Connecting with the past through Roman clay lamps in an Iron Age longhouse

 

While attending a seminar on Museum Education at the Iron Age Farm (Jernaldergården) at Ullandhaug as part of my postgraduate studies at the University in Stavanger (UiS), I spotted something I had not expected to see; a replica of a Roman clay lamp. Although not temporally anachronistic (the original farmhouse had been in use between ca. AD 350–550), it was rather out of place geographically.

After having toured the largest of the three reconstructed longhouses—a locale I’ve become very familiar with over the years, both as a lover of history since childhood and as a filmmaker in 2021—I decided to ask our guide and instructor about the lamp. She agreed that it was a bit out of place, but as evidence of lamps from the period are quite scarce, and since the replica was based on lamps from roughly the right period, it had likely been included by the museum simply as a convenient prop to illustrate how people illuminated their homes in antiquity.

Note that the Iron Age Norwegians were hardly isolated from the rest of Europe, though, unlike the later Viking Age, trade with the Mediterranean was somewhat minimal. Still, the Archaeological Museum in Stavanger does feature large bronze pots with Romanesque designs from the same period, Roman glassware was also imported—presumably via Germany and Denmark—as prized luxury goods (a few examples from digitaltmuseum), and the occasional Roman coin do pop up every now and then. However, no one has ever found a Roman style clay lamp, at least not yet.

However, fascinating as all this was, I was (and still am as of the writing of this article) in the process of writing the second book in my Professor Korrigan mystery series, this time focused on the Roman occupation of Britain, and it just so happened that I was planning on writing a chapter where such a lamp featured. In this chapter, without giving too much away, Korrigan encounters what can best be described as a spectral artefact—or an ‘apport’ as it’s called in paranormal circles; a seemingly tangible but actually incorporeal object projected into the present from the past (quite fanciful, I know, but my last novel featured an extra-terrestrial substance, so why not?). As such it was in my best interest to get to know such objects as closely as possible in order to be able to convey to the reader all of the sensory impressions Korrigan would experience handling and studying this mysterious object. As a history student at the university, and someone already familiar to the museum staff—seeing as I literally borrowed the whole longhouse for a short film shoot just a few years earlier—I asked them if I might be allowed to have get a proper look at the lamp, and perhaps even get to actually light it. Despite the fact that the tour/seminar had been at the very tail end of the summer season and they were now officially closed for autumn/winter, they generously agreed to make a special appointment for me.

Killing two birds with one stone I had scheduled to meet with Inger Horve, the Operations Manager at the Iron Age Farm, just after a lecture at the university. The reconstructed farmstead is a part of the Archaeological Museum in Stavanger, which in turn is a branch of the University, and conveniently for me, just right up the road from my faculty on campus. I’d agreed to meet with Horve by the largest of the longhouses, but the lecture had finished early, so I was about twenty minutes ahead of schedule.

The Iron Age Farm (Jernaldergården) at Ullandhaug as you approach it from the old gate. Before the visitor’s centre was built in 2018 (now closed during the off-season) this was how you always visited the open-air museum. At least when you approach from the visitor’s centre (just out of frame to the left) you can’t immediately see the three (somewhat immersion-breaking) city blocks in the background. Photo taken November 2026. 

I approached through the old gate—not being able to enter by the now closed visitor’s centre—and passed about a dozen sheep, all quite accustomed to people and thoroughly indifferent to my presence. During the aforementioned tour that had inspired this whole visit a few weeks earlier, our guide and instructor, who had previously worked here as a museum host, introduced us to the two matriarchs of the sheep flock, whose names were Aud Jr. and Embla. As I zigzagged past the clusters of sheep droppings and made my way to the main entrance to the largest longhouse, I also recalled what she had told the group while we’d all gathered in the same spot a few weeks earlier. She’d pointed down at a white blotch on the ground and told us that this was the incriminating evidence left by Aud Jr. after a recent flour raid inside the longhouse; the result of a careless host having forgotten to close the door properly. Inside is a recreation of a hand-turned millstone that is used to demonstrate, especially to schoolchildren, just how labour-intensive it was to produce a simple loaf of bread in Antiquity. However, once the sheep discovered the joys of licking away all the excess flour produced by these demonstrations, they quickly became hard to keep out—especially Aud Jr., whom Inger Horve later described to me as the “ringleader,” and a bad influence on the other sheep. After she’d led us all into the longhouse, the last of us to do so, as per her instructions, had closed the door behind him to not let any sheep sneak in. A few minutes later we heard the muffled, annoyed bleating of a foiled Aud Jr. just outside the door. 

Back in the present I was about to knock on the somewhat modern-looking wooden door when I noticed it was open; a slight crack between it and the doorframe. I let myself in and found the place empty of both sheep and humans, though the lights were on. I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I was intruding, but I did after all have an appointment. I’d never been inside without a tour guide or other tourists present, so I took the opportunity to have a look around and found the Roman lamp down by the now cold hearth, just as it had been previously. Now that I got a proper look at it in the light it was a lot greasier than I’d remembered, almost pitch black. It was sticky to the touch. When Horve arrived, right on time, I was pleased to see that she’d brought not only the wicks and oil as agreed, but a brand-new lamp for my little experiment.

The interior of the largest longhouse at the Iron Age Farm (Jernaldergården) at Ullandhaug. Photo taken November 2026.

