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    ‘The Fortress’: A Norwegian Export About the Danger of Closed Borders

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    Both sociopolitical thriller and parable, this Viaplay series presents a future that can feel uncomfortably plausible.In “The Fortress,” a new series about pandemic, isolationism and government corruption, something is rotten in the state of Norway. The year is 2037, and the country has spent the last decade cut off from the rest of the world, behind a wall of its own making. When a deadly virus sweeps through the land, the prime minister blames refugees for bringing the illness to an insulated paradise.But in this case, the menace is a domestic breed. And the government will do anything to cover up its origins.A sociopolitical thriller and a parable, “The Fortress,” a seven-part Norwegian series, made its American debut on Tuesday, the latest in a wave of Scandinavian dramas cresting on American shores in recent years that tend to be brainy, rooted in reality and, yes, chilly. (This one is available on Viaplay.)It is also timely — dystopian and futuristic but only just, playing off the rising tide of isolationism in Europe and around the world in these post-pandemic, post-Brexit, “build the wall” times.“Our main theme is that to solve the world’s problems, everybody needs everybody,” said John Kare Raake, a co-creator of the show and its lead writer, in a video interview from his home in Oslo. “We can’t just say, ‘That’s not our problem.’ We have to work together and decide that we can relate to problems in other countries that are not at our doorstep.”With a star-filled cast and an award-winning script (it won best screenplay last year at the Series Mania festival in Europe), “The Fortress” is a high-profile venture for Viaplay, a Swedish-based streamer that made its North American debut only last year. The show’s assortment of characters representing the different strata of Norwegian society are played by some heavy hitters of international drama.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      An Extraordinary Documentary About the Most Precious of Lives

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      Margreth Olin’s “Songs of Earth” works almost like a poem as she records her parents and the Norwegian landscape.It’s rare to see a film that feels not just poetic in nature, but like actual poetry. The rhythm and cadence, the imagery and metaphor, even the sense of movement and time that often accompany a great poem don’t translate easily to the screen. Filmmakers need a light touch and trust in the viewer to lean in and let their work wash over them, rather than trying to decode everything.Margreth Olin somehow pulled it off — and in a documentary, no less. Her “Songs of Earth” (in theaters) is tough to categorize as anything other than poetry, though there are elements of nature photography and personal narrative woven throughout.At the center of “Songs of Earth” are the relationship between Olin’s parents, Jorgen and Magnhild Mykloen, as they age, and the spectacular landscapes of her native Norway. The film moves through a cycle of seasons, during which the terrain changes from green to brown to white and back again. At the center of that terrain is Olin’s 84-year-old father, who returns repeatedly to the Oldedalen valley, in the western part of the country.Olin’s father tells her stories of his life and their ancestors. She learns about tragedies, about surgery he underwent when he was young, about the way the world has shaped him and his life. Both of her parents — who have been married for 55 years — talk about their relationship and what the future may hold for them, with grief inevitably on the horizon.The gentle stories are marked by periods of silence that are never silent: The earth produces its own noises of ripples and blusters and crackling, melting ice, sometimes harmonizing with a gorgeous score by Rebekka Karijord. It’s really quite an experience to watch, and what might tie it all together is Olin’s decision to film her father’s skin at very close range. There’s a point being made there: His wrinkles and crevasses echo the landscape, which has also been shaped by time and forces of nature. In the span of the earth’s life, an individual human’s time is minuscule, yet precious — we are the planet in microcosm.It’s an altogether extraordinary film, one I’ve thought about often since I first saw it, and I’m delighted that it’s playing in theaters — the immersive nature of the sounds, music and landscapes are worth experiencing with the full concentration a cinema affords. But even if you can’t see it that way, it’s worth watching whenever it’s available digitally. Just make sure you close the door, dim the lights and give yourself the gift of being immersed in it fully.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Eurovision Fans Are Hungry for News. These Superfans Are Here to Help.

