Creating (in) the Arctic: Investigating collaboration and location through a case study of the Arctic noir serial Thin Ice

Introduction

The Arctic is a diverse region in ongoing transformation. While the Arctic has historically been seen as frozen, inhospitable and static (MacKenzie and Stenport, 2015a: 3), it is now also a region changing towards the opposite: thawing, habitable and traversable as a consequence of climate change (Moberg et al., 2020: 183). The change, then, is seen as both an impending catastrophe and a promising place for new waterways, resource extraction and thus economic and political gains causing considerable geopolitical uncertainty similar to the immediate aftermath of the Cold War (Auerswald, 2020: 251). In recent years, this development has made its way to high-end TV drama building on both the political tensions and the distinct aesthetics of the Arctic landscapes. This is particularly evident in Nordic crime fiction, where ‘Arctic noir’ has already established itself as a marketing term and subject in scholarly writings on film and television drama (for example Hiltunen, 2020; Iversen, 2020; Waade, 2020). As argued by Anne Marit Waade, the term ‘Arctic noir’ builds on the characteristics of Nordic noir but differs by ‘making the Arctic setting and climate significant to the plotline of the crime narrative as well as in the visual aesthetic’ (Waade, 2020: 39), often approaching discussions of geopolitical issues, the climate or Indigenous peoples.

This interest in content from the Arctic has created opportunities for the development of screen production industries among the Arctic nations and peoples. In recent years, ultra-small screen industries such as the Sámi, Faroese or Greenlandic ones have developed with increased structure and cooperation. This can potentially change the balance in the existing production ecology dominated by larger screen industries such as that of Iceland. Furthermore, the narratives increasingly take place not only in the Arctic but also involve its (Indigenous) populations and cultures such as Sámi in the serials Midnattssol [Midnight Sun] (2016) or Utmark [Welcome to Utmark] (2021). This has caused a need for the involvement of the communities concerned. An example of this is the recent Ofelaŝ guide from the International Sámi Film Institute that included guidelines for responsible filmmaking involving Sámi culture and people (The Sámi Film & Culture Advisory Board, 2021).

An interesting case in this context is the Greenlandic screen industry, which has developed rapidly together with the increasing (geo)political and cultural interest. The development has resulted in a wide range of Greenland themed crime novels starting with Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow in 1992 and gaining momentum in the 2010s (Dybdal, 2021: 115). However, except for one episode in the first season of Borgen (2010) and recently the whole season of Borgen: Riget, Magten og Æren [Borgen: Power & Glory] (2022), this tendency has yet to manifest itself on-screen among the growing amount of Arctic high-end TV dramas.

This changed in 2020 when the original serial Tunn is [Thin Ice] (2020) premiered; a Swedish-Icelandic coproduction set on the East coast of Greenland. Here, a research vessel is attacked during a negotiation between members of the Arctic Council leading to both political intrigues and discussions of Greenlandic independence. We follow different plotlines and characters such as the Swedish foreign minister, a Greenlandic police officer, an Inuit activist and a wide range of politicians. Dealing with both political schemes, a hijacking and several other threats – not least the climate crisis so evident in the setting – we see the different characters deal with the issues as individuals, while at the same time getting a picture of the connection between political disagreements, personal problems, climate and social challenges in Greenland. All this is set in, in the words of the Swedish broadcaster, a ‘magnificent Arctic environment’ (TV4, n.d.: 4) with the isolated city of Tasiilaq as the main setting. Thus, Thin Ice stands as an Arctic noir par excellence due to the various ways in which it highlights current challenges and discussions in the region.

With the Arctic Council’s member states and Greenlandic Inuit at the centre, Thin Ice is highly multi-ethnic and multi-lingual with actors and personnel from across the global North including Swedes, Danes, Greenlanders, Finns, Icelanders, Americans and Balts (Carlström, 2019). Furthermore, the production of high-end TV drama is notoriously expensive, and taking it to less accessible and more unpredictable peripheral locations increase the usual production challenges – additional expenditures that local co-funding usually cannot make up for (Hansen and Re, 2021: 58). Thin Ice is produced by Yellowbird in coproduction with Sagafilm for Cmore and TV4. Additionally, the serial is made in collaboration with France Télévisions, supported by Creative Europe MEDIA, Nordisk Film & TV Fond, Icelandic Film Centre and Swedish Film Institute and in association with NRK, DR, RÚV, YLE and Lumière. Due to this, Gunhild Agger describes it as a ‘Swedish coproduction with European affiliations and a distinct Nordic profile’ (Agger, 2021: 31).