For fuel she had brought a bottle of “Tran,” a brand of cod liver oil that most Norwegians have childhood memories of reluctantly downing as it’s a very popular dietary supplement rich in omega-3 fatty acids and various vitamins. Now this might seem like a bit of an odd choice for lamp fuel—and I was a little surprised myself when I first heard that this is what they commonly use in these lamps at the open-air museum. For context, in antiquity most people would have used olive oil; a commodity that was anything but scarce in the Roman sphere of influence across the Mediterranean during the height of the empire. Olives are, however, not exactly a common thing up here in the cold north of Scandinavia and certainly would have been completely unknown to the Norwegians of the Iron Age. Of course, my interest in these lamps was in relation to Roman Britain, though there too we encounter the same problem. In my research I found that, although olive oil was imported to the Roman occupying forces, it became something of a luxury commodity reserved for the elite. Since my story is focused on the Roman army, specifically the lower-ranking auxiliary troops, olive oil was therefore out of the question. Let’s not forget that olive oil is also foodstuff, so unless you lived at the heart of a wealthy city like Rome or Carthage where you could expect a fair amount of food surplus, you were effectively just burning up something edible. Doing some more research I found that there were several substitutes produced in Roman Britain, such as sesame oil, nut oil, castor oil and animal products such as fish oil. Since fish oil kept popping up in later Medieval British historical references as well, and since it was what the museum had on hand, I decided to simply go with the more practical alternative. I’d also read that fish oil lamps were quite malodorous and produced a smoky flame, all of which seemed to fit in well with my hapless auxiliary soldiers deployed on a cold and rainy island to the north to stand watch on Hadrian’s newly constructed defensive wall with the “barbarian” Celts waiting for their chance to strike back against the invaders on the other side. 

As you can see in the photos below these lamps come with a very convenient, recessed hole for pouring the oil into (the “dish” around it is called a discus, though this one was rather flat) and I quickly discovered how easy it was to overfill the lamp and ended up creating a little pool of oil. The wick that Horve had brought with her, which looked like a little shoelace, was made from very finely weaved wool threads. In antiquity such wicks would commonly have been made from scraps of linen, papyrus, or oakum. The matches I was given had been stored in the longhouse, and since this was in early November, they had gotten a little damp. As I sat there striking the same match again and again, barely getting a spark, I could imagine myself back in antiquity with a flint and tinder struggling to start a flame. Eventually I did get a flame going and lit the wick. Once the flame reached the oil in the nozzle (rostrum, literally “beak”) it lit up remarkably well. It was a surprisingly wild flame, completely different from the calm, gentle flicker of a modern candle. As expected, the flame produced a lot of smoke. Horve turned off the electric lights and, although a little daylight did seep in from some small openings in the roof, it was impressive how well it lit up my immediate surroundings. I brought out my notebook and found that I could easily read from it. The biggest surprise, however, was the smell. It was actually quite nice. It had a very fresh hint of lime to it. We checked the Tran bottle and found that it had been lime flavoured to be more palatable, and being such a modern product, probably didn’t give any indication of the foul smells I’d read about. I’ll just have to use my imagination for this particular detail when I describe it in my novel.

The light looks quite calm on this photo, but the wild, flickering flame, with its oddly extended smoky wisp was quite unlike any modern candle I’ve used. It felt appropriately archaic, though when contrasted with the rustic setting of the Iron Age farmhouse, it also felt quite modern and “civilised.” 

Horve had also brought with her the stems of some soft rush (juncus effusus), which, when peeled, produce a slightly spongy pith filling that can be used as a wick. In Norwegian this plant is called lyssiv, which literally translates as “light-rush,” suggesting a very old association with lamps. Incidentally, the Norwegian word for the cod liver oil, tran, comes from the Middle Low Saxon trān, which means “drop” or “teardrop” (NOAB). However, the Icelandic name for cod oil is Lýsi, and if we compare this to the aforementioned lyssiv, we have a word that sounds almost identical to the Norwegian word for “light.” In Icelandic Lýsi literally refers to something that provides light (Zoëga, 281), demonstrating that fish oil too has been a common lamp oil in this part of the world for a very long time.

In our case, though, the “light-rush” did not provide all that much light and the flame at the end of the spongy wick was quite small and dim. Horve figured the rush was a bit too damp for our experiment, though it did demonstrate that it was viable as a wick, even if our attempt went out after only five minutes or so. It probably didn’t help either that the original woollen wick used for this lamp had gotten stuck inside the lamp when the end of the wick protruding from the nozzle had burned away some time earlier. In antiquity a small needle, or specialised tweezers, were used to pull the wick out as it burned down to avoid this from happening.

The soft rush wick did work but provided a much smaller flame due to it having not been dried out properly. Some unpeeled rush can be seen lying in the background. The dark coating on the lamp is the result of several years of accumulative soot mixed with the overflow of fish oil. 

Trying to figure out exactly what type of Roman lamp the replicas were based on according to established typological classification proved a lot trickier than I’d expected, though they both seem to correspond pretty well with the Loeschcke type X lamps (or Buchi type X-a), often referred to as the “Roman Factory Lamp” and dating to around AD 90 to the end of the third century. These are generally identified by their lack of decoration, though Bacchic or comic mask motifs do frequently appear in the centre of the characteristically flat-bottomed discus. Another distinguishing feature is the raised rim that forms a channel all the way out to and around the wick-hole on the nozzle, not an altogether uncommon feature, but the sharp angles are very typical of the Loeschcke type X. So far so good. On each side, outside the circular rim, are two or three knobs, which on actual antique lamps are the remains of broken off rings used for suspending the lamp with chains. How exactly only two attachment points were supposed to suspend the lamp without it tipping over and spilling the oil out the nozzle beats me but looking at a lot of photos from museums I see that many of these lamps did indeed only have two attachment points. Either way, our modern lamp-maker has either added these knobs simply as an allusion to this historical suspension feature or may simply have been unaware of their exact purpose. What we’re left with are two vestigial dimples divorced from their original practical purpose. I’m glad I discovered this, as, when I was standing inside the longhouse, holding the lamp in my hand, I kept wondering what on earth these little knobs were meant for. They seemed a rather pointless detail to add purely for decoration, and I could find no practical reason for them as I held it in my hand, seeing as they did not provide a natural place for my fingers to rest either.

