How do you tell a story everyone has already heard in a way that makes people feel like they’re hearing it for the first time? This was the crucial question behind “Black Circle,” a widely acclaimed podcast series from Bergens Tidende.

The story of Norwegian black metal is tailor-made for sensationalism. It is truly outrageous: murders, church burnings, satanic imagery, young boys in corpse paint.

From its start back in the 1990s, the scene was heavily mythologised from the start. As a result, it has been retold in countless formats, more often than not drowning in shocking headlines.

In the process, the actual story of Norway’s most infamous cultural export got lost. 

Revisiting history

Bergens Tidende set out to make an audio documentary that told a fundamentally different story: not only about violence and notoriety, but about music, friendship, youth culture, identity, and the mechanisms that turned a local scene into a global myth.

The ambition was never to ignore the criminal and tragic elements but to contextualise them.

The idea partly came from the scene’s present-day afterlife. Every year, black metal fans from around the world — so-called blackpackers — travel to Bergen to see places and meet people tied to the genre’s origins.

For us, this raised several questions: How did a subculture formed in teenage bedrooms and local rehearsal spaces become one of Norway’s most unlikely cultural exports? And what is it that still draws new audiences to this genre long after the media frenzy has faded?

Choosing a podcast approach gave us room to move slowly through a large body of material. Over five episodes and 230 minutes, we built a chronological narrative arc from origins and escalation to myth-making, collapse, and aftermath.

The reporting itself was extensive. The series is built on more than 25 in-depth interviews, a number of field recordings, and a large archive of historical material. Musicians, journalists, police investigators, and others were invited not just to retell events, but to reflect on them with distance. Some central voices had rarely, if ever, spoken so openly to the press before. 

Reframing the story

That access did not come easily. Because of the scene’s bad experiences with the press in the 1990s, many people were initially sceptical of yet another media retelling. We had to spend a long time building trust, showing that we understood the history and would treat it seriously.

In several cases, people only agreed to participate after long conversations and after others in the scene had vouched for us. This process became part of the reporting itself: Before we could tell the story, we had to show that we were worthy of their trust.

One important dimension was Bergens Tidende’s own role. In the early 1990s, the newspaper was not only part of the coverage that helped shape public understanding of black metal during a period of moral panic; it also published the now infamous first interview with Kristian “Varg” Vikernes, launching the genre from obscurity into a global media phenomenon. 

In “Black Circle,” we chose to give our own part of the story the same critical examination as other aspects of it. 

The sound design follows the same philosophy. We wanted an immersive audio world, but not a manipulative one. Instead of relying on heavy effects, we built a restrained sonic landscape using original synth-based music inspired by black metal’s melodic language, together with archival recordings and authentic tapes from the period.

The goal was to anchor the listener in time and place.

Lessons learned

So what have we learned?

Slow journalism, trust-building work, and reframing known narratives can unlock untold stories that resonate with listeners. 

“Black Circle” quickly became one of BT’s most-listened-to podcasts, approaching 100,000 plays, and found an audience well beyond dedicated black metal fans. People inside the scene responded to the nuance and precision.

Newcomers responded to the accessibility. For us, these were the clearest signs that our storytelling approach had worked: By resisting the easiest version of the story, we made it more engaging, not less.

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