As Agger also notes, Thin Ice is innovative in several ways and especially in the use of ‘the Greenland location and the presence of modern Greenlanders [that] play a significant role in highlighting alternatives in current Arctic geopolitics’ (Agger, 2021: 22). In this way, the mere representation of Greenlandic elements of verisimilitude brings originality into the narrative. In terms of production, however, the serial was primarily filmed in Iceland with limited involvement from the evolving Greenlandic screen industry. Thin Ice thus demonstrates a place-centred paradox in film and high-end TV set in the Arctic or North Atlantic region: the discrepancy between setting and location. This solution of fully or partly shooting a production elsewhere naturally has several causes with the obvious ones being economic leeway and the lack of infrastructure in the place in question. However, put next to the ethical and representational issues (which the Ofelaŝ guide is an example of), runaway productions and choices of location must be seen in the light of more than mere practicalities.

As the first high-end TV serial with Greenland as a setting, involving Greenlandic personnel and actors, Thin Ice offers a unique case to examine a sparsely studied region and the ultra-small Greenlandic screen industry, which is distinguished by the presence of particular challenges and opportunities. Therefore, this article presents an explorative case study of Thin Ice. Based on the briefly described challenges presented above, three questions are pertinent: How and why did Thin Ice deploy transnational coproduction processes? How is the serial creating cultural specificity and a plausible Greenlandic setting? Lastly, the article discusses how a runaway production from a Greenlandic perspective – such as Thin Ice – influences the developing Greenlandic screen industry. In this way, Thin Ice illustrates not only the position of the Greenlandic screen industry but also existing challenges and opportunities as a region undergoing change.

Approaches to place and (co-)production studies

Greenlandic screen production has not attracted much attention, with only a handful of in-depth works that foreground representation (Gant, 2004; Thisted, 2013; Volquardsen, 2015) or early film history (Gant, 2004; Kleivan, 1981; Pedersen, 2003; Rygaard and Pedersen, 2003). There are few studies of current developments; especially since the premiere of the first Greenlandic-produced feature film Nuummioq in 2009 (Grønlund, 2021; Montgomery-Andersen, 2021; Thisted, 2015a). Likewise, there has been limited interest in the production perspectives of the Greenlandic film industry (Frank, 2019; Grønlund and Dybdal, 2020; Thorsen and Péronard, 2021), and so far no studies on international collaboration have been published.

However, there has been an increasing scholarly interest in the Arctic region as a whole (Hart, 2021; Kaganovsky et al., 2019; MacKenzie and Stenport, 2015b). These studies extrapolate the heterogeneity of the region and its various voices and histories – both concerning nation-states and Indigenous peoples. Among the Arctic countries and cultures, Iceland is the most studied in the areas of screen industries and coproduction (Conolly and Whelan, 2012; Davies, 2019; Norðfjörð, 2007, 2015).

Building upon this existing literature, I wish to combine representational studies with a screen industry approach by focusing on location, which is understood in the broadest sense as both geographical place and the setting of the narrative. In this way, the focus will be on how Thin Ice as a transnational coproduction creates a plausible sense of place and thereby provides insights into recent production strategies and collaboration in contemporary (Nordic) high-end TV drama in the Arctic. Here, the term ‘transnational’ is used rather than ‘international’ to acknowledge the increased complexity of collaboration that characterises today’s coproduction of high-end TV drama (Dunleavy, 2020: 336–337).

While the location studies approach may seem a non-traditional path into the study of representation and screen industries, I argue, on the contrary, that this approach encompasses both representational and industrial considerations by including everything from aesthetics to policies of place or, in terms of Thin Ice’s complex place conditions, policy of places. More specifically, I will draw upon the broad location study methodology developed by Kim Toft Hansen and Anne Marit Waade (Hansen and Waade, 2017). The location studies method adds importance to and examines the complexities of the relationship between places and screen production through a combination of off- and on-screen elements of location (Hansen and Waade, 2019). In this article, I will differentiate between location as the geographical location of the actual shooting and the setting as the on-screen places being depicted or referenced by the story. By doing so, I follow the clear distinction from Hansen and Waade and at the same time write myself into a longer theoretical discussion of distinctions in terms of spaces on screen. Here, Martin Lefebvre’s often-used distinction between landscape and setting underlines a more complex approach with setting as space ‘subservient to characters, events and action’ and landscape as ‘a pictorial concept distinct from the mere setting’ (2011: 64). In this sense, the distinction opens for a more phenomenological-oriented analysis of ‘the more complex significations and aesthetics that mark out location-as-landscape from location-as-setting’ (Roberts, 2016: 367). In this article, however, the interest is towards the creation of a (plausible) space rather than the subjective experience of space making the various under-categorisations of on-screen spaces a risk of diluting the production-oriented analysis. Therefore, I will use the simple distinction between location and setting that supports my approach of mixing production study methods with textual analysis of on-screen factors. Here, on-screen factors point to ‘the salient ‘textual’ aspects of location studies, with special interest in how places appear on screen’ (Hansen and Waade, 2019: 106). Focusing on the specific setting, the objective is to examine how every scene expresses for example local colour; a term referring to ‘the aesthetics of the valorized local’ (Kapor, 2008: 39). The use of local colour is thus a way in which certain features represent specific places or historical periods. According to Hansen and Waade (2017: 62), this is shown through factors such as landscape, climate and architecture. By supplementing this with textual analysis of characters, I wish to examine the creation of both cultural specificity and a plausible sense of place.

