The Story of Northern Lights and Darkness, part 1

At the beginning of 2023, I had an idea of boosting interest for my own, now increasingly growing number of English language titles (i.e., originally Swedish scenarios that I had translated), by tapping into the crime fiction trend of Nordic noir. What if I, and preferably other Call of Cthulhu scenario writers around Scandinavia, could offer the English-speaking market something unique and exotic, and show them how well the Cthulhu Mythos works in a Nordic setting?
First, a sidenote: I am well aware that the Nordic countries are not synonymous with Scandinavia. To be specific: the Nordics include the sovereign states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden; the autonomous territories of the Faroe Islands and Greenland; the autonomous region of Åland, and the cultural region of Sápmi. Scandinavia most commonly includes only Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. But it can sometimes also refer to the Scandinavian Peninsula (which excludes Denmark but includes a part of northern Finland). That said, in English usage, Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym for the Nordic countries, territories, and regions. Iceland and the Faroe Islands are sometimes included in Scandinavia due to their ethnolinguistic connections with Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. While Finland differs from other Nordic countries in this respect, some call it Scandinavian due to its economic and cultural similarities, and because it has a significant Swedish-speaking minority and strong historical ties between the two countries. I have, in this context, settled on using the two terms Nordic and Scandinavian interchangeably, and as inclusive as reasonably possible.
Anyway, I started scouting Nordic/Scandinavian authors on the Miskatonic Repository (a section of DriveThruRPG for Call of Cthulhu community content), but found precious little. So little, in fact, that I for a while wondered if I was alone. That seemed unlikely.
So my next step was tracking down TTRPG forums and Facebook groups in the various Nordic languages, and posting calls to arms (in English, because even though especially Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are quite similar, and many in Finland know at least a little Swedish, my idea was that we were going to write scenarios for a mostly English-speaking audience, thus it would make most sense to keep our conversations in English as well).
I quickly got a few replies from people who were interested in the idea. The first to sign up was Wille Ruotsalainen in Finland, followed by Poul Holmelund in Denmark, Maja Hvalryg Kvendseth in Norway, Theodór Helgason in Iceland, and Oscar Sedholm in Sápmi.
We did reach out to others as well, and we are today more in the extended creative team, but the above are the ones who have so far produced material in this project.
This core group of writers agreed on focusing on helping each other to produce scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, set in modern-day Scandinavia. One scenario from each country, and all of them firmly rooted in that particular setting. We also quickly abandoned the idea of restricting ourselves to the Nordic noir theme. Although I had already started writing an entry that was very much in that vein. More about that later.
From the beginning, we really wanted to create a collection of scenarios. Ideally, a nicely designed book in print. But at the same time, we were realists. If we were going to offer this for sale through DriveThruRPG, we needed to sell at least 251 copies to be eligible for POD (print on demand) status.
And 251 might not sound like a lot, but at the time, less than half of the Call of Cthulhu community content at DriveThruRPG even reached 50 sales. Only 8% made it to 251. But we were optimistic!
Another sidenote: We were also quite aware that even though DriveThruRPG is a great marketplace, it is in no way a cash machine for authors. DriveThruRPG keeps half of the sales, and there is not much money to be made from writing TTRPG scenarios to begin with. So if we wanted to commission artists for illustrations, maps, etc., we would be lucky to break even.
More about our venture in “The Story of Northern Lights and Darkness, part 2”.