Two examples of Loeschcke type X, or “factory lamps,” from the Getty Museum, Los Angeles (public domain photos).

Left: Terracotta mould-made lamp decorated with a theatre mask design, Roman (Cologne, Germany), 1st–2nd century AD. Object Number: 83.AQ.377.441.

Right: Terracotta mould-made lamp, Roman (possibly North African), 1st century AD. Object Number: 83.AQ.377.444.

All in all, I feel it was a very successful experiment. Although I still have no idea how burning fish oil would have smelled in antiquity, and there are still certain details that needs to be ironed out for my novel, what started as a vaguely defined object I’d only seen in photos; with no real sense of scale, weight, texture, and actual efficiency, I now understand as a tangible, practical object.

This whole experience, even if it mostly just consisted of me fiddling with a couple lamps for about half an hour, and discussing history with a museum-educator, actually highlights really well the value of institutions such as The Iron Age Farm (Jernaldergården) at Ullandhaug, and open-air museums in general. For the past few years now I’ve been spending much of my time sitting in lecture halls, listening to historians talk about the past, and while this is certainly very valuable (and something I quite enjoy), it doesn’t do much to put you into the shoes of the people who lived in the past. You get a lot of interesting information but few tangible experiences to connect them to. But when standing in a dimly lit, slightly damp, chilly reconstruction of an Iron Age House, feet planted on well-trodden earth (the original excavated flooring by the way), and the only source of light you have is a flickering flame emanating from a small clay container you’re holding in your hand, you do get a certain empathic connection with the past; a feeling of presence. Of course, such props are just that, props, and not a true indication of the past, but it does concretise and bring to life an otherwise abstract past in a way that is educational on a much more tactile level than reading a book or listening to a lecture ever can.

And this is far from my first experience of this kind in this very building. As I alluded to earlier, I have been coming to this open-air museum fairly regularly since I was a child, and when I was nine years old, I actually spent the night here with a group of kids as part of a special arrangement. I got to taste bread made with flour grounded in the millstone and baked over a flame. It was surprisingly tasty, though the stone-ground flour did mean it was infused with grit; small particles of stone that ground against my teeth. Every bite into the otherwise soft bread had a slightly unsettling crunch to it. At that moment I understood why skeletons from this era always have noticeably worn-down teeth and why historians often talked about how they could identify someone’s approximate age by simply looking at how worn down the teeth were. If I had been eating bread like this every day my whole life my teeth would already have been in a pretty bad state as well. Likewise, sleeping on what effectively amounts to a wooden shelf with animal hides to keep you warm (though for practical reasons we did bring modern sleeping bags as well) and having a low flame crackling nearby, the flickering flames casting dancing shadows around the wooden support beams, is one of the most vivid experiences I’ve had in relation to my appreciation and understanding of history. And this kind of intuitive historical consciousness is exactly what places like the Iron Age Farm were made for.

Literature: 

Bailey, Donald M. Greek and Roman Pottery Lamps. London: British Museum, 1972.

Bussière, Jean, and Birgitta Lindros Wohl. Ancient Lamps in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2017. http://www.getty.edu/publications/ancientlamps (Accessed 04 November 2026). 

Walters, H. B. Catalogue of the Greek and Roman Lamps in the British Museum. London: Printed by order of the Trustees, 1914.  

Zoëga, Geir Tómasson. A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952.

PS. For some much nicer exterior photos of the Iron Age Farm than the one I quickly snapped on my way up from campus, plus some more details about its history, check out my previous article The Locations that Inspired The Starseed.

Making The Wild Huntsman

In spring of 2021, as lockdowns were starting to ease in Norway, and after having spent the previous year writing my first novel, I felt the need to flex my filmmaking muscles again and decided to make a short Fantasy film. Equipped with a meagre budget of roughly 10,000 NOK (the equivalent of about $900 or £700) and not much else—I was pretty much on my own and had little to no experience with the small film culture that exists on the Norwegian south-west coast around my hometown of Stavanger.

Inspired by the English folktale of the Odinic character Herne the Hunter, I quickly wrote a simple script and set out looking for my cast and crew.

My biggest stroke of luck was when I come in contact with actor and model Thor Rosland, who is generally known for his commercials for The Beard Struggle, in which dressed as a Viking, he promotes a series of beard oils and grooming products in comedic skits which had become something on an online sensation.

And with the upcoming release of The Pendragon Cycle, in which Thor plays Hengist, the warlord of the Saxons, this seemed like a good opportunity to reminisce a little about my short film with Thor; The Wild Huntsman.

Thor Rosland as The Huntsman. Photo © Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

THE PREMISE

First off, I should probably explain in more details where I got the idea for the Huntsman and why I chose to make a short film out of it. 

I’ve always been fascinated by fairy tales, folk stories and myths from across the world. I'm especially fascinated by symbolic archetypes, doubly so when they appear across borders in the myths of neighbouring cultures. So, while looking for inspiration for my script, I came across the Danish/German folk tale of "The Fairy Hunter," a simple story about a hunter that kills an elf-girl (note that elf in this case refers to a more mischievous fay-like creature rather than the noble elves popularised by books/films like Lord of the Rings). Shortly after I came across the British legend of Herne the hunter, an antlered huntsman who is believed to be an incarnation of both the Celtic god Cernunnos and the head of the Norse gods; Odin—the latter of which is also the leader of the Wild Hunt. With these two simple stories in mind, I decided to combine them and create my own little cross-cultural archetype myth.