In terms of off-screen factors, Hansen and Waade link textual analysis to production studies by examining how creative and financial practices are connected to and shaped by place (2019: 107). They identify four central factors, of which three are particularly interesting to this case: sites of production, where productions take place; geographical place, the specificity of the physical place; and policies of place, referring to the local, regional, national or transnational policies of place (Hansen and Waade, 2019: 107).

These factors can be supplemented by focusing on the various reasons for choosing one location over another, based on issues such as economics, technology, aesthetics and logistics (Gleich and Webb, 2019: 5). In the literature about so-called ‘runaway film productions,’ there are several suggestions as to why production companies choose to shoot abroad, which media lawyer Adrian McDonald narrows down to three main categories: artificial economic runaways, natural economic runaways and artistic runaways. He explains that:

Artificial economic runaways are films shot abroad because of artificial, or legislatively created, incentives designed to lure productions. Natural economic runaways are films that shoot abroad to take advantage of natural economic occurring phenomenon – cheap labor – that lower production costs. Artistic runaways are films that shoot abroad to artistically service the story – a film about Paris that shoots in Paris.

                       (McDonald, 2007: 900)

In a transnational high-end TV drama coproduction such as Thin Ice, different interests and demands from various financial or production partners will of course shape both the choices of location and the constructions of place. Furthermore, the place itself plays a crucial role as something both physical, imagined and mediated as well as historically in flux offering both meaningful landscapes and a rich narrative pool (Eichner and Mikos, 2017: 43). Through an evaluative as well as an industrial approach to the example of Thin Ice – as a cultural artefact that is both logistically challenging and costly – this article will seek to increase understandings of screen industry collaboration in the Arctic, the involvement of minor film industries in this process and the possible development of these two elements.

Methodologically, the case study combines on- and off-screen perspectives – textual media studies as well as production studies – through ‘empirical studies of the people producing and making decisions about the locations […] as well as funding systems, production sites and facilities’ being used in this instance (Hansen and Waade, 2017: 56). The empirical data presented in this article is existing material (the serial itself, interviews and marketing material) and semi-structured interviews with exclusive informants (Bruun, 2014) involved with the production. These interviews, conducted and translated by the author, consist of the serial’s main producer, Søren Stærmose (Yellowbird), one of the main Greenlandic actors of the serial, Nivi Pedersen, and the Greenlandic producer Emile Hertling Péronard who was only briefly involved in the production concerning casting.

Creating in the Arctic: The cases of Iceland and Greenland

Since the early years of cinema, it has been an expensive affair to shoot in the Arctic. It was not unusual for expeditions to be partly funded by film companies in the hope of their returning sensational footage (Nørrested, 2011: 45). When productions ventured to Greenland, these were often referred to as film expeditions involving great logistical planning and personnel. Due to this, early on-location productions were often based on transnational cooperation and financing such as the US/German film coproduction SOS Eisberg (1933).

While a steady stream of both feature films and documentaries has flowed from both Greenland and the Arctic in general since then, TV drama is a relatively new strand of productions from the region. In recent years, the genre of Arctic noir, as mentioned above, has changed this with several productions such as the British Fortitude (2015–8) or the Finnish/German Ivalo [Arctic Circle] (2018-present). This recent flow of TV dramas is in line with the rise in TV stories from different regions involving transnational coproduction, a change that has significance for both cooperation and the cultural encounters available to audiences (Bondebjerg et al., 2017: 1–2). On top of this, together with a general rise in production costs of high-end drama, the increasing interest in regional stories and ‘exotic’ locations have contributed to the need for cooperation as ‘shooting far from home requires the establishment of local partnerships (to identify crew, cast and locations, etc.) and more often than not, also entails some sharing of risk’ (Hammett-Jamart et al., 2019: 2). This increasing interest in local stories has brought productions to the Arctic region, where small industries are developing.

