Moody. Intelligent. Occasionally snowing sideways.

For a region with some of the world’s lowest crime rates, the Nordics have produced a frankly unreasonable amount of television about murder.

For years, Nordic television meant dark forests, exhausted detectives, questionable knitwear and somebody discovering a body before breakfast.

But something interesting happened along the way.

What started internationally with Nordic Noir developed into something much bigger. Political dramas, teenage coming-of-age stories, royal romances and even a remarkably peaceful Danish seaside hotel started finding audiences far beyond Scandinavia.

Subtitles stopped being a problem.

Apparently, if the story is good enough, people will happily read television.

Here are eight Nordic TV series that travelled far beyond the North — and occasionally made viewers want to travel there themselves.

🇩🇰 The Killing (Forbrydelsen)

The series that helped start it all

Sarah Lund investigates a murder.

For a very, very long time.

The Killing rejected the traditional crime-show formula of solving everything before the credits. Instead, one investigation unfolded slowly across an entire season, alongside the effect of the crime on the victim’s family, the police and the political world around them.

International audiences loved it.

The original Danish series eventually travelled to well over 100 countries and territories, becoming one of the programs credited with opening international doors for Danish television and Nordic Noir more broadly. The phenomenon has even been studied academically, with Aarhus University examining how The Killing helped turn Danish drama into an international television export.

It also created perhaps television’s most unlikely fashion icon:

Sarah Lund’s Faroese sweater.

Suddenly people who had never been anywhere near the Faroe Islands desperately wanted knitwear from them.

Not bad for a detective series.

And should Copenhagen itself start looking rather appealing between murders, you can experience the considerably more peaceful real thing as part of a tailor-made journey through Denmark with Best of Nordic.

🇸🇪🇩🇰 The Bridge (Bron/Broen)

Scandinavian cooperation gets complicated

The opening is almost perfect.

A body is discovered exactly halfway across the Øresund Bridge between Sweden and Denmark.

Half in Sweden.

Half in Denmark.

Which is an extraordinarily inconvenient way to create an international police investigation.

The Bridge brought together Swedish detective Saga Norén and her Danish colleagues and gave Nordic Noir one of its most recognizable characters.

The series travelled spectacularly well. Its second season was broadcast in 179 countries, while its central idea inspired adaptations based around other international borders — an extraordinary reach documented by Cineuropa in its coverage of The Bridge phenomenon.

It also transformed the Øresund Bridge from impressive infrastructure into something millions of viewers associated with murder.

A little unfair, really.

In everyday life, the bridge simply connects Copenhagen and Malmö, which also makes it remarkably easy to combine Denmark and Sweden in the same Nordic itinerary.

No forensic team required.

🇫🇮 Bordertown (Sorjonen)

Finland joined Nordic Noir. Things did not get cheerier.

Detective Kari Sorjonen moves with his family to Lappeenranta in southeastern Finland, hoping for a quieter life.

This being Nordic television, that plan goes badly almost immediately.

Bordertown combines unusual murder cases with family drama and an intensely analytical central character. But one of its greatest strengths is the setting.

Instead of Helsinki, viewers get Lappeenranta, forests and Finnish lake country.

And international audiences noticed.

The first season was eventually sold to 180 countries, according to Yle’s coverage of Bordertown’s international success, while streaming introduced the Finnish-language series to an even wider audience.

That’s rather extraordinary for a program filmed in a Finnish city many international viewers had probably never heard of beforehand.

It also proves something we particularly like at Best of Nordic:

Sometimes the places people don’t already know are precisely the ones worth discovering.

And if the landscapes interest you more than Sorjonen’s murder cases, a journey through Finland with Best of Nordic can take you from Helsinki into Lakeland and much further north.

Finland contains considerably more lakes than serial killers.

Thankfully.

🇳🇴 Skam

Teen television that didn’t feel like teen television

Then Norway changed the rules.

Skam followed teenagers in Oslo through friendship, relationships, religion, sexuality, identity and the general horror of being 17 and assuming everyone else has figured life out.

They haven’t.

What made Skam particularly clever was the way it was released. Scenes appeared online at the time they supposedly happened, while fictional characters had their own social-media accounts.

The audience didn’t simply watch the story.

They almost lived alongside it.

The format became an international phenomenon. According to NRK’s overview of international sales and adaptations, official versions were created in countries including France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, the United States, Croatia and South Korea.

And Oslo itself became part of the attraction.

Fortunately, experiencing the city doesn’t require returning to high school. Oslo can easily form the beginning of a much bigger journey through Norway.

We consider that a significant advantage.

🇩🇰 Borgen

Somehow, coalition negotiations became binge-worthy

On paper, Borgen shouldn’t work internationally.

A Danish television series about coalition politics, parliamentary negotiations and media strategy?

Try pitching that after lunch.

Yet Borgen became one of Denmark’s great television exports.

The series follows Birgitte Nyborg as she rises through Danish politics and discovers what happens when power, ideals, compromise, family and the media all begin competing for the same 24 hours.

The first three seasons were sold to more than 80 countries, and the program’s international reputation eventually contributed to its return through a collaboration between DR and Netflix. When announcing that revival, Netflix itself described Borgen as an acclaimed Danish drama with an extensive international audience.

