Heartland

 

"Excuse me, dear sir,
is this the way to the heartland?"

“Wild Scandinavia” is a three-part BBC series about nature in the Nordic countries. I just glanced at the episode titled “Heartland”. In Sweden, it has been given a somewhat different title: “Sveriges hjärta” or The Heart of Sweden. Which is kind of odd, since some parts of the docu were apparently filmed in Norway and Finland! Cough, cough, cough…

“Heartland” takes us to the Scandinavian and, I suppose, Finnish boreal forests. For some reason, the winter section is more extensive than the summer ditto. Perhaps the Nordic winters are more fascinating for an international audience? Animals featured include lynxes, bears, beavers, reindeer, wolverines and wolves. One high point of the documentary is a struggle between bears and wolves over a reindeer carcass. Another is a similar struggle involving golden eagles and ravens. Ospreys are also shown. We even get to meet human ice-skaters! A strange oversight is that no deer or moose are shown. 

The production ends with the lekking (mating rituals) of the black grouse, a relatively large galliform living in the “heartland” forests. The film team had to spend the night at the lek grounds in freezing winter temperature. Geezus, can´t footage of this kind be obtained with drone technology these days? Or no?

I admit that “Wild Scandinavia: Heartland” could be of some interest to somebody who is completely uninformed about “our” local wildlife. Personally, I tend to avoid the wilder parts of our land, preferring more urban congregations, but I suppose YMMV!