When a mother and daughter arrive in a small Icelandic coastal town, it isn’t clear what drove them from the sunny idyll of Lisbon, Portugal.
Maria works in a local fish factory, evidently in a flirtation with a handsome colleague, while Bela, her teenage daughter, immediately launches herself into the local party scene: popping pills, snorting cocaine and drinking with abandon.
When Maria’s body is found in the harsh, grey wet of morning with no clues about what happened to her, the mystery about who she really was, and who had motivation to kill her, unfold over a pacy, intriguing eight episodes.
At the same time that Maria’s life, and how it ended, are central to the plot, so is Bela’s struggle to get an explanation for her mother’s death and to plan a future while living in a hostile land that isn’t her home.
One of the strongest pillars of Cold Haven is the introduction of veteran detective Soffía Falsdóttir, who comes saddled with her own demons.
Firstly, Soffia returns after having left her mother and son, Hakan, to cohabit in the relatively remote Icelandic Westman Islands so that she could pursue her career in Reyjavik.
Hakan has grown into a surly teenager, both secretive and evasive. Whether this is because of hormones, or the wrath of a child left alone, or because there’s genuinely something to hide once Maria’s body is discovered, plagues Soffia. Even worse, it plagues her partner on the case - Mattý Hansdóttir - who immediately suspects that Soffia is covering for Hakan. Soffia has enough to deal with, since her father was the cop in charge of this little town, and there’s a suspicion amongst the locals that Soffia didn’t earn her job so much as inherit it effortlessly.
Around this fundamental triangle between Maria, Bela, and Sofia, there are the men who have loved, exploited, hurt, or used each of these women to varying degrees. Which of them, if any, were capable and motivated enough to kill Maria and to leave her daughter alone in the world? It could be Tomas, Maria’s paramour, who enthusiastically carried on a sexual relationship with Maria but expressed no signs of commitment. Did she know something that could destroy him? Did she just want too much from him, or was there an accident and he raced from the scene?
As Sofia is investigating this angle, Maria’s estranged husband, Alex, Bela’s father flies in and insists upon arranging Maria’s funeral and holding the ceremony in this Icelandic town she had escaped to. He is adamant her body not be returned to Portugal, but be buried out in the remote wildness where she died. What is he trying to hide, or is he genuine in his belief this is where Maria chose to live and ought to remain? It is evident from the first episode that Alex has a volatile temper. He rages at Maria’s elderly father, evidently infuriated that his wife and daughter have made a life anew without him.
But Alex is not purely a stranger in the town. He knows Gloria, also a close friend to Maria and aunt figure to Bela. The nature of their relationship is murky, and as revelations of drug smuggling, affairs, violence, and familial secrets are unravelled, Cold Haven sends genuine shivers down the spine. As a nuanced take on a mother-daughter relationship in all its complicated truths, Cold Haven is a deeply personal, dramatic take on the typical Nordic noir, and if the sturdy, determined detective Soffia comes back for future seasons, we may have a new Queen of Nordic Crime Solving to follow.
Cold Haven is everything we want in a Nordic crime series, with a flawed and frustrated investigator trying to both leverage the knowledge of community in a small, tightly knit society, while also not being undermined by the same people she’s out to question.
The setting, of course, is hostile and beautiful, and there’s a good combination of hardened elders, nutty personalities, and well-intentioned but under-skilled colleagues proving obstacles to the case getting solved.
Cold Haven is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