The secret is that Borgen was never really just about Danish politics.

It was about power and people.

Coalition negotiations were simply where everyone happened to meet.

🇮🇸 Trapped (Ófærð)

Murder + isolation + Icelandic weather

A ferry arrives.

A body is discovered.

A snowstorm closes the roads.

Nobody can leave.

At this point, experienced Nordic television viewers know that the weekend is unlikely to improve.

Trapped used Iceland’s landscape brilliantly. Snow, mountains, darkness and isolation weren’t simply background scenery; they became part of the tension.

The series became an important Icelandic television export, and its international journey eventually continued through Netflix as Entrapped. Netflix’s announcement of the continuation described Trapped as one of Iceland’s most successful television productions.

It established another important rule of Nordic Noir:

Never trust the weather.

In reality, travelling through Iceland is considerably more welcoming.

Still dramatic, admittedly.

But usually for geological reasons rather than homicide.

🇸🇪 Young Royals

Nordic drama discovers royalty, romance and Netflix

Young Royals proved that Nordic television doesn’t actually require a corpse.

Sometimes being a teenager is traumatic enough.

The Swedish series follows Prince Wilhelm after he begins attending the elite Hillerska boarding school and finds himself caught between royal expectations, public scrutiny and his relationship with Simon.

It found viewers far beyond Sweden.

When the third season arrived in March 2024, it entered Netflix’s global Top 10 for non-English television at number five, attracting 2.9 million views in its first measured week, according to Netflix’s own global viewing figures.

No detective.

No murder investigation.

Barely any Faroese knitwear.

Nordic television had clearly diversified.

🇩🇰 Badehotellet (Seaside Hotel)

Finally, Denmark exports a series where most people survive

And then we come to Badehotellet.

No Nordic Noir.

No detective staring sadly across a harbour.

No body under the breakfast table.

Instead, wealthy Copenhagen families return each summer to a small seaside hotel on Denmark’s North Sea coast, where guests and staff negotiate love affairs, class differences, ambition, family drama and a rapidly changing world.

And people absolutely loved it.

In Finland, where the series is known as Rantahotelli or Badhotellet, it became a familiar fixture on Yle. The broadcaster repeatedly brought earlier seasons back when new ones arrived and described Badehotellet as one of Yle Fem’s most popular series.

Its success at home was equally remarkable. In a feature exploring both the program and Denmark’s real seaside-hotel tradition, Yle reported that roughly a third of the Danish population was following the series.

And its journey didn’t stop in the Nordics. Under the international title Seaside Hotel, the program also reached North America, where PBS Passport now offers all ten seasons.

That makes Badehotellet particularly important to this story.

Because it proves that the international appeal of Nordic television isn’t simply Nordic Noir.

Sometimes you don’t need murder.

Sometimes you need summer dresses, complicated relationships, Danish history and coffee served from proper porcelain.

And this one you can actually experience

There is another reason we particularly like Badehotellet.

It makes you want to go there.

The hotel itself is fictional, but the wide beaches, dunes, seaside traditions and distinctive atmosphere of northern Jutland are very real.

After enough episodes, you may develop an unexplained desire to head north, walk along enormous North Sea beaches, visit Skagen and spend a few days pretending your biggest concern is whether dinner will be served at seven or half past.

Fortunately, that part can be arranged.

A tailor-made journey through Denmark with Best of Nordic can incorporate North Jutland, Skagen, the west coast and the classic Danish seaside atmosphere that makes Badehotellet so appealing in the first place.

No script required.

And ideally, considerably less drama.

So Why Do Nordic TV Series Travel So Well?

Nordic Noir certainly opened the door.

But these eight series show that the appeal runs deeper than murder mysteries.

There’s a recognizable Nordic approach to storytelling: imperfect characters, moral ambiguity, patience, understated humour and a willingness to let landscapes become part of the story.

Copenhagen looks like Copenhagen.

Oslo feels like Oslo.

Lappeenranta isn’t pretending to be somewhere more famous.

Iceland is allowed to be enormous, dark and inconvenient.

And a small Danish seaside hotel can simply be a small Danish seaside hotel.

Perhaps that’s part of why these programs travel so well.

They feel local.

And strangely, that makes them universal.

From Screen to Scandinavia

There’s one final advantage to watching Nordic television.

The scenery isn’t fictional.

You really can cross the Øresund Bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö, explore the Finnish lake landscapes behind Bordertown, wander Oslo neighbourhoods familiar from Skam, experience Iceland’s dramatic landscapes or head north through Jutland in search of your own little piece of Badehotellet.

And television isn’t the only screen industry that has discovered the North. The same landscapes have appeared in major international films too — from Arctic scenery and dramatic mountains to Copenhagen streets. If you’d like to continue the screen journey, have a look at our story about Hollywood movies filmed across the Nordic countries.

And despite what several thousand hours of Scandinavian television may have led you to believe, your chances of encountering a murder investigation are reassuringly small.

At Best of Nordic, we create tailor-made journeys, incentives, meetings and travel programs across Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. So if one of these series has made you curious about the real North, we can turn that screen inspiration into a tailor-made Nordic journey.

Because in real life, the only cliffhanger should be:

Where are we going next?