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      A cottage industry of blogs and social media accounts, run by Eurovision obsessives in their spare time, satisfies a seemingly endless demand.Magnus Bormark, a longtime rock guitarist in Norway, said his band had gotten used to releasing music with little publicity. So nothing prepared him for the onslaught of attention since the band, Gåte, was selected to represent Norway at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.The phones have not stopped ringing, Bormark said — not just with calls from reporters from mainstream media outlets, but also from the independent bloggers, YouTubers and podcast hosts who provide Eurovision superfans with nonstop coverage of Eurovision gossip, backstage drama and news about the contest.Casual Eurovision observers may tune in once a year to watch the competition, in which acts representing 37 countries compete in the world’s most watched cultural event. But for true fans, Eurovision is a year-round celebration of pop music, and since the winner is decided by viewer votes as well as juries of music industry professionals, fan media hype can help boost those artists’ profiles.The rise of websites and social media accounts dedicated to Eurovision news follows a broader trend in media, where nontraditional media organizations, like fan sites, podcasts, newsletters, new video formats and publications dedicated to niche interests, are expanding in size and influence.Members of the band Gåte, representing Norway at this year’s song contest, have been surprised by the attention they have received from Eurovision fans.Per Ole Hagen/Redferns, via Getty ImagesA report published last year by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat users paid more attention to social media personalities, influencers and celebrities than journalists when it came to news.“Someone can sit in their bedroom, being passionate about Eurovision, but suddenly they have 40,000 followers,” Bormark said.One of the most followed Eurovision news sites, Wiwibloggs, was founded by William Lee Adams, a Vietnamese American journalist who works for the BBC.“The fan media is sort of covering this year round, breathlessly, because they recognize that it’s an underserved topic,” said Adams, whose site’s YouTube channel got more than 20 million view last year. “This is the World Cup of music, this is the Olympics on steroids, and it deserves attention.”A lot has changed since Adams founded the site 15 years ago. At the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2012, Adams said he and a friend, dressed in hot pink pants and tight white shirts, were among a small number people in the media room who were not representing traditional outlets.“Things kind of snowballed from there,” he said. Today, Wiwibloggs has a volunteer staff of more than 40 writers, editors, videographers and graphic designers from 30 countries.As a Eurovison blogger, Lucas has attended the competition many times.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesThis year, about 300 members of the fan media, representing nearly 200 publications, social media channels and podcasts, are registered to cover the Eurovision finals in Malmo, Sweden. Another 200 fan journalists have access to the competition’s online media room, according to the European Broadcasting Union or E.B.U., which oversees the event. That’s in addition to the more than 750 journalists from traditional media outlets expected to attend, including one reporter from The New York Times.Alesia Lucas, a Eurovision commentator from the Washington, D.C., area, said she started a YouTube channel in 2015 as a way to find with other people who were passionate about Eurovision — not easy for an American. As her audience has grown, so has the role of bloggers in setting the tone of conversations about the artists, she said.“We start banging the drum earlier than even the E.B.U. to start getting Eurovision back into the zeitgeist and highlight the moments that are notable,” said Lucas, who uses the name Alesia Michelle for her YouTube channel. She records content at 6 a.m., before her daughter wakes up, and edits video after she’s finished her day job of handling communications for a labor union.The Eurovision commentator Gabe Milne produces videos for his YouTube channel when he’s not at his day job at London City Hall. “Often I’ll do eight or nine hours there, come home, and then spend six or seven hours of research, getting everything ready,” he said. Compared to past years, “you’re seeing a lot more professional-style content,” he said.Lucas records content at 6 a.m., before her daughter wakes up, and edits video after she’s finished her day job of handling communications for a labor union. Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesYet fan media has mostly stayed away from a topic that mainstream media outlets have covered extensively: a campaign to exclude Israel from the competition because of the mounting civilian death toll in Gaza.“We’re not journalists,” said Tom Davitt, an Irish physical therapist who records Eurovision YouTube videos on evenings and weekends. “We’re not even amateur journalists, we’re just amateur content creators, so wading into this kind of stuff — we’re just not trained for it.”While reporters from mainstream media outlets tend to be impartial observers of the competition, many fan media are not aiming for neutrality. When USA Today hired a dedicated Taylor Swift reporter who was also a self-proclaimed Swiftie, it raised questions: Is it possible for a fan to maintain objectivity? Would someone who is not a fan understand the subject well enough to cover it?Charlie Beckett, the head of a think tank focused on journalism at the London School of Economics, said objectivity was not the goal in Eurovision.“The whole point of Eurovision is that you’re incredibly biased according to your nationality and which singer you like,” Beckett said. The growing numbers of fan media sites reflected the growth in hype around Eurovision, even nearly 70 years after its first edition. “It seems to ride out any kind of fashion reversal,” he said.Lucas, from the D.C. area, said that while mainstream media outlets report on Eurovision as a circus, it was now more mainstream than people credit. “Yeah, it’s camp, a little bit,” she said, “but you can’t tell me that Katy Perry’s halftime show was not camp either.” More

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      For This Experimental Festival, Bring Your Swimsuit and Dancing Shoes

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      The Borealis experimental music festival in Norway has become a space for lively exploration in a famously self-serious field.BERGEN, Norway — Little could be predicted about a premiere by the young experimental Norwegian-Tamil composer Mira Thiruchelvam. But it was held at a fjord-facing heated pool, so the presenter had a suggestion: Bring a swimsuit.It was par for the course at Borealis, the experimental festival here that has achieved renown as a launchpad for eclectic projects by musicians from Norway and beyond. If in recent decades, the Nordic countries — facilitated by enviable government funding for the arts — have proved a hotbed of musical activity, punching above their weight in the classical world, Borealis has become the region’s warmhearted fringe festival, showcasing a blossoming experimental classical scene.A sound installation in the traditional Sami construction, Borealis’s coziest concert hall.Elina Waage Mikalsen, Borealis’s artist in residence, had a sound installation in the hut.Led by Peter Meanwell (artistic director) and Rachel Louis (the managing director), Borealis, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in a five-day festival that ended Saturday, has created a rare space for lively exploration in a notoriously self-serious field. It is the festival that’s “nothing to be afraid of,” as the local paper Bergens Tidende called it in a headline during the week, right down to its “eksperimentell”-themed tube socks.Part of what gives Borealis its accessible feel is its use of Bergen’s tightly grouped cultural centers, separated by cobblestone alleys, short and often wet — a given in Europe’s rainiest city. On opening night, the United Sardine Factory, a repurposed cannery, hosted short commissions by composers across the festival’s history to honor its anniversary. Listeners could then meander over to a 13th-century royal banquet hall, whose medieval splendor was the backdrop for the Indonesian ensemble Gamelan Salukat, performing works by the experimental composer Dewa Alit.The singer Juliet Fraser in “Plans for Future Operas.”Borealis found its coziest space in a small wooden structure on the mountain of Floyen, built in the style of the Sami, the Indigenous people of the Sapmi region (encompassing parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia). Accessible via a short funicular trip and winding hike, the structure was home to a sound installation by the Borealis artist-in-residence, the Norwegian-Sami Elina Waage Mikalsen — the work’s thrumming bass seemingly keeping pace with the churning flames in the building’s wood-burning stove. Given the Norwegian government’s recent acknowledgment of continuing human rights violations on Sami lands, Mikalsen’s exploration of Sami experimentalism — the subject of her talk later in the week, featuring performances by the Sami musicians Viktor Bomstad and Katarina Barruk — felt especially potent.This year’s festival also saw a number of works investigating the nature of instruments, probing their materials