Beforeigners

Anne Bjørnstad and Eilif Skodvin, the writing team behind Lilyhammer, created Beforeigners (Fremvandrerne) for HBO Nordic, the first Norwegian-language series the channel produced. The series was directed by Jens Lien, whose The Bothersome Man brought a similarly dry eye to Norwegian life. The creators have said they wanted to tell a story about refugees who arrive from a different time rather than a different place. The first season aired in August 2019 and became the first HBO production nominated for Best Drama Series at the Gullruten, Norway's television awards; a second followed between December 2021 and January 2022.

The premise is set out early. People from the Stone Age, the Viking Age and the 19th century have begun appearing in the waters off Oslo, and the city is attempting to integrate them. Detective Lars Haaland (Nicolai Cleve Broch) is partnered with Alfhildr Enginsdottir (Krista Kosonen), a Viking-era woman who has joined the police, on the murder of a Stone Age woman. Linguists were brought in to build a Stone Age language and to reconstruct Old Norse and 19th-century Norwegian, and Kosonen, who is Finnish, learned both Norwegian and Old Norse for the part. The second season sends the pair after a killer with ties to Jack the Ripper.

Critics noted the dry humour running beneath the procedural, and Kosonen's performance drew particular praise. The series was removed from HBO Max in July 2022, after the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger, and has been hard to see since; Arte is due to bring it back to European audiences in November 2026.