According to the Arctic Business Analysis report on cultural and creative industries in the Nordic Arctic (consisting of Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Faroe Islands and Greenland), the film industry is generally contributing ‘to new and more diversified employment activities, regional attractiveness and stronger regional identities. The film industry is present in all the Nordic Arctic countries to varying degrees’ (Nordic Council of Ministers, 2018: 19). Though the Greenlandic film industry has gone through tremendous development in recent years – with the first Greenlandic produced feature film in 2009, the establishment of the filmmakers’ association FILM.GL in 2016 and the film workshop Filmiliortarfik the same year (Grønlund and Dybdal, 2020) – the industry is still very small and has limited experience with major productions. Out of a total population of 56,000, approximately 50 people work professionally or semi-professionally in the film industry. According to the report, Greenland is placed at the lowest level of economic activity and policy support compared to the other countries in the region (Nordic Council of Ministers, 2018: 21). This is partly due to the demographical and geographical challenges as well as structural issues, for example, Greenland is the only country of the six without a film institute.

Iceland, at the other end of the scale as the most developed film industry in the Nordic Arctic, has high economic activity and not least a 25 % tax rebate for productions shot in Iceland (Nordic Council of Ministers, 2018: 19). Furthermore, the rebate is triggered by productions made more than 80 % in Iceland, which makes it possible to produce 20 % in other EEA and EU countries – as well as Greenland (Polarama, n.d.). This, combined with spectacular landscapes, has attracted international filmmakers and foreign productions in search of Arctic or otherworldly backdrops for action and fantasy epics (Conolly and Whelan, 2012: 6). Thus, Iceland has become a popular runaway destination for Hollywood and this development has transformed Icelandic filmmaking and the industry dramatically.

On-screen, the Icelandic locations are often used to create an authentic generic setting or doubling other settings such as the Himalayas, Siberia, Switzerland (Norðfjörð, 2015: 181) – or Greenland. While Greenland itself has functioned as ‘stand in’ – such as Antarctic wilderness in Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2019) or as spectacular Arctic scenery in The Last Airbender (2010) – it has more often been a central part of the diegesis if it was chosen as location. Alternatively, the Greenlandic location is simply being doubled or part doubled (as in mixing on-location footage from Greenland with footage from elsewhere). The doubling of location is most common with recent examples such as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) as well as part doubling in Against the Ice (2022) – both by doubling Greenland through Icelandic locations.

In the recent strand of Arctic noirs – and rise of series in general – Iceland continues as a popular location in narratives where Iceland figures diegetically or doubles as another location – such as the Norwegian archipelago Svalbard in Fortitude or, in the case of this article, Greenland in Thin Ice. In his study of Liverpool as a centre of film and TV production in the UK, Les Roberts presents the idea of ‘the world in one city’ to illustrate the city’s ability to stand in for other urban locations (Roberts, 2012: 148). Arguably, Iceland can similarly be described as the ‘Arctic in one nation’ due to its extensive use as a stand-in for various Arctic locations – urban as well as rural.

With Iceland as a common location for doubling as Greenland, Thin Ice can be described as a runaway production from the perspective of the new and developing Greenlandic film industry. Rooted in economic benefits, the Hollywood unions’ application of the term is linked to these setups when post-war promises of foreign funding, cheaper crews and authentic locations led productions to travel across the globe (Steinhart, 2019: 40–41). Though loaded with pejorative charges from dissatisfied unions in 1950s Hollywood, the idea of runaway productions seems quite illustrative to the ‘loss’ of local foreign productions in Greenland. Here, the opportunity for broader economic gains – due to a larger team living in a smaller community for a longer period – are lost as well as additional employment in the community. To stay in this allegory, international productions tend to ‘runaway’ to Iceland not only for the generic authenticity of the picturesque Arctic landscape but also to create the visual appearance of a plausible Greenlandic setting.