and extending their boundaries. The quietly intense Norwegian violin and contrabass duo Vilde&Inga, collaborating with the composer Jo David Meyer Lysne, presented “NiTi,” a dialogue between the duo and Lysne’s metal and wood kinetic sculptures that moved silently back and forth throughout the performance — a poetic distillation of the action of playing a string instrument.a performance of “Glia,” by the American composer Maryanne AmacherAt first, the musicians produced subtle flickering textures using their own instruments, then gradually integrated the fixtures beside them, including a violin harnessed to a contraption that tickled its strings. Much like Vilde&Inga’s forest-inspired collaboration with the composer Lo Kristenson a few days later, though, the work felt inconclusive, less a finished product than a fantastical impulse that the collaborators would do well to keep pursuing.More successful in this vein was “I N T E R V A L L,” created and performed by the Norwegian percussion trio Pinquins with the artist Kjersti Alm Eriksen. Around a hollow wooden cube, with instruments and industrial and household appliances hung on ropes from its ceiling, the four performers began a sort of haywire scavenger hunt, hurling objects through the frame, blowing petulantly into plastic tubes attached to the cube, even grabbing long poles to bang on the theater itself, for an inexhaustible probe of the setting’s sound-making potential.A drawing by Oyvind Torvund’s for “Plans for Future Operas.”A young DJ at a family workshop at Borealis.A similar playfulness pervaded the Norwegian composer Oyvind Torvund’s imaginative “Plans for Future Operas,” performed by the soprano Juliet Fraser and the pianist Mark Knoop. Part of a continuing series in which ensembles perform the sounds of hypothetical performance situations, “Plans” is accompanied by a slide show of Torvund’s scribbled doodles. As various visions flashed on the screen — a “car horn” opera, for which Fraser issued honks; a “telepathic opera,” during which she kept silent, appearing to communicate songs by mind alone as Knoop played — the duo conveyed, with gusto and evident amusement, Torvund’s freewheeling musical language.Notable throughout the festival was its care for participants of all ages and backgrounds. A performance of the Torvund presented outside the concert hall was geared toward audience members with accessibility needs. In workshops, children created miniature versions of the “I N T E R V A L L” cube using carrots, beads and wire, and recorded shrieks to be played back on tape loops. On one night, four enthusiastic participants in Borealis’s Young Composer program, whose applicants needn’t be young or trained as composers, presented heartfelt premieres.After-hours dancing.After-hours audiences found delightfully earsplitting sets by the White Mountain Apache violinist Laura Ortman and the electronics and vocal duo Ziur and Elvin Brandhi; as the evening wore on, a group of young people began an impromptu residency on the dance floor. The next morning, bathers at — and in — the heated pool witnessed Thiruchelvam’s rollicking commission “External Factor” performed with the dancer Thanusha Chandrasselan — part of a series inspired by the Borealis office’s Sunday tradition of fjord swimming. Listeners bobbed to Thiruchelvam’s thumping electronics, interspersed with her improvisations on Carnatic flute and electric guitar, and cheered for Chandrasselan’s jerky choreography, her boots managing impressive friction against the pool’s wet ledge.One of the festival’s oldest works was among its most forward thinking: the pioneering American experimental composer Maryanne Amacher’s “GLIA” (2005), whose title refers to the nervous system cells that support communication across synapses, performed by the composer Bill Dietz, a former Amacher collaborator, and Ensemble Contrechamps. As Dietz explained in a preconcert discussion, Amacher would not likely have approved of the piece’s posthumous performance, viewing her works not as fixed sets of sounds, but rather as part and parcel with the circumstances in which they were originally produced. Yet ‌I could not help but be grateful to be wandering around the illuminated pyramid of players in the black box theater, letting the voluminous layers of sound course through my ears.Tourists and Borealis audience members enjoy the view above Borgen; nearby this perch, reached by funicular, is the Sami construction.Closing night began promisingly with the Norwegian sound artist Maia Urstad’s enigmatic “IONOS” — an atmospheric dialogue among three radio amateurs that resulted, at one point, in contact with another user somewhere out there. Much to its credit, Borealis is a place where artists can take risks, even if things will occasionally fall short of the mark — as