Norway State TV NRK Shows Continuous Fire Burning For 12 Hours

Scandanavia's New Slow-Burning Drama

Brits have got the hots for slow-burning Scandinavian drama, from The Killing, to Borgen, to The Bridge, but the latest hot offering from Norwegian state TV might not see any takers here - a 12 hour broadcast of a burning log fire.

The NRK programme, described by the channel's head of programming Rune Moeklebust as "slow but noble television, will be a continuous shot of the wood burning - to capture the age-old entertainment of staring at a log fire.

The programme, Hel Ved, will include firewood specialists speaking about "nerdy subjects" like the best kinds of wood, techniques for chopping and stacking, as well as "cultural segments" which involve music and poetry.

Moeklebust told Reuters: "People in Norway have a spiritual relationship with fire," Moeklebust said. "Fire is the reason we're here, if there was no firewood, we couldn't live in Norway, we'd freeze."

"More people will tune in than on a normal Friday night," Moeklebust said.

The channel is no stranger to left-field broadcasting. In 2009 it attached a high-definition camera to the front of a train travelling from Oslo to Bergen and streamed the results in real-time.

Two years later the channel broadcast more than a 130 hours of a cruise ship sailing up the Norwegian coast to the Arctic, the world record for the longest continuous TV programme. The programme was so popular, NRK had to repeat it.

In 2011, NRK broadcast 134 hours non-stop of a cruise ship going up the Norwegian coast to the Arctic, bagging the world record for the longest continuous TV programme along the way.

At one point 3.2 million people tuned in to watch that feature, or over 60 percent of the population.

in late 2012 it broadcast a 10-hour train journey between Trondheim and Bodø - the Nordladsbanen.