Best-selling Finnish author Satu Rämö on the creation of the 'Hildur' series and her Icelandic adopted home

Living in an isolated village that – due to the surrounding mountains – barely sees sunlight could stifle creativity. But for Finnish author Satu Rämö, it’s what gets her juices flowing. “The first time I arrived in Iceland I got a funny feeling,” she says. “I was at the airport, and the weather was absolutely awful – pouring rain, super windy, proper horror August conditions. But I got a strange sensation – there was something really cosy about it. It was a wonderful feeling.”

Rämö has lived in Ísafjörður, a sleepy town nestled in Iceland’s remote Westfjords, for five years (she’s lived in the country for 15 in total). The dramatically rugged landscapes serve as a great source of inspiration for the 44-year-old writer. “It’s the emptiness, darkness and the raw beauty of nature – the volcanic eruptions, the avalanches, the long distances, and the intense climate that dictates life here. All of this fascinates me so much,” she says. “The limits placed by nature here don’t give me anxiety. Rather, they fuel my creativity.”

Related: Read Satu Rämö's latest ‘Hildur’ installment – written exclusively for Vogue Scandinavia

Iceland is also home to Rämö’s award-winning crime book series, Hildur, currently comprising three novels: Hildur, Rósa & Björk, and Jakob, with the fourth, Rakel, set to be published this autumn. As the name suggests, the series centres around the moody criminal investigator Hildur Rúnarsdóttir, who untangles the web of crimes that suddenly begin to enmesh the tranquil Ísafjörður community. But Hildur has demons of her own to tackle, as does her Finnish sidekick and police trainee, Jakob Johanson. The beloved duo also star in Restored Honour, a short story Rämö penned exclusively for Vogue Scandinavia.

Upon its debut in 2022, Hildur became an instant best-seller in Finland. The next year, the trilogy became the country’s three most-sold books, mounting 330,000 copies sold – a record number in Finland. Since then, the Hildur series has been snapped up by publishers in over 10 countries and a TV show based on the books is in the works. While the mystical landscape and the cases that land on Hildur’s desk are undoubtedly intriguing, it’s Rämö’s characters – complex yet relatable – that have received the highest praise.

“I’m still flabbergasted by all of it,” Rämö says of her books’ unprecedented popularity. Her surprise is warranted: Hildur was the first time Rämö had tried her hand at crime fiction. Having always enjoyed writing (“It’s a good way to organise the things clattering around inside your head”), Rämö worked as a freelance journalist while studying to become an economist. After moving to Iceland in 2008, she realised there weren’t any decent Finnish travel guides to her new home and decided to write one herself. That marked the beginning of Rämö’s nonfiction journey, during which she penned a cool 17 books covering varying topics from self-help to school subjects.

Hildur was born out of the constraints of lockdown. As an avid Nordic Noir consumer and influenced by her untamed surroundings, Rämö thought a crime novel seemed like a good fit. “I started thinking about what kind of person I’d like to meet if I got to make a new friend now – it [creating Hildur] was my own imaginary play,” she says. Soon, she had a whole book – and even a couple of sequels - drawn up in her mind.

Related: Read our exclusive short story by award-winning crime novelist Viveca Sten

When she was commissioned to write an exclusive short story for these pages, it was a no-brainer for Rämö to dive back into Hildur’s world. For Restored Honour, Rämö dug deep into the archives of her freelance journalism days, when she was covering topics related to violence against women occurring within Icelandic families. “That’s when I discovered the ‘restored honour’ concept,” Rämö says. The very real, now-defunct legislation (uppreist æru in Icelandic) allowed citizens convicted of serious crimes to have their pristine civil standing restored if they met certain conditions. Since she first read about the law, Rämö has been itching to include it in her work.

In the story, things seem pretty calm in Hildur’s secluded community until a dead body appears in the local fish factory’s cold room. While the case appears perplexing at first, it soon opens a window into the intricate history of a local family, leaving Hildur and Jakob faced with an unforeseen, difficult choice. “I’m super happy with the outcome,” Rämö says. “The ending will leave the reader really thinking about the story.”