in the final piece, the British composer (and former Borealis director) Alwynne Pritchard’s “Counting Backward,” for the Bergen chamber ensemble BIT20, conducted by Jack Sheen. “Counting Backward” was a bloated collage of predictable ambient ensemble writing and hokey prerecorded observations on time and nature, echoed by volunteers planted throughout the audience. As BIT20 played, four performers in the center of the theater tied a knot from thick ropes so they could repeatedly hoist a tree stump from the floor, an act that underscored the degree to which the work’s own threads were disconnected.The mind strayed toward what would have been a more satisfying conclusion to the week: the Pinquins show two nights before in the same space. At the climax of that work, the performers yanked open the wooden cube’s canopy, spilling a supply of sunflower seeds to the ground. The drizzle of seeds continued, and continued — a hypnotic, seemingly unending invocation of what a festival like Borealis can make possible. More

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      Heilung Puts a Heavy Metal Twist on the Sound of the Vikings

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      The band Heilung performs on replica instruments to recreate the sound world of pre-Christian Europe and bring it into the modern age.BORRE, Norway — “We have vegan potato salad in the medium cauldron,” Maria Franz announced to the 17 members of Heilung, her folk metal band, as they gathered around a campfire here recently. The band was celebrating the release of its third album, “Drif,” at Midgardsblot, a festival that takes place on a Viking burial ground and also includes seminars on Viking culture for an audience of campers, many of whom were dressed up in tunics and cloaks. Earlier that day, festivalgoers joined the band to listen to the new album while sitting on the floor of a replica Viking feast hall rigged up with a speaker system.It was the perfect setting for Heilung, whose work over the past eight years has put a heavy metal twist on the music of pre-Christian Europe. Working with a team of researchers and performing on replica instruments from the period, Heilung produces music that its members describe as “amplified history.” Heilung takes its lyrics from historical texts, like runic inscriptions on archaeological finds, and uses sound sources that would have been available to early European civilizations, such as stones, bones and crude metal objects struck together.Clockwise from top left; Kati Liiri and Jussi Aspivaara at the Midgardsblot festival, in Borre, where Heilung played; Faust, a Heilung band member; a festival attendee; a homemade patch on a vest.David B. Torch for The New York Times“Drif,” for instance, combines throat singing, spoken word, chanting, battle sounds and field recordings from nature. One of Heilung’s songs, “Hakkerskaldyr,” was used in a trailer for a recent Robert Eggers film, “The Northman,” another artistic imagining of ancient Scandinavia.“We’re not claiming that we are doing the exact same thing as our ancestors did, because no one knows,” Franz said. “But it’s our interpretation of how it might have felt.”Heilung has three core members — Franz, Christopher Juul and Kai Uwe Faust — who are supported by a large cast of onstage performers, including actors dressed as Viking warriors, backing singers and drummers.Franz said the band’s project was about more than just focusing on the Viking era, though. Its members want to tap into what they see as a shared ancient history that goes beyond European borders and encompasses all of humanity. For instance, “Marduk,” the last track on the new album, is a recital of 50 names of the highest god of the Mesopotamians. Franz sometimes plays a primitive instrument she brought back from India: a stick, half a coconut, some goat skin and strings. If you look back far enough into history, Juul said, you find that most cultures share similar instruments, and similar myths.Fans of Heilung listening to its new album, “Drif,” inside a replica Viking hall.David B. Torch for The New York TimesThere are other bands in the subgenre of folk metal that draw on pre-Christian history, like the Norwegian group Wardruna. But Heilung stands out for the depth of its historical engagement and the scale of its live performances. The band’s self-released debut album, “Ofnir,” was well-received in folk metal circles, but it was not until the band’s first live shows, in 2017, that Heilung became popular in the broader metal scene.