Thor Rosland as The Huntsman. Photo © Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

The simplicity of both stories also made them perfect for my meagre budget and resources. I knew that my hometown of Stavanger could provide me with plenty of beautiful nature scenery befitting both folk tales, but also a perfect replica of an Iron Age farmhouse. I contacted the owners early on in the production and received permission to shoot parts of my short there, as well as borrow some of their period-accurate costumes.

I was off to a good start.

RALLYING A CAST & CREW

The lead (different from the titular character) proved to be the most difficult to cast as I required someone fairly young but who still had a Viking-quality to his appearance. The casting of Thor as the Huntsman had been something of a lucky stroke, and all the characters (despite there only being four) proved difficult. Stavanger simply isn’t a place with that large a film industry or acting community, and the fact I was producing a micro budget short film and was only offering to cover expenses didn’t exactly help much either. 

All attempts at casting the lead led me to an assortment of Oslo actors that had to be rejected due to the travel costs, though I eventually got into contact with Vegard Heggelund, a young actor with a proper Nordic look to him who, despite living and studying in Oslo, was actually from Karmøy—a large island not far north of Stavanger. It just so happened that he was planning a visit home for the summer holiday and he was more than willing to sacrifice a weekend for this project provided I could cover the cost of the relatively short trip down to Stavanger and accommodation, a request I was more than happy to oblige.

Actor Vegard Heggelund. Photo © Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

The shooting crew consisted of three media students from the University in Stavanger, a somewhat meager number for a film shoot but perfectly serviceable for a small project like this—it's worth mentioning that I have worked with less in the past, though I wouldn't recommend it. Still, it was an odd adjustment after having recently spent some time in London with film crews of at least a dozen or so people (which is still quite small). 

At the risk of sounding like a money pincher, I've found that you can save a lot of money by "hiring" students as they are usually more than happy to get the chance to add any project to their CV before they've even finished their education. I also got the camera equipment for free via the university as I had borrowed from them before, so they knew I was someone who could be trusted with their equipment.

A small but very efficient film crew. Photo © Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

The on-set photographer; Kornelius Kiil Enoksen, (whose excellent photos I’ve used throughout this article) is a friend of mine from my days studying Media & Communications. The rest of the crew consisted of pretty much every family member, friend, or friend-of-a-friend that I could convince to spend a weekend in July hanging out in a park while the rest of us were running about within the nearby woods getting our shots.

ANTLERS, SPEARS & COW TAILS

In the same way that digital cameras have become a godsend for the low budget filmmaker (though I do love analogue film), so has Etsy for the micro budget prop-maker. 

You’d think the Huntsman’s antlers would have proven to be the most difficult part of the pre-production—and in a sense it still was—but after some brief online searching I came across someone who made realistic looking horns and antlers for fantasy cosplayers. As luck would have it, she was also Norwegian, albeit living in Oslo, but after contacting her and explaining what I needed she was more than willing to make me some custom antlers with strengthened supports for the production. 

Etsy also provided me with a pretty convincing ancient-looking spearhead made from fiberglass and polyester resin, as well as the Mystery Girls’ animal appendage. One learns many strange things while working on projects like this, and the fact that you can buy real cow tails online is one of those things that really shouldn't surprise you, but receiving one in the mail is a whole other thing.  

Vegard Heggelund mending a prop between takes. Photo © Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

The more “normal” props, such as a mediaeval fishing rod, I constructed myself. There’s not much to say about the making of the rod, it’s about what you’d expect, a bit of whittling, some twine, glue, etc. and the bone hooks were fashioned out of clay. But the one thing that I am quite proud of about this prop is just how historically accurate it turned out to be. No fishing rods have ever been found by archaeologist in Scandinavia, though based on the numerous discoveries of hooks made from deer bone it is safe to assume that they were used during the Viking Age. The simple rod I made was based off recreations of English fishing rods from the Middle Ages, but only a year or so after the film’s premiere I went to the Archaeological Museum in Stavanger and saw an exhibition of experimental recreations of bone hooks, and I was pleased to see that they looked virtually identical to my fake ones.

A few weeks before the shoot I met Thor in his home for a costume fitting and to try out the newly arrived antlers from Oslo. 

When it came to the costume for the Huntsman, I chose, both for practical and thematic reasons, to do the complete opposite that I planned on doing for the main character (the "Young Viking") and his family, and ignored historical accuracy completely. The practical reason for this was, of course, primarily because Thor could provide his own costume, which was more Hollywood inspired than anything based on history or archaeology. But because I knew the Huntsman would have to stand out and appear otherworldly when compared to the more "normal" characters, the exaggerated costumes he used for his Beard Struggle commercials fit perfectly, though admittedly I did end up choosing the most down to earth pieces he had in his wardrobe. Being a mythical creature that is part of the natural order I felt the brown leather gave him a suitably “earthy” look, while the fur around his shoulders complimented the animal-hybrid look of the antlers, making him appear somewhat elemental. 

Thor Rosland putting on his costume. Photo © Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

THE IRON AGE FARM

To paraphrase what I wrote in a previous blog article (The Locations that Inspired The Starseed); Just a few kilometres uphill from the inlet where Harald Fairhair united the tribes of Norway into a single nation after the battle of Hafrsfjord in 872 AD, a trio of carefully reconstructed Iron Age longhouses lie in the shadows of three brutalist apartment blocks from the mid-1970s.

I’ve been coming to this location semi-regularly since childhood (I even spent a night there as a Boy Scout) and have always been fascinated by the feeling of being transported back in time when visiting, that is, as long as you look away from the aforementioned apartment blocks, or the nearby visitors centre, and if you look south you can pretty much see the entirety of the University in Stavanger, but, if you point your camera in the right direction, or simply stay within the longhouses, then it really does feel like you’ve travelled back to the Iron Age. And that’s exactly what I ended up doing.

