A small village on the edge of a big forest sounds like an idyllic fairy-tale setting. But fairy tales usually have a dark side. In Fenris, the big bad wolf might be out in the woods, but it’s also lurking inside the villagers’ heads – and that’s an even more dangerous place to be.
Emma Salomonsen (Ida Elise Broch) is a biologist working with the Norwegian Nature Inspectorate (the Statens naturoppsyn, or SNO) where her job involves monitoring, registering and tagging wolves across the country. It might seem like an innocent government job but wolves are a controversial topic in Norway, and this is a series that dives deep into the social divide they symbolise.
For many the return of wolves to Norway over the past thirty or so years is , a sharp reminder of the divide between city and country. Only a hundred or so are thought to live in Norway, but their constant attacks on sheep and dogs are high profile; almost two-thirds of the local population were set to be culled last year due to pressure from the farming and hunting lobbies (the culls are the subject of ongoing court action).
Emma at work tagging wolves. Source: Viaplay
The issue goes from grass roots activism all the way to the top of the political system. One of the members of Norway’s current coalition government has a policy to remove all wolves from the country, despite a “wolf zone” set aside within which the animals cannot be hunted. It’s an issue that polarises the country and sparks fierce debate, especially in rural areas like the one Emma is about to find herself dragged back into.
When her boss Jo (Øystein Røger) lets her know that her father (and his friend), Marius Storhammar (Magnus Krepper), has stopped reporting on the wolf pack he’s meant to be observing, she quickly packs her car and her son Leo (Viljar Knutsen Bjaadal) and hits the road back to the small town where she grew up. Even in the fiercely passionate world of wolf research, Marius is something of a controversial figure: who knows what wild tangent he’s gone off on.
She arrives to a town in turmoil. Daniel, the son of one of Emma’s old school friends Kathinka (Julia Schacht) has disappeared, and everyone is quick to blame the wolves. Not without reason: Daniel was obsessed with the local wolf pack and was spending a lot of time hanging around with Marius, who isn’t exactly popular among his neighbours. Emma’s not really a big fan of her father’s either. She clearly had a good reason for fleeing her insular hometown years ago, and now as a fiercely protective mother, the last thing she wants is that cycle to continue.
The imposing, spectacular landscape of ‘Fenris’. Source: Viaplay
Wading through. Source: Viaplay
The local sheriff (Jan Gunnar Røise) is leading the search for the boy, in between trying to stop the town from tearing itself apart. Most of the townsfolk aren’t fans of wolves, nor of the government bodies they see as siding with the predators and against them. When Emma finds the missing boy’s bloody jacket at her father’s house, she angrily confronts him; when he vanishes, she becomes convinced there’s more going on in the woods than just a hungry wolf.
Those woods look stunning, by the way. Deep valleys, dark forests and a rich autumn glow goes a long way towards giving Fenris the feel of a slightly sinister fairy tale, even when the focus is on the local kids Leo falls in with or the more down-to-earth troubles of some of Emma’s now-grown childhood friends.
Journalist Naim Karimi (Cengiz Al). Source: Viaplay
Teaming up with Naim (Cengiz Al), a big-city journalist now working for the local paper, she starts to dig down into both the town’s dark past and its troubled present. The past she knows too well; the present has plenty of secrets of its own.
Youth gangs, sinister figures and deep social divides make Fenris a series with plenty of twists and turns across its six episodes, weaving in a range of social issues – and more than a few character conflicts – as Emma struggles to find the truth about what happened to her father.
Norwegian woods. Source: Viaplay
And all the while, in the dark forest on the edge of town, there are the wolves.
