Spellbound is the world’s first travel experience that attracts tourists by scaring them off, using audio to unlock a new dimension of traveling. While most destinations showcase beautiful views, Sweden tuned into a zeitgeist of mysticism and brought its mythology-steeped nature to life in a haunting audio-experience. Co-created with iconic horror-writer John Ajvide Lindqvist, it leverages the power of sound to trigger imagination and delve visitors deeper into the local myths that make Sweden special. By geo-locking it to the Swedish forests, visitors were lured onto an eerie journey, deep into the unknown.

Arriving at a forest, Swedish nature's voice alluringly narrates a journey through the woods – making it feel as if it was alive. Sounds like twig snaps become heavy footsteps and tree roots turn into trolls’ bony arms. Along the way, listeners encounter mythical creatures, including the seductive forest nymph Huldran – leaving a lasting impression.

Welcome to my home. I am Sweden, that distant country in the north, and this place is my soul. The forest. If you could cross me in ten steps, seven of them would go through a forest. Oh, I have lakes, fields, mountains and cities but they are temporary interruptions of my true nature. My being, if you like.

Allow your shoulders to drop and breathe deeply. Draw in the scent of spruce, sap and mouldering leaves. You are here now. Half an hour ago, you were still at the train station or airport and you can hardly understand how quickly one can get to the forest in the country that is me. It is everywhere and everyone is allowed to come here.

Take a couple of steps and look where you put your feet. Don’t trip on a root or sink into the damp moss. Walk deeper into the woods. Now you can lift your gaze and look around. It is beautiful, isn’t it? The flickering light that plays across the trunks of pine and spruce, the light- green shimmer of the occasional, slender, deciduous tree.

You knit your brow and tilt your head. What is it that you see? In the haphazard vegetation, there is an almost perfect, raised circle of ferns and blueberry bushes, as if it had been planted here, in the middle of the forest. You approach it with caution. Its symmetry elicits respect.

There are thousands and thousands of similar places in Sweden, the remains of kilns. Here charcoal was produced from the remnants left from harvesting timber. Men sat for many days and nights tending the glowing embers until the wood mass had been distilled into charcoal that could fuel the smithy hearths.

Look around you. Maybe you can even find the ruins of a charcoal hut and the stone [masonry] from what was once a stove, now covered in moss. Here the men sat during long nights, watching over the glow that could not be allowed to turn to fire.

Is it so strange that they dreamed themselves away? That eyes that had peered for too long out into the darkness thought they saw what they most wanted to see? And ears that had listened to the monotonous moan of the fir forest for hours on end thought themselves hear a whisper: Come. Come to me.

At first, she was only perceptible as a vague contour, a streak of fog floating between the tree trunks. As the collier’s passionate longing grew stronger, she took form and became a beautiful woman from exotic locales. She called him to her. If he answered her call, he was lost for eternity. He had gone to the Huldra.

But was she simply a fantasy woven from moonbeams, originating in the gloom and solitude? Could it have been the embers and warmth from the kiln that drew her to them? Perhaps it was her thousand-year-old seclusion in the deep woods that would be eased by a collier’s embrace?

The kiln now lies before your feet, extinguished and forgotten, but perhaps the Huldra lingers nearby. In her long existence, one hundred years is only a parenthesis, a blink, and she has time to wait.

The sun is sinking in the sky. Through the low rays of light, you can discern carvings in the rock, images of prey, a kind of wish fulfillment on the part of the hunters who wandered in these woods long ago. They are the ones who have dug the holes you see here and there, death traps for wolves and elk.

Twilight falls rapidly. Now it is only the tops of the spruce trees that glow like green fire. You want to return to civilization, to your comfortable hotel room, your bathrobe and your slippers. Check off the fine nature experience. But which way was it you came? You haven’t followed a path and as you turn around and around, the tree trunks are bewilderingly alike.

You should have picked out some signs. You should have checked the battery of your phone. You should have followed a marked trail but you didn’t. You were in a hurry to delve into the untouched, primeval forest and now, here you stand. Lost. I can’t help you, I am only the voice you hear inside your head.

You wander aimlessly for a little while and arrive at a tarn. Dusky pink clouds are reflected in the still surface of the water where veils of the evening mist are beginning to rise. The dark and musty smell of muck from the bottom wafts toward you and a bird can be heard calling far away. The cry echoes in a desolate way between the mute fir trees and it is the sound of loneliness that you hear. Your own loneliness.

Along with the mist, your memories also arise, things you have heard or read about the creatures that are said to live in the Swedish forest. The Neck [Nix, water spirit] who plays his fiddle, forcing people to dance until their legs are nothing but bleeding stumps. The Lantern Man [Will-o’-the-wisp] who offers to light your way and then leads you to a place from which no one has ever returned. The Mare who rides you at night until you wake black and blue.

You wrap your arms around your body as if to shield yourself and you listen for other sounds. Voices, music or cars on a highway. Something to give you direction and prove that civilization still exists. But nothing can be heard. There is only you and the forest.