Setting up a shot at the Iron Age Farm in Ullandhaug. Photo © Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

As mentioned, I had contacted the manager of the Iron Age Farm early on in the project and I quickly received permission from her to shoot in and about the open-door museum, that is, provided we arrived before opening time, so as to not crash with any potential visitors. We were also given permission to pick out some of the authentic period-costumes they had for Vegard to wear throughout the shoot (even when not filming on the site) and we were told that the shoot would be overseen by one of their regular hosts—in costume no less. They were, however, somewhat vague on who exactly would be there when we arrived for the shoot, but assured me that whoever they were, they wouldn’t mind being on camera. So, I adjusted the script slightly by adding a brother/sister/mother background character, depending on who actually did show up.

We arrived early in the morning on June 26, having pretty much just a little over an hour to prepare and shoot everything we needed before the tourist would start arriving. We were greeted by a young woman in a period accurate dress named Johanne, and as such the main character ended up with a sister. Vegard was taken to the costume room and quickly fitted with his costume, while actor Pål Gunnar Eid Gribbestad, who played his father, provided his own costume. 

Pål Gunnar Eid Gribbestad inside the Iron Age longhouse. Photo © Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

The host proved very enthusiastic about the project and lit a fire within the largest longhouse. She even dropped by the kitchen in the visitor centre café to get some fish to cook on the stone plate to add some domestic realism to the film's opening scene. She had no qualms about being on camera and even ended up becoming the first character we see in the finished film. Lit primarily by the fire (and a flickering red LED light), the opening shots of Johanne and Paul Gunnar are, I think, some of the best in the film. 

All went according to schedule, and we managed to wrap up just as the doors officially opened on the Iron Age Farm. While the film crew began carrying all the camera equipment away from the longhouses towards the visitor centre a small group of period-dressed hosts crossed us going in the opposite direction carrying wooden swords and other replicas of Iron Age implements meant to entertain and educate visitors.

Vegard Heggelund. Photo © Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

THE LAKE AND THE FOREST

The rest of the film was shot around a small lake called Lille Stokkavann (lit: Little Stokka Lake) a short walk from where my mother, aunts and uncle grew up—I even spent part of my own childhood here, so it was very familiar territory.

When we arrived at our "green room," a nearby barn turned into a community centre, the rest of the crew had already unpacked and were waiting for us. We shot everything needed around the lake that day, as well as a long sequence within the nearby woods which in the final edit was cut down to a mere two shots. That’s filmmaking for you.

Discussing the scene with Vegard Heggelund. Photo © Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

We returned to the same location for the second day, this time being joined by Thor Rosland, and spent the entire day within a small clearing close to a well-travelled gravel footpath hugging the edge of the lake. The crew of friends and family kept watch while the rest of us were working within the forest, informing joggers and people simply out for a stroll that there was a shoot going on. Most people were quite polite and passed by quietly, though we did receive a fair number of curious onlookers peeking at us through the bramble. Hardly surprising really, it’s not every day you see a large Viking with antlers while walking your dog. 

I had originally planned to use a smoke machine for this sequence to add a haunting, mystical atmosphere to the already picturesque forest clearing, but although I had acquired one via the university and had successfully tested it in the studio there a few days earlier, once we set it up in the forest, with a portable battery, spare fluid and everything, the little box-like machine merely sputtered out a few wimpy whisp of smoke and refused to give us anything else. 

Vegard Heggelund & Thor Rosland between takes. Photo © Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

While irksome, the smoke machine was hardly necessary to finish the scene, even if I did loose much of the mythic aura I wanted to convey. At least the lights worked as intended, and I could console myself by getting a chance to play with some coloured gels for the first time, something which I learned a lot from and intend to continue to do in future film projects. I may have been denied my smoke, but I did succeed in using the unnatural green lighting as a means of conveying that there was something otherworldly about this forest and its two supernatural inhabitants.

Once the broken smoke machine had been ditched the shoot went quite smoothly, that is as smoothly as a shoot can be when an actor is forced to wear wobbly antlers on his head inside a dense forest, but apart from the logistics of shooting everything out of order (more so than usual) there were little to complain about, that is, except for the poor actress playing the Mystery Girl, who, unlike the two men, wore a pretty skimpy dress that made her an easy target to a swarm of very persistent gnats. I later learned she’d been bitten quite often, but she had merely soldiered on and finished the shoot with very few complaints.

Directing a scene with Thor Rosland. Photo © Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

THE MYSTERY GIRL

Now, unless you're a Scandinavian, or just so happen to be well-read on Nordic folklore, you are probably not familiar with the creature that the Mystery Girl is revealed to be at the end of the short film. Although certain liberties have been taken with this myth, most Scandinavians watching the short will instantly recognise her as a Hulder (or Huldra) the moment her cow tail is revealed.

The Hulder is for all intents and purposes the Nordic equivalent of a siren or nymph, i.e. a seductress that leads men to their doom by enticing them to follow her into the forest.

Shooting a scene with Helen Sertsu. Photo © Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

As with most folklore it’s hard to pin down the exact nature of a Hulder, though they are consistently depicted as young, beautiful blonde girls with a cow’s tail (which they usually try to hide). In many stories they also have a large hole on their back described as resembling a rotten tree stump. My Hulder obviously deviates a fair bit from much of this, the back-hole simply because it wouldn’t have been doable within the tiny budget (and frankly I don’t see what the point of it is beyond being weird) and although I originally intended to cast a Norwegian actress with blonde hair, actress Helen Sertsu was chosen due to her enthusiasm for the project and her availability. With this change in ethnicity, I decided to update the originally planned costume from an Iron Age dress to something more Mediterranean, specifically a Greek-inspired Khiton dress, implying that this creature in human form did not solely prey on Scandinavians, but had been chased by the Huntsman across multiple countries for who knows how many centuries. I also added additional details to her costume to further imply this long history, such as an amber necklace which suggested she had been in central Europe, a Celtic broch attached to her belt, and I even had some silver thread worked into the hem of the dress to add a subtle anachronism that made her seem just a little out of place in the “real world” of the Young Viking. 

