What are the other couch potatoes watching on their small screens? Series In my foreign TV goes around programming elsewhere, one country with one guide at a time.
Icelanders watch Icelandic broadcasts. This is not obvious everywhere. English Canadians hardly ever watch their national productions. French-speaking Quebecers don’t even listen to French-language music very much on streaming, whether from here or elsewhere. So, eh.
And what shows do Icelanders watch? Once a year, on New Year’s Eve, like French-speaking Quebecers, they tune in en masse to the small screen to watch humorous sketches on the past year, a bye Scandinavian version, what.
Recently, they have also become very passionate about Verbúðinlaunched on the public channel RUV on December 21, 2021. The series offered on Netflix under the title Blackport offers a touching and comic portrait of a small fishing port in the 1980s. Privatization and other more or less capitalist worries are tearing the fishing community apart. The ecological and funny pamphlet has been described as a sort of crossroads between the worlds of Aki Kaurismäki and the Coen brothers.
The RUV television service has been around since 1966. It has two channels. Until the 2000s, programming was limited to seven hours daily, in the evening. The broadcast overflows a bit more now on weekdays and it starts at 8 a.m. on weekends. The RUV no longer closes for a few weeks during the summer holidays, as in the XXe century, to encourage people to go outside and play under the midnight sun.
I would just say we are a nation of storytellers
“The conversations prove it: people talk about television among themselves, especially when there is a national success like Blackport, which has also been extensively covered by the country’s media,” said the Duty Hrafnkell Stefansson. Himself a screenwriter (Kurteist Folk, Corruption, Borgriki…), he was joined in Reykjavik at the end of June when Prime Minister Trudeau was attending the Nordic Summit. “It was the same with Naeturvaktin [Le quart de nuit, 2007]. Everyone was watching this series and everyone was talking about it. »
Like its sequels, Dagvaktin And Fangavaktinthe sitcom Naeturvakvin was broadcast by Stöð 2 (literally: the 2e chain), of the private consortium Sýn which owns other platforms, in particular for sport. Stöð 2 broadcasts the national telecrochet Idol stjörnuleit and many American series, from Homeland To Curb Your Enthusiasm. The RUV also relays a bunch of them.
These foreign programs are always offered in English with subtitles, even productions for children, which makes them bilingual quickly. The RUV also operates the online site for children Krakkaruv to offer cartoons and other creations in Icelandic.
“Like many countries, we broadcast a lot of American productions,” says Mr. Stefánsson. People under 40 all speak fairly good English and have often learned it by watching American television. 5 or 6 year olds learn it like that and then they keep watching English content on YouTube. It’s almost a problem. We must also protect our national language. »
Overheating
We have to produce this Icelandic television that Icelanders watch in competition with TVmade in USA.
Hrafnkell Stefánsson finds himself at the center of this media system since he directs the studies of the Icelandic film school, the Kvikmyndaskóli Íslands. The establishment, founded in 1992, trains professionals in all audiovisual professions, from producer to screenwriter or special effects designer, including acting. The two-year programs attract around 110 students at a time. Foreigners take a course entirely in English for around $12,000 per session.
“Many of our students don’t have a television screen,” explains the director. They watch movies and series on their computer or phone. He adds that a few years ago his students were still working on widescreen formats, whereas now the good old 4/3 format of traditional television is becoming fashionable again. “Their images are getting narrower and narrower. I think it comes from their habit of looking at the images vertically on their phone. »
The Kvikmyndaskóli Íslands School of Image, Sound and Gaming offers future professionals paid internships in collaboration with the growing audiovisual industry. About 90% of 2022 graduates are already working in the sector.
This result is nothing less than one more cultural miracle for this land, this ultimate Thule, which accumulates them. The independent republic since 1944 has only about 375,000 inhabitants, 200,000 less than the national capital of Quebec. This tiny population is also scattered over the equivalent of all the southern regions of Quebec.
The demographic Lilliputian has nevertheless produced artistic giants for 1000 years. His medieval sagas are part of the literary heritage of humanity. The Icelandic Halldor K. Laxness received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955. Should we really talk about Björk, Ragnar Kjartansson or Hildur Guðnadóttir?
“There is a pretty strong artistic characteristic in our nation,” says Mr. Stefansson. Icelanders are said to have the most authors per capita in the world and, in fact, it is often said that we are the best per capita in several areas. I would simply say that we are a nation of storytellers. »
The Icelandic shooting industry therefore feeds on the national cultural wealth, and vice versa. Everything can be explained, and there is no need to re-read Ernest Renan to know that a miracle is simply an unusual fact that awaits its rational explanation.
Strength through emulation
The growth of the country’s audiovisual sector is also partly explained by the contribution of foreign shootings. Tax advantages (up to 35% of production costs) attract the big Hollywood sets as much as the magical landscapes, which change completely a few tens of kilometers away. The list of series and films filmed there recently includes Prometheus, Interstellar And Game Of Thrones.
“These productions keep our film crews working all year round and continually boost the quality of their work,” says director Stefánsson. “Iceland is a very small market, and you have to make alliances to survive and grow. »
Some national productions are done in collaboration with international partners, often European in particular, to give birth to yet another filmed version of the nordic black : Ófaerð (Trapped) with Norway and Germany; Broth (The Valhalla Murders) co-produced with Norway; Return with Denmark; Stella Blomkvist with Sweden and Germany. A quartet of big pockets in the industry, including comedian Olafur Darri Olafsson (True Detective), has just founded Act 4 to support Icelandic productions for the world market.
At the same time, Iceland manages to impose itself almost everywhere with its very typical stories shot in Icelandic, a language spoken by 0.004% of Earthlings. Icelanders look at each other in Icelandic. The rest of the world too.
“Iceland has been fashionable for some time,” summarizes Hrafnkell Stefánsson, in all modesty. That should help a little. Platforms like Netflix have also accustomed international audiences to attending productions in their original language, with subtitles. But I believe that it is above all the quality of the productions that explains the attraction of Icelandic television. »