Press release —
Voices of the Fjords: From Voss to the World: Randi Fuglehaug Writes Murder Into a Mountain Town
Ford Norway • Voices of the Fjords #7 • Oslo and Voss, August 2026
In Voss, a mountain town close to Norway's Hardanger region, an extreme-sports week and a sheep's-head feast have both ended up as scenes in a murder investigation. Randi Fuglehaug's crime trilogy follows local journalist Agnes Tveit through the town Fuglehaug herself grew up in, turning its ski slopes, its festivals and its close-knit village life into gripping small-town suspense. She left Voss for journalism decades ago and now lives in Oslo, where she also co-writes the young-adult series Royalteen - a global hit read in fourteen languages and adapted twice by Netflix. But it's Voss, and the fjord and mountain landscape around it, that keeps pulling her back, book after book.
Voss sits in Norway's Vestland county, close to the Hardanger region, a short drive from Bergen and the Hardangerfjord - a town wedged between lake, fjord and mountain, known equally for its extreme sports, its skiing and its old farming traditions. Randi Fuglehaug grew up on these streets, and later, from her writer´s desk in Oslo, turned the whole valley into a crime scene - three times over. Fallesjuke, Tonedød and Skallebank follow local journalist Agnes Tveit through a Voss that looks exactly like the real one, down to the newspaper she works for.
What's the one memory or image from growing up in Voss that still shapes how you write about the place?
Honestly, as a teenager I was a bit bored here. It's beautiful, but when I was young I didn´t really see that - I just wanted to get out and see the world. I played a lot of team sports, handball and tennis, and I had a big group of friends, but I wasn't the outdoorsy, nature-loving kid people might expect from someone who writes about these mountains now. That fascination came later, once I'd left and could see the place properly.
You left Voss for journalism and now live in Oslo, but you keep bringing readers back through Agnes Tveit. What does it feel like to return - on the page and in person?
I go home as often as I can, and I love Voss all year round, but I especially appreciate it in the spring, when spring has sprung while there is still snow in Oslo. There's also a jazz festival before Easter that's become a real homecoming for people from Voss who've scattered everywhere. On the page, it's the same instinct: I keep sending Agnes back into the same streets I grew up on.
You've said you were nervous about what people back home would think when you started writing crime fiction set in Voss. What actually happened when the books came out?
I was genuinely scared. This is my hometown — I know these people, and I was worried they'd be upset that I'd turned it into the backdrop for murder. I made a point of having friends and people from the region read the manuscripts first, because I wanted to get it right and be fair to the place. So far I haven't had a single angry reaction. The launch parties, in Voss and in Oslo where I live now, were both full of curious, warm people. I've even had a Voss police officer offer me tips.
The fjords and mountains around Voss aren't just scenery in your books — they carry the plot. How does the landscape actually shape a story?
Every book in the series is tied to a real event in the region — Ekstremsportveko, the extreme-sports week, becomes the setting for a murder in the first book, and other books lean on things like the jazz festival Vossa Jazz and the food feast Smalahovesleppet. The fourth book, which will be out early 2027, is set during a local football tournament. Voss is small and safe, the kind of place nothing bad is supposed to happen — which is exactly what makes it work for crime fiction. And the town has always drawn outsiders, extreme athletes and travellers who stay a season or a lifetime, so the cast of characters is bigger and stranger than a small town usually gets.
“It’s a small, safe place — nothing is supposed to happen here. Which is exactly why it works so well for a murder.”
You write glossy royal drama set in Oslo and raw local crime set in Voss, almost side by side. What does each place give you that the other can't?
They're a real counterweight to each other. Royalteen I wrote together with a co-author, which is a completely different, more playful process — it became eight books and two Netflix movies, and that collaborative energy is refreshing after the solitary work of the Voss novels. My co-author is also from western Norway, and I think that is part of why work so well together. We share the same type of mindset and humor.
Royalteen has been read in fourteen languages and made into two Netflix films, while the Agnes Tveit books are deeply local to Voss. Does a very local, very Norwegian story travel differently than a royal drama?
It's interesting, Agnes Tveit has already sold into eight countries, so the local story clearly travels too. What I'd love to see next is a real link to tourism: whether a book set somewhere like Voss can actually bring people to visit the region, not just readers to a story. That connection between fiction and a real place people can go and stand in is something I think about a lot.
If someone visiting Fjord Norway for the first time asked you where to go to actually understand Voss, not just see it - where would you send them?
Come in spring if you can, that's when the valley is at its most beautiful. Or in the winter, if you like skiing. Take the gondola up and walk along the ridge with the whole valley below you, or run around Vangsvatnet lake in town. If you're brave, someone will talk you into skydiving. I have done it twice myself, but strangely never in Voss. And you have to try smalahove, the salted, smoked sheep's head, at the Smalahovesleppet festival - even if, like most first-timers, you can't quite believe you're expected to eat something that's looking back at you.
Randi Fuglehaug is available for press interviews.
Agnes Tveit trilogy (Fallesjuke, Tonedød, Skallebank) published by Kagge. Royalteen series (with Anne Gunn Halvorsen) adapted by Netflix.
Press contact via Oslo Literary Agency.
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