Helen Sertsu. Photo © Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

POST-PRODUCTION & RELEASE

The post-production phase proved to be somewhat more international than the shoot. The music was composed by Swedish artist Zacharias Wolfe, whom I had first heard of via The London Film Academy, and “Yggdrasill,” the song which plays over the end credits was licensed from Dutch singer and songwriter Jonathan Barendsma, AKA Gealdýr. The visual effects were done by Guilherme Filipe, while the rest of the process, such as film editing, colour grading, etc. was either done by myself or Kevin Nordlander (who was also the Assistant Director).

The Wild Huntsman had its premiere in the US, February 18, 2022, at the Pensacon Short Film Festival in Pensacola, Florida.

The Locations that Inspired The Starseed (Part 1)

If you have already read my sci-fi mystery novel; The Starseed, you might have wondered which of the many locations described in the book are real and which are not. You might have Googled a few, or you might even have already been familiar with some of them, but if I have done my work well then there will also have been a certain ambiguity about at least some of the places visited by Professor Korrigan during his three-day journey through the west coast of Norway. 

It is no coincidence that I chose the west coast as the setting for my first novel set in the real world, as I myself grew up in this part of the country—granted a few decades after the book’s setting of 1975. By the time I came into the world in the early 90s the “oil adventure” was already starting to wind down, though it was still very much an unavoidable part of the culture. And my hometown of Stavanger was, and still is in some ways, seen as the “oil capital” of Norway. With these influences I suppose it was only a matter of time before it made its way into my writings.

So, as you can imagine, every single location described in the novel, whether real or made up, will have some connection to actual places that have some meaning to me. Listed here—in order of appearance in the novel—is every town, village, and a few vehicles, with a short breakdown of their real-life counterparts.

Mild spoiler warnings for the plot of The Starseed.

Just in case you haven’t read the novel yet, I have made sure to avoid any major character or plot-driven spoilers in this article, however, the locations themselves, especially the later ones in part two, can be considered plot spoilers in and of themselves.

THE IRON AGE FARM

In my hometown of Stavanger, just a few kilometres uphill from the inlet where Harald Fairhair united the tribes of Norway into a single nation after the battle of Hafrsfjord in 872 AD, a trio of carefully reconstructed iron age longhouses lie in the shadows of three brutalist apartment blocks from the mid-1970s.

Having been history buff and an armchair archaeologist my entire life it goes without saying that I have visited the Iron Age Farm at Ullandhaug many times over the years, and the odd contrasts of this location has never ceased to amuse me. The illusion of having travelled back to the age of the Vikings would have been perfect had it not been for the three apartment buildings that always seem to intrude upon the scene whenever you try to take a nice picture of the place. And if you try to take a picture southward, with the mountains of the Bokna Fjord clearly visible on the horizon, you will also get a nice panoramic view of the University in Stavanger, not to mention the peculiar-looking old telecommunications tower that stands atop a forested hill nearby.

One of the few “clean” views of The Iron Age Farm at Ullandhaug back in 2000 before the construction of the visitor centre.

Stone and concrete. These brutalist apartment buildings were raised in mid-1975, the same year as the Iron Age Farm reconstruction was completed. Photo taken in Feb. 1996.

Ullandhaug, much like the plot of The Starseed, is a fascinating tapestry of the old and the new placed side-by-side. It therefore seemed appropriate to start my story in a location inspired by Ullandhaug. Likewise, what better way to introduce an archaeologist than having him partake in an archaeological dig.

Although I’m a sucker for pulpy adventures about daring explorers discovering ancient temples in the jungles of India or in the Egyptian desert, Korrigan is not Indiana Jones, so for this story I wanted to depict a realistic archaeological excavation that allowed me to incorporate the changeling myth that is central to the novel. The slow and laborious process of an excavation is admittedly not the most exciting thing to read about, but I knew it would serve as a good introduction to my characters and themes, and since ancient Norway was once littered with homesteads like the one at Ullandhaug, I figured a near-identical one could be buried under the fields of some farm in the nearby county of Suldal. As a matter of fact, while in the late stages of writing the novel, I found out that archaeologists had recently performed a series of lidar sweeps over Ritland in Suldal proving the presence of multiple prehistoric settlements. I could make some joke about having a sixth sense for archaeology, but you could dig in almost any field near the south-west coast and find signs of ancient habitation. Case in point, one of the most important archaeological digs in Stavanger (the excavation of the so-called “Gausel Queen” from 1997-1999) was a mere fifteen-minute walk away from where I grew up. I remember my mother taking me to watch the archaeologists work when I was seven years old. Clearly it must have had a strong effect on me.

The excavation of Dronningåsen ("The Queen's Hill") in September 1999. The kid in the red T-shirt is me.

A few years later as part of a field trip during my short tenure as a Boy Scout I spent a whole day, and night, at the iron age farm at Ullandhaug. This was many years before the construction of the nice visitor centre that now stands at the foot of the hill, so we slept in sleeping bags placed atop sheepskin covered wooden benches, and the closest thing we had to a bathroom was a small, smelly outhouse with a door that didn’t close.

Almost two decades later I returned to the Iron Age Farm, not as a history enthusiast, but as a filmmaker, and used one of the longhouses as a shooting location for my 2022 Fantasy short film; The Wild Huntsman. If you’re curious, you can watch the whole 5 min. short here.

Shooting a scene with actor Vegard Heggelund at the Iron Age Farm during the summer of 2021. Photo by Kornelius Kiil Enoksen.