Creating a coproduction set-up

When the first ideas of making Thin Ice emerged from executive producer Søren Stærmose and actor Lena Endre in 2013, the prospect of creating a Greenland-centred serial was perceived as something new and untried. According to Stærmose, he knew from the outset that it would be impossible to shoot a serial in Greenland due to the lack of economic incentives such as tax rebate systems, infrastructure and the shortage of experienced film personnel. For the same reasons – especially because of the presence of lucrative tax breaks – Iceland was chosen as the best and closest alternative. Additionally, the production found that several Icelandic locations were similar to the Greenlandic urban landscapes and wilderness such as the town Stykkisholmúr and Fellsendavatn. The Icelandic shooting was supplemented by second unit shots from the Tasiilaq area in Greenland through CGI renderings to form an attractive visual, and more authentic, mosaic (Stærmose, personal communication, April 2021).

In this sense, Thin Ice can be described as a ‘runaway production’ in artificial economic and artistic terms. Iceland was chosen for its attractive financial incentives as well as for the extent to which its ‘Arctic qualities’ through rural and urban landscapes could aesthetically service the story (McDonald, 2007: 900). The limited use of second unit shots from East Greenland was a purely artistic choice to create a plausible setting and only involved a three-man team flying to Tasiilaq.

Stærmose quickly started a close cooperation with the Icelandic company Sagafilm to create a Swedish/Icelandic coproduction in collaboration with France Télévisions for C More and TV4 in the largest TV series production made by an Icelandic company with a budget of eleven million euros (112.000.000 SEK). Stærmose explains that France Télévisions’ vague classification as a collaborator rather than an official coproducer was due to Yellowbird not being able to fulfil the French requirement for French personnel to be involved. Still, France Télévisions chose to cooperate and contributed 10 per cent of the budget, approximately 1.2 million euros, without having creative influence.

Furthermore, the large international interest, which made a production of this size and cost possible, is also a result of the plot’s setting in the harsh environment of the Greenlandic east coast. Stærmose explains the non-traditional choice of using East Greenland as setting – instead of the more common west coast – for the story as a decision to create an even more ‘exotic’ and rural noir. As he recalls, ‘We thought that it would be more exotic, wild and weird to go to and show the east coast. We knew about the land formations and that the coastlines were exceptionally dramatic and beautiful’ (Stærmose, personal communication, April 2021). According to Stærmose, the choice of this setting was a key selling point internationally, offering something new in the ongoing wave of interest in regional crime narratives of which Arctic noir is one element.

Being involved in all aspects of the production – from finding creative personnel and coproducers to financing – Stærmose initiated the different aspects of the production where he found his personal connections to be a crucial enabler. It became a coproduction between Yellowbird and the Icelandic Sagafilm where Stærmose already knew the owner and CEO, Kjartan Þór Þórðarson. With headquarters in Reykjavík and a sales office in Sweden, Stærmose underlines the importance of a felt nearness in terms of coproduction in a project of this size with far-away productions.

Accordingly, Thin Ice is a contemporary example of a transnationally coproduced high-end drama. It has a coproduction set-up that is similar to other European co-productions, where the fundamental sense of trust and a shared vision are essential between partners when venturing into large-scale transnational productions (Bondebjerg et al., 2017: 103). As Stærmose emphasises, the innovative element was the use of Greenland as an ‘exotic’ setting and the solutions deployed in making Iceland look like a plausible Greenland.

Creating the Arctic: Greenlandic characters, dilemmas and landscapes

The Arctic region is diverse and marked by complex issues of colonisation and conflicting geopolitical interests which the writers used as the foundation for the main plot. In this way, Thin Ice writes itself into a general tendency of television becoming more geopolitical, an endeavour ‘defined by [an] engagement with international issues including terrorism, the refugee crisis, nuclear deterrence, and climate change’ (Saunders, 2020: 1). As argued by Agger, a major contributor to the originality of Thin Ice stems from the way it uses and includes Greenland and Greenlanders which can ‘update traditional images of Greenland culture’ (Agger, 2021: 29). This is especially evident through the Greenlandic characters, who, in various ways, imbue the narrative with Greenlandic perspectives and a desire for change.

From the beginning of the story, Greenlandic actors play key roles as the Greenlandic policeman Enok Lynge (Angunnguaq Larsen), his wife Ina (Nukâka Coster-Waldau), the Greenlandic Prime Minister Pipaluk (Kimmernaq Kjeldsen) and the young activist Kimmernaq (Nivi Pedersen). Through this, (West) Greenlandic people and language (Kalaallisut) are represented vividly when Greenlandic characters interact. Furthermore, the serial examines not only political intrigues and climate issues but also postcolonial issues and Greenlandic independence.

