HBO’s Beforeigners Trailer Imagines Vikings in Modern-Day Oslo

Any new HBO series is worthy of notice, especially when that series has a grand, ambitious conceit that sounds a little crazy on first blush. That’s the case for the premium channel’s new show Beforeigners, which imagines Vikings (and folks from the Stone Age, as well as the 1800s) appearing all over the world.

Beforeigners is mainly set in modern-day Oslo, with drama centered around a police investigation. One of the Vikings who suddenly appears in the present—Alfhildr Enginsdottir (Krista Kosonen)—joins the Oslo Police Force. She’s teamed up with a regular cop named Lars (Nicolai Cleve Broch), and the two begin investigating the murder of a woman with Stone Age tattoos. Alfhildr’s methods might be a little crude (she bites a guy’s face, for instance), but she seems more than game.

The first trailer provides a glimpse of this fresh take on the fish out of water story. In this case, the fish are sharks, more than capable of handling themselves in the modern era, if only they can figure out all the bizarre new technology. These time-travelers have no memory of how they got to the present, and their arrival in the modern era is a global phenomenon. They’re called “beforeigners.”

Beforeigners begin its existence as a 6-episode Norwegian show produced by HBO Europe and was released last year. Now the first episode is streaming on HBO Now and HBO Go, with the rest of the episodes streaming every Tuesday. Check out the first trailer here:

Here’s the official synopsis for Beforeigners:

A new phenomenon starts happening all over the world. Powerful flashes of light occur in the ocean, and people from the past appear from three time periods; the stone age, the Viking age, and the late 1800s. No one understands how this is possible, and the people from the past, called “beforeigners”, have no memory of what’s transpired.

A couple of years later, Alfhildr, who comes from the Viking Age, is teamed up with burned-out police officer Lars Haaland as part of the police department’s integration program. While investigating the murder of a woman with Stone Age tattoos, Lars and Alfhildr make unexpected discoveries.

Featured image: Krista Kosonen is Alfhildr Enginsdottir in ‘Beforeigners.’ Courtesy HBO