TAU FERRY DOCKS

The inclusion of the Tau ferry docks, though very brief, actually carries a bit of significance for a local like myself, doubly so as someone who quite enjoys the whole atmosphere of ferry rides, something which is sadly becoming less common nowadays. Up until the completion of the Ryfast subsea tunnel system in 2019, the only two ways to get to Tau (and Suldal) from the Stavanger peninsula was either to drive around the whole arm of the Bokna fjord, or to take the Tau-Stavanger ferry. Since Tau is the largest settlement near Pulpit Rock (if you’re not already familiar with it, you might have seen Tom Cruise climb it during the climax of Mission Impossible: Fallout) it was the most natural place for tourists and locals alike to travel through, that is, until the tunnel was built.

The tunnel is naturally faster and more convenient, but in my opinion, a poor substitute for the charm of taking the ferry across the fjord on a sunny summer day on your way to hike up to one of Norway’s most iconic locations. Although I grew up in the suburbs of Stavanger on the opposite side of the fjord, I somehow never got around to visiting Pulpit Rock until I was in my early twenties, when I did the hike with a good American friend of mine that was visiting in 2014. Judging from his holiday photos from his visit I’d venture a guess that he would agree with my assessment that the ferry was an integral part of the charm of the whole trip. A few years later he visited Norway again, this time bringing along his wife (he’d gotten married since his last visit), and although we chose another, even more scenic route this time, we still had to take a ferry. The third time I went to pulpit rock, this time with my brother (his first time) and an American relative (it was a first for him too) we naturally took the Tau-Stavanger ferry. This was in 2018, one year before the completion of the tunnel, and therefore my last trip with the ferry.

I couldn't find any photos of the Tau ferry docks, so here's the ferry on its way there in 2014.

STAVANGER

When I first started working on The Starseed I decided that I wouldn’t dwell too much on the city of Stavanger despite it being my hometown and chose instead to make it part of Professor Korrigan’s journey from the excavation to the drill rig. After all, if you wanted to fly out to any form of petroleum industry-related rig in 1975 it would have to be through Stavanger. However, I couldn’t ignore the city of my upbringing entirely, so what started as a few simple sentences evolved into a brief tour of downtown Stavanger, appropriately seen through a historical lens.

The route that Korrigan takes in the book, starting at Østervåg, then following through Vågen and finally into the town square, is for all intents and purposes one of necessity and historical accuracy, and yet it very much is a perfect summary of the history of the city. I did in no way exaggerate when I described it as a thousand years of history crammed into less than a minute of driving.

Vågen bay, Stavanger, in 1997, though it appears much the same today and would not have changed much since the novel’s setting of 1975 either.

Toldboden (left) and Victoria Hotel (right) on a grey April morning in 1996, not too different from how Korrigan would have seen them in March of 1975.

Even today, if you stand at the end of the bay at Vågen and you look out towards the fjord you are likely to see some pretty large signs of industry as you’ll be facing the Rosenberg shipyard. And although you are not likely to see any oil rigs under construction anymore, you are still likely to spot some kind of tanker or cargo ship not unlike the ones observed by Korrigan on his ferry ride into the city. Turn around and look in any direction and you’ll see plenty of signs of Stavanger’s maritime history, from the traditional porthouses now turned into bars and nightclubs to your left, and to your right, towering above most other buildings you’ll find the modernist Ankerbygget (literal translation: “The Anchor Building”). Look closely and you’ll find anchors incorporated not only into the wrought iron balconies but also in the granite façade itself. Stavanger is not only a thousand years of visible history in one place, but a living tribute to all things maritime.

But on the opposite side of the town square, slightly to the left of the Stavanger Cathedral School, you’ll see a grey granite cathedral that has looked very much the same as it has done for the past 900 years; Domkirken. 

The Stavanger Cathedral in 1995 before the recent renovation work done in preparation for its 900th anniversary in 2025. This shows the more extravagant rear view as opposed to the simpler, more mediaeval-looking front end that Korrigan would have seen.

Stavanger Cathedral—colloquially known as Domkirken—is the oldest cathedral that’s been in continuous use in Norway and was finished around 1150, though the city counts the year 1125 as its official foundation. Some experts maintain that part of the structure could date back as far as 1090, with others claiming that an old wooden church could have stood on the site for several centuries prior. The elaborate gothic façade on the east end (pictured above) was constructed in the late 13th century after the city had been ravaged by a fire in 1272. The western façade with the main entrance, which is the side that Korrigan would have glimpsed during his brief drive through downtown Stavanger, has a much more modest and mediaeval look to it.

Although the nave has always been open to the public (with certain exceptions), I have been fortunate to get to visit some of the less commonly seen parts of the cathedral over the years, such as the crypt and even the bell tower. In preparations for the city and the cathedral’s joint 900th anniversary in 2025, the church has been undergoing extensive renovations and has been entirely closed off since 2020. Unfortunate news for tourists, but it has been a golden opportunity for local archeologists who have used the restoration process as an excuse to excavate in places that have previously been completely out of limits.

FORUS AIRPORT

The location of the partially abandoned runway described in the third chapter is pretty much “down the road” from where I grew up, though by my time there was little to suggest it had once been an airstrip. As a kid me and my friends would often cross this location as a shortcut to the mall. We’d go down the hill, through the tunnel under the E39, and then step through a hole in a fence that took us to a large empty square of asphalt that I was always told used to be a landing platform for helicopters. At the time I didn’t think much of it, my mind was usually focused on the contents of the toy store or the pet shop (I had a friend who collected stick insects) hidden behind the row of office buildings and workshops on the other side of the empty lot.