In order to do so, Thin Ice uses cultural encounters and national stereotypes similar to other Nordic noir TV dramas such as Bron/Broen [The Bridge] (2011-8) which drew on deliberate national stereotypes based on how Danes and Swedes think of each other (Bondebjerg, 2020: 211). In Thin Ice, we meet the messy and unconsciously inappropriate Danish foreign minister, Martin Overgaard (Nicolas Bro), and the strict and idealistic Swedish foreign minister, Elsa Engström (Lena Endre) who share some traits of personality and appearance with The Bridge’s Martin Rhode (Kim Bodnia) and Saga Norén (Sofia Helin). The same deliberate play with stereotypes is used in the representation of the Russian and American politicians, which helps create a plot in which distrust and sympathy change along with stereotypes fulfilled at first, but later shaken when the US government turns out to be the real culprit. At the centre of the story is the Danish-Greenlandic relationship, where the Danish foreign minister Overgaard shows little to no knowledge of the Greenlandic culture and becomes an ironic comment on the Danish-Greenlandic relationship today – from a Greenlandic perspective.

By using oil exploitation as the core story, it refers to real debates and dilemmas over mining. For instance, the Greenlandic government ended a zero-tolerance policy to uranium extraction in 2013, which was reintroduced in 2021 (Brøns, 2021). This creates the dilemma of trying to reconcile climate concerns with national economic development. This dilemma is clearly shown through Prime Minister Pipaluk, who is divided between national ecocritical voices, represented through activist Kimmernaq, and the economic progress that oil extraction could bring.

Furthermore, the Greenlandic police officer Enok Lynge is subject to the Danish authorities. But through his local knowledge, and not least a solid moral compass, his character becomes a critique of this unequal relationship, as the Danish police chief turns out to be both corrupt and without empathy for the Greenlandic people. Through these characters, Greenlanders are given agency in the political conflicts that concern them, without involving them. Thin Ice thus illustrates a more contemporary Arctic, where Indigenous peoples are no longer voiceless and without agency, but ‘have their own political voices’ (Thisted, 2015b: 23).

The characters are of course inextricably linked to the Greenlandic setting. In the serial’s opening sequence, a spectacular Arctic sublime landscape of mountains, ice cap and an infinite whiteness of ice and snow is displayed. According to Agger, this scenery can be linked to a long history of Arctic depictions in Gothic thrillers starting with Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein which creates a ‘tighter darkness than usually seen in Nordic noir’ (Agger, 2021: 29). Throughout the serial, the Arctic nature is depicted in an almost stereotypical use of dramatic elements with blizzards, an ice bear and endless space of wilderness turning Tasiilaq into an isolated setting similar to that of the remote Icelandic town in Ófærð (Trapped, 2015-).

While these generic elements help to create a distinctly Arctic place, cultural specificity (Greenlandness) is created through the use of certain elements of verisimilitude such as seemingly Greenlandic architecture (colourful scattered houses), sled dogs, Greenlandic street signs and Air Greenland’s characteristic red helicopters and planes. Together with the characters, these elements are what makes the serial visually original. This integration of Greenlandic elements is of course the result of a larger work off-screen, where Greenlandic personnel appear as the innovative element in relatively traditional Nordic coproduction.

As such, Thin Ice uses Greenland’s status as a delicate geopolitical and postcolonial site as a point of departure for the story. In this sense, screen production is used as a way to debate both conditions of Indigenous peoples and global warming more broadly that speaks especially into Arctic noir’s placement in the region’s climate and not least its peoples. It is in this encounter that the genre can be said to have particular opportunities – and perhaps even a responsibility – to articulate issues and bring forward alternative narratives.

Creating in the Arctic: Plausibility and Greenlandic supervision

To create the right setting of a dramatic Arctic winter, the serial was shot in the coldest period of the Icelandic winter from January to March, a season of stormy weather, snow and general unpredictability. The production took place in three major locations in Iceland – Stykkisholmúr, Fellsendavatn and Reykjavík – to create a plausible rural and urban Greenland. To mitigate the limitations of economy and climate, the whole eight-part serial was shot in 10 and a half weeks. At the same time, all interior shots were filmed on location. Location scenes in Stykkisholmúr, for example, used a local hotel restaurant, rooms and bar to create a setting for the Arctic Council meeting. A major part of the shooting took place on location in Stykkisholmúr where the architecture and scattered buildings were seen as similar to a Greenlandic landscape. This was also the case with the production of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) which also used Stykkisholmúr to create a plausible Greenlandic urban setting in 2013. According to Stærmose, it was just a matter of implementing Greenlandic elements and changing the signs:

We were allowed to change it into a Greenlandic community. That is, we had to repaint some of the houses, we had to place dog sleds […]. We were allowed to set up large kayak storage rags and tripods to dry fish. […] We were allowed to change all their roads signs and write Greenlandic street names.

