string of crimes in a quiet Norwegian town, in a show that combines procedural realism with warmth, small-town empathy and family life.
Åremorden (The Åre Murders): A small Nordic community confronts a series of murders that unpeels secrets beneath its tranquil surface, blending village charm with suspense.
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tagged in: ARD, Kathrine Valen Zeiner, Nordisk Film Production, Sigurd Mikal Karoliussen, Sogn Murders, TV2, TV4