From urban Nordic noir to countryside Midsummer fest

My first scenario under the Nordic Lights and Darkness umbrella was about urban explorers discovering the strange things that have happened in an old Cold War-era fallout shelter, located next to the Stockholm underground station, Slussen. Although I made it clear that if a Keeper would like to adjust and relocate the scenario to another city in another country, that was certainly possible. A key piece of infrastructure was a subway system with a station near what had been a Cold War-era fallout shelter. Apart from that, most ingredients were likely to be found in many modern urban areas.
I was quite happy with how the scenario, called The Tunnel People, turned out. It actually has a pretty dark true backstory, as it was inspired by an actual case of a young urban explorer who went missing and was discovered dead a few days later.
Another important inspiration was a short story by Jack Werner called “Under Slussen” (Creepypodden i P3), and Jack did generously let me copy some elements from it. Inspiration was also found in several discussion threads on various online forums, as well as from documentation about the LARPs Tunnelfolket and Scen 3. Similarities with the video game and/or the TV series The Last of Us were, however, completely unintentional. I don’t play video games and only watched the acclaimed show after writing this scenario. But the show is truly great!
But with the success of the first Nordic Lights and Darkness collection, we in the writing group were determined to release another. Poul had already come a long way with a sequel to The Art of Hygge, called Lost in Cremation. Once again, the evocative title did help raise interest in the product.
It is worth mentioning that not all the writers from the first collection returned to participate in the second. This was due to happenings in life. We also, at this stage, had several new people in our Messenger chat group, who wanted to pitch ideas and sought help to develop them. Unfortunately, none has yet made the final step to be ready for publication.
For my part, I wanted to do something completely different from the bleak, urban setting of The Tunnel People. I had recently seen the amazing film Midsommar, in which a group of young Americans is drawn into a violent cult in rural Sweden. I had also, for many years, enjoyed a TV show on Swedish television called Allt för Sverige, marked in the US as The Great Swedish Adventure. I thought that I could take the elements of ancestors of people who migrated from Sweden in the 19th century, especially to America, but could have ended up wherever, and combine it with the concept of a rural cult, but with a Mythos aspect.
The result was The Calling of the Blood, in which the investigators – out of curiosity – all submit DNA samples to an online genealogy service and are then offered grants to travel to Sweden and learn about their family history. But a dark secret awaits them, as is often the case in Call of Cthulhu scenarios.
Writing the scenario allowed me to research the historical background on the massive Swedish emigration during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and I include some of that in an appendix.