“It was a phenomenon,” said Jonathan Selzer, a music journalist at Metal Hammer magazine. He remembered seeing the band at Midgardsblot, in 2017, when it played the penultimate slot. The set incorporated elaborate costumes, including antlers and animal furs, battle cries and half-naked actors dressed as warriors charging around the stage. This performance set the blueprint for all of Heilung’s stage shows since. “You could just see this realization going through the crowd in real time, from incomprehension to wonder,” Selzer said. “The whole field turned into Viking rave.”Michael Berberian, who signed Heilung after that show to Season of Mist, a metal label he runs, said it was “a band that popped out of nowhere with a complete concept.” He added that “the visual aspects, the costume, the unique music, the production values were all there, fully ready.”Heilung onstage at a concert in Denver last year. The band stands out for the depth of its historical engagement and the scale of its live performances.Maurice NunezFranz, Faust and Juul first met through the Viking re-enactment scene, in which enthusiasts gather to dress up as Vikings, learn about their history and practice their traditions, such as sword fighting and cooking over an open fire. Runa Strindin, Midgardsblot’s founder, said the popularity of Viking re-enactments had exploded over the past five years in northern Europe, spurred by TV shows like “Vikings” and movies like “The Northman,” as well as the inclusion of Norse gods in the Marvel movies.“People are searching for an identity to come closer to something that is missing in their modern lives,” Strindin said, “and they are attracted to the Norse mythologies because it’s so easily adaptable. Whatever suits you, you will find it there.”Norse mythology also resonates with some far-right groups that see it as an endorsement of their ideology, but Heilung’s members strongly reject that worldview. For at least a century in Scandinavia, extreme nationalists have adopted the visual language of ancient runes to suggest an imagined, pre-modern era of racial purity, and neo-Nazis have used the symbols to identify themselves to one another.The connection between Nordic runes and white supremacy is still strong. Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian extremist, marked the weapons he used in a 2011 massacre with runes, and the perpetrator of the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque terrorist attack in 2019 emblazoned a sonnenrad — a rune symbol that was appropriated by the Nazis to embody their ideal vision of an Aryan identity — on his backpack.Selzer, the music journalist, said that, outside the metal scene, many people were wary about bands in the folk metal subgenre, whose merchandise and visual branding features runic symbols or who go to runic inscriptions for lyrics.A Viking battle demonstration at Midgardsblot. Heilung’s core members met through the Viking re-enactment scene.David B. Torch for The New York TimesBarbara Welento, 32, traveled from Poland to hear Heilung.David B. Torch for The New York TimesRunic windchimes at the Midgardsblot.David B. Torch for The New York TimesReclaiming Viking culture, particularly the runes, from neo-Nazis was a central part of Heilung’s mission, Strindin said. Each of the band’s live shows opens with a recited poem that emphasizes the audience’s shared humanity. “Remember that we all are brothers, all people, and beasts and trees and stone and wind,” reads one line.Strindin said that when she was growing up in Norway, in the 1990s, taking an interest in runes was discouraged by teachers and parents, because of their far-right associations. Heilung, she said, was “helping to take those symbols back, and put new meaning to them,” one that emphasized their original, spiritual intentions.“We see music as a cup,” Faust said. “You can have a beautiful cup, but a cup is supposed to transport something. So I was always more interested in the content: What am I doing with these frequencies? What is my intent, with these songs?”At the album listening session in the replica Viking hall, there was a quiet, respectful atmosphere, like a church. People closed their eyes to listen, or read through a booklet of explanatory notes the band had provided to accompany each track.The next day, Heilung played the festival’s headline slot to a crowd of fans who had come from all over the world. Lindsey Epperson, 32, from Tucson, Ariz., who had left the United States for the first time to be there, said the band’s music was “familiar, even though I wasn’t from that time,” adding, “It sounds like home to me.”A hush fell over the crowd as the show began. A performer wafted incense out over the audience, and the rest of the band gathered in a circle to recite the opening poem. They left a break after each line, so the crowd could chant it back with one voice.A couple on a Viking burial mound at dawn at Midgadsblot. “People are searching for an identity to come closer to something that is missing in their modern lives,” said the festival’s founder.David B. Torch for The New York Times More