            (Stærmose, personal communication, April 2021)

Together with extensive CGI work to incorporate exterior second unit shots from the Tasiilaq area, these were the technical methods used to create a plausible Tasiilaq and ‘Greenlandic noir’ setting.

The creative team was primarily Nordic, in that it included Icelandic scriptwriters as well as Norwegian and Icelandic directors. Due to the placement of virtually all shooting in Iceland, the below-the-line personnel were primarily Icelandic. To create cultural authenticity, then, Greenlandic personnel were involved primarily in the areas of acting, casting and directing. The foremost Greenlandic creative contributor was Nukâka Coster-Waldau, an actor who is also credited as ‘Greenlandic supervisor’. This vague role entailed Coster-Waldau taking responsibility for a broad creative influence and for the supervision of all Greenlandic elements in the serial. Important elements of this role were reading the scripts and assisting the Norwegian and Icelandic directors to ensure authentic use of Greenlandic cultural elements, clothing and dialogue. Actor Nivi Pedersen describes this supervising function as an absolute must:

There is nothing cornier than when dialogues are too translated. It is always easy to differentiate between whether the Greenlandic language feels authentic or not. […] It’s simply a must to have a Greenland expert, a very knowledgeable Greenland expert, present in both pre- and post-production.

             (Pedersen, personal communication, June 2021)

Having a Greenlander in a supervising role is considered the absolute minimum among the Greenlandic personnel and as important to the cultural precision of a production that seeks to accurately represent Greenlandic culture.

The creation of cultural specificity, then, is not just a naïve and uncritical construction and representation of language and culture, but an attempt to construct a correct representation in cooperation with Coster-Waldau as a prominent Greenlandic representative. This is more in line with the current and critical discussions on representation in film and television today, where minorities and Indigenous peoples are demanding more influence as the earlier mentioned Ofelaŝ guide from the International Sámi Film Institute underlines. In this regard, Thin Ice is a production where the vast majority is not shot in Greenland, does not have a Greenlandic coproducer and uses only a limited number of Greenlandic personnel. The question then is, what a runaway production – from a Greenlandic perspective – such as Thin Ice can do for the developing Greenlandic screen industry?

Ambivalence and industrial development

When reading articles published after the premiere of Thin Ice, interestingly, there is a clear ambivalence concerning the used locations. Though there are overall positive experiences of the cooperation in both public interviews and the interviews made for this article, there have been critical voices of ambivalence from the creators themselves. After the release of Thin Ice, the Icelandic producers Kidda Rokk and Steinarr Logi Nesheim commented on shooting the majority of the serial in Iceland, asserting that:

With Thin Ice, we didn’t really have a choice but to carry out most of the shooting in Iceland. But working with Greenlandic actors and filmmakers opened our eyes to the great potential Greenland has. Not only in terms of landscapes and locations but especially Greenlandic talent – and of course the great Greenlandic storytelling traditions that we’re only just now seeing transformed to the screens.

                 (Rokk and Neshiem in Mitchell, 2020)

While Greenland was not initially seen as a possibility for the production of a high-end TV drama, they describe Thin Ice as a revelation of the possibilities of Greenland. In this sense, the serial was not solely an introduction to Greenland for viewers of high-end TV drama, but as an important first step for the creators themselves.

During the creation of the serial, Rokk and Nessheim met with several Greenlandic film professionals and among others the producer Emile Hertling Péronard who helped with the Greenlandic casting. Péronard describes how neither Rokk nor Nesheim were content with the serial being shot in Iceland (Péronard personal communication, March 2021). Due to this initial collaboration, Péronard – together with Greenlandic director and producer Pipaluk Kreutzmann Jørgensen – eventually collaborated with Rokk and Nesheim by establishing the production and production service company Polarama Greenland. The company is an independent and self-owned subdivision of the Icelandic Polarama, which Rokk and Nesheim established in 2020 after leaving Sagafilm. In that way, Thin Ice affected not only the Icelandic screen industry – where the production took place – but the Greenlandic one as well.

Being the first Greenland-centred high-end TV drama, Thin Ice became an important production by introducing the outside world to a (not yet utilised) potential drawn from unique locations and local talents. In this way, the Nordic coproduction acts as a central launching pad in the development of the ultra-small Greenlandic screen industry. According to Pèronard, this has later manifested itself in Greenlandic-Icelandic collaborations with the ‘aim of improving the qualifications of the industry and ensure that as much work as possible is made by Greenlanders’ (Péronard, personal communication, March 2021).