As I describe in the novel, this simple airstrip was built by the Deutsche Luftwaffe in 1941 at the start of the German occupation of Norway. After the war it was supposed to be used by the Norwegian military, but little ever came out of it, presumably due to the much larger airport in Sola which is a short drive away. During the late 60s the airstrip was finally put to use by Helikopter Service as a means to ferry workers out to numerous oil rigs that were popping up all over the North Sea. The airstrip was used as a helicopter base until 1989 when a new and improved helicopter terminal was opened at Sola airport. Since the helicopters had no need of the full length of the three taxiways, it was not uncommon for the locals to use the empty stretches of tarmac to help their teenage children practise for their driver’s licence. In fact, my mother learned to drive there in the late 70s. 

Researching this familiar, but once very different locale for the book, was at once fascinating and somewhat difficult as there are very few photos of the place during the 70s. Small patches of the old taxiway can still be found here and there, having been converted into parking lots or integrated with new roads, and from what I’ve read online one of the maintenance hangars still exists.

What was left of the airstrip in 1994, photographed by my mother. Although this predates it by a couple of years, I spent most of my childhood living at the foot of the hill you can see in the far background.

SOLA AVIATION MUSEUM

Although a very minor influence on the actual story, and despite Sola airport only being mentioned in passing in the book, I would still feel remiss if I did not mention the Aviation Museum at Sola. 

This is very much the kind of old-fashioned, no-nonsense museum that I sorely miss these days and that seemed to be the norm when I was a child. It is the very definition of utilitarian and is completely devoid of the pretentious art-gallery vibe that is so common in modern museums. What you see is what you get, and the locale itself is as much a piece of history as the exhibitions within.

The museum was founded in 1984 and is run by local volunteers. Photo taken July 2023.

The museum itself is an old WWII aircraft hangar stuffed with all kinds of aircraft, ranging from something as small and simple as a former civilian owned Bell 47 single-rotor, single-engine light helicopter, to a duo of American jet fighters from the 50s such as the Republic F-84G Thunderjet and the RF-84F Thunderflash. They have various German Luftwaffe aircraft such as a Messerschmitt Bf 109, as well as the only remaining airframe of an Arado 196 which was stationed on the Kriegsmarine cruiser ship the Blücher, which was sunk in the Oslofjord in April 1940. As if such an assortment of fighter jets, both partial and complete, were not impressive enough, standing dead-smack in the centre of the hangar is a full-on Douglas DC-6 airliner with a capacity of up to 70 passengers. And as if one full airliner wasn’t enough, standing beside it is a slightly smaller, but still massive, Convair CV-440 Metropolitan once used by SAS and Norfly. But the most impressive plane in the collection by far (or at least in my opinion), has to be their beautifully restored, black-painted Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina amphibious aircraft from the 1930s. Although not the largest plane in the hangar, and by no means the most spacious one within, there is just something raw and menacing about the massive silhouette of this beast of a flying boat, aided in no small part by its pair of massive three-bladed propellers attached to the 32 metre (104 ft) wings raised above the fuselage like some massive predatory bird about to take flight. I am also a sucker for all things 1930s and 40s, and the domed gun turrets give it that vintage charm that in my opinion has never been surpassed.

However, at the end of the day, I came for a single purpose—one perhaps a tad mundane compared to all that I’ve described so far, and that was to get a good look at the museum’s Bell UH-1 Iroquois (or “Huey”) helicopter, as I knew a few of them would be an important part of the eventual discovery of the stolen LNG tanker ship in the novel. Compared to the MD 500 (“flying egg”) used by Marshall, the UH-1 does play a fairly small part in the plot, but since the museum didn’t have an MD 500, I had to consult online sources in that case. I did likewise for the UH-1, of course, but when there was one sitting in an aircraft hangar less than an hour away from where I live, I figured it was as good an excuse as any to go and visit a museum I had not been to since I was a kid. Besides, the trip did prove useful to my research after all, and the information accompanying the helicopter did clarify a question I had about where the Norwegian Air Force's Hueys would have been stationed in 1975. Getting to inspect one in person also gave me a good indication of just how many people could realistically be crammed into a single helicopter, making me realise that the passenger capacities I had read online were quite ambitious.

Left: A Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina from 1932. Right: Bell UH-1 ("Huey") helicopter formerly owned by the Royal Norwegian Air Force. Photos taken July 2023.

THE NORWEGIAN PETROLEUM MUSEUM

Although I grew up surrounded by people working in the petroleum industry—heck the headquarters for Statoil was right down the road—I’ve never actually been to a rig of any kind. It’s not exactly like you can just pop down to the nearest oil rig and ask if you can have a look around. I have, however, been to the next best thing; The Norwegian Petroleum Museum.

Photo taken in 2023 showing the back-view of the museum with the mini ‘oil rig’ protruding from the main building on the left.

Opened in 1999, the petroleum museum, much like the Iron Age Farm, is one of those places I’ve continually visited since I was a kid, either through school or on my own accord, though admittedly, I never all that much attention to the historical or technical nuances of the exhibits until I got the idea to set my first Korrigan novel in Norway during the oil rush in the 1970s.

The one part of the museum that has always stood out to me, is the large back-section that emulates an oil rig. At first you step into a fake plane, complete with sound effects and TV screens in the windows, and then you step onto a walkway that takes you out of the museum and onto the “rig,” complete with crane, emergency raft, a genuine control module filled with retro-looking buttons and levers, a more modern control chair that looks like something out of a sci-fi movie, and even an escape chute for the kids to try out. Although the “effects” used to immerse you in this experience were, and still are, somewhat crude, it was still very much an experience that left a big impression on me as a child. 

A 7-year-old me on the mini-rig on opening day, May 20th, 1999. The Rosenberg shipyard can be seen in the background. I still have the ticket stub from that day. The text reads: The Norwegian Petroleum adventure began when this drill bit struck oil in 1969. The rest is history.”

CONTINUED IN PART 2.