There is a splashing sound when something breaks the placid surface of the water and a streak of ice runs along your back when you think you glimpse a mushroom-pale hand waving as if for help, a drowned person who begs to be recovered and buried in holy ground.

Trembling, you back away from the tarn and begin to walk, without paying attention to the direction. Any which way is equally welcome. If you can simply follow a straight line, you ought to arrive at a road at some point. A remnant of light lingers in the sky and casts the interlaced shadows of the trees on the ground before you. The eyes of a fox glimmer and disappear, frogs hop away underfoot.

Are you frightened? Yes, you are frightened, I can hear it in your heartbeat pounding in your ears. Fairy folk and walkers aside, you also know that there are large animals in the Swedish forest. Bears, wolves and elk. You also know that attacks are incredibly rare but that is hardly a comfort when every moss-covered rock you spy is an animal’s back, its fur standing on end, when every snapping twig is the sound of heavy paws approaching.

The further along you wander without anything happening, the more your terror of these animals begins to give way to another: the fear of disappearing. You have not told anyone where you were going, no one knows that you are here. You may walk until you collapse in the heather and give up the ghost. It may be years before anyone finds you in the form of a skeleton, licked clean by the animals of the forest, impossible to identify.

No! You won’t accept it! Even though the light from the sky barely illuminates your way, you straighten your back and quicken your steps. You stretch out your arms and let the tips of your fingers brush the rough bark of a pine tree until your path is blocked by a fallen tree. You pass the upturned roots at a safe distance, aware that the tendrils could suddenly break free and shoot out like knotted troll arms.

You are forced to round a gigantic boulder dropped here by the inland ice that covered this country some ten thousand years ago. You take the long way around a swamp where small amphibians wriggle in the water and skip between the grassy tufts. You have lost your sense of direction and your straight line. You walk with your arms outstretched before you. The darkness is impenetrable.

The elastic threads of a spider web stick to your face and it is the hungry touch of ghosts that you feel, lost souls attracted by human warmth. Branches scratch your cheeks, sharp witches’ nails reach for you in the dark. Your heartbeat speeds up. Your heart pumps your blood around faster and faster, beating so hard it thuds in your ears and brings you to the brink of tears. Sobbing, you stumble on with all the creatures of the night at your heels.

Then something happens. You stop and blink the tears from your eyes. Slowly, slowly the tree trunks regain their contours, converted by the developer fluid of the night. Damp leaves and fir needles glitter in blue. The moon rises in the sky and spills its stolen light over your sweaty, tear-drenched face.

As if fuelled by the moonshine, you gain renewed strength, widen your step and walk briskly. Until you stop. The rock face in front of you is far too familiar. The crudely carved outlines of prey animals are teased out by the low light of the moon. You have walked in a circle. You sink down next to the rock and stroke it with your fingers while tears again wet your cheeks.

The tops of your fingers find letters that you follow. Fourteen in total, four letters in a language you do not understand. If there is a message, it is not directed to you. You end up sitting there for a long time, your head leaning against the stone while the moon rises above the tree tops.

You are tired, very tired. The only thing that remains is to find a place for the night and wait for the morning sun to light your way. Not too far away, you find a stream with clear water. You cup your hands, catch the full moon in the raised surface of the water and drink until you quench your thirst. In the distance, you can hear a howl and you shiver as you think about werewolves, humans in the form of a wolf who hunt when the moon is full.

As you turn around with the water dripping from your lips, you see the moon shine more strongly through a gap in the tree tops. Light falls over the place that made you stop in what feels like an eternity ago, the old charcoal kiln, the circle of bushes and ferns. You are pulled there, drawn by the lead-colored light’s illusion of comfort.

Your body screams for rest. You sink down into the blueberry bushes and find that it makes for surprisingly soft bedding. The tightly interlaced branches keep you hovering a few centimeters above the cold ground. You tear off a few fern leaves and shape them into a rudimentary pillow. It’ll do. You can manage this.

You lie on your side with your head resting in your hands and the fern leaves. Puffs of fog from the tarn blow in between the trees and turn the moon beams into white spears thrown from heaven to Earth. It cannot be denied: if you survive this then you have experienced something that few Swedes and even fewer visitors have done.

You have just started to feel sleep come creeping when you startle. There is a rustling in the ferns as you raise your head. What was it you heard? A voice. A whisper as faint as the evening breeze across the grassy tufts, in a language that is spoken by all and by no one. Come to me.

The veils of mist embrace the trees, billowing and turning, puffing up and taking firmer form, assembling into the texture of the thinnest silk fabric that sweeps up the dried fir needles on the ground. Long blonde hair brushes over jagged twigs and a milky white hand glimmers as it is struck by the moon light before it returns to the shadows. Come.

You sit up in the rustling blueberry bushes. You rub your eyes and pinch yourself stupidly in the arm. You squint. There is no doubt, you can see her now as she dances light as a feather in bare feet with the delicate dress swirling around her like living water. She is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. It doesn’t matter if you are a man or woman, old or young. Her shimmering skin, her eyes borrowed from a deer, and her smiled glowing like a flame in the night. She is