Despite emphasising the good community and cooperation around the production of Thin Ice, both Péronard and Greenlandic actress Nivi Pedersen noted some initial disappointment that the serial continued the use of Iceland as a substitute for Greenland. At the same time, they acknowledge the current state of the industry and the lack of capacity for foreign productions of that size. Instead, Pedersen, who herself is a rising Greenlandic director and actor, points to a few key benefits of runaway productions:

It’s very exciting to be part of these large productions – not just as an actor, but also just in general as a filmmaker. […] It’s really interesting because it’s in a way what we [the Greenlandic film industry] want to work towards. I don’t know whether to call it more professionalisation, because we’re still professionals, it’s just in a different way. First of all, we do not have all the means, but we don’t have all the assistant functions in our productions that are needed in the larger ones neither.

             (Pedersen, personal communication, June 2021)

As already mentioned, the Greenlandic film industry is very small, and individuals often take on different roles in the same production. As is the case with Pedersen, being part of a large-scale production such as Thin Ice contributes to the professionalisation of young Greenlandic filmmakers, which can potentially influence the Greenlandic industry as such working towards an industry with the capacity to manage similar projects in the future. International coproductions have led to a professionalisation and the evolution of production services in the Icelandic screen industry in similar ways as Hollywood runaways developed the British film industry as early as the 1960s (Fenwick, 2017: 198). But as this case study indicates, there is also an industry potential for countries that are not directly involved as either a primary location or in an economic coproduction.

Based on this, the serial did have benefits for the Greenlandic film industry, though many initiatives came out of a frustration driven by the very fact that Greenland was not used as an actual location. This points to a complex relationship between location and setting. The Greenlandic film industry is still in its earliest years in terms of coproduction, still trying to get a foothold and a local, durable field of filmmaking. To do so, the obvious path is experience and collaboration creating an efficient production environment with the capacity for future high-end TV drama and film productions.

Conclusions

In this article, I have examined the Arctic noir serial Thin Ice in terms of coproduction as well as the creation of cultural specificity and place plausibility from both off-screen and on-screen perspectives. The article has explored how this Swedish-Icelandic co-production has influenced the development of the ultra-small Greenlandic screen industry. Thin Ice is a current example of a high-end TV drama becoming the most expensive TV production made by an Icelandic company. From the beginning, Greenland was deselected as the actual shooting location due to the lack of both personnel, capacity and, not least, of tax rebate provisions. Due to the sites of production, the specificity and policies of place, Iceland was chosen as the double for Greenland. To fund and create an Arctic noir, the serial took the form of an international coproduction and, using Adrian McDonald’s terminology, that of an artificial economic and artistic runaway.

The serial creates a plausible place through a comprehensive production process. Being a highly multi-ethnic and -lingual serial, the different nationalities and cultural considerations were a potential challenge – especially in terms of the Greenlanders and Greenland shown on-screen. By using a wide range of Greenlandic speaking actors, elements, and not least the cross-over creative function of Nukâka Coster-Waldau as ‘Greenlandic supervisor’, more cultural specificity was integrated into on-screen representations. Though Thin Ice is not based on financial Greenlandic coproduction and the use of Greenlandic locations is very limited, this article has outlined the experienced and potential benefits of the serial for the Greenlandic screen industry.

Through the involvement in high-end TV drama such as Thin Ice, the industry can further professionalise itself and gain the experience needed to attain more influence over future productions to ensure a larger economic gain and greater authenticity in representation. This is already the case in newer productions such as Borgen: Riget, Magten & Æren where Polarama Greenland acted as production service in the long periods of shooting on-location in Greenland. Here, both Péronard and Pedersen underline the gained experience for the industry (Andersen, 2022; Rasmussen, 2022) and – as Péronard writes in the caption of a Borgen-related Instagram-post – the possibility to ‘destroy a few stereotypes along the way’ (Péronard, 2022). In this sense, Thin Ice has whetted the appetite for Greenlandic film professionals, and high-end productions have chosen the Greenlandic location despite its continued lack of primarily economic initiatives. Thin Ice thus illustrates both a region and an industry in development as well as changing production practices. As with Thin Ice, there are many opportunities hidden in screen production whether it is professionalisation or representation. In this regard, the important factors are collaboration and involvement – both when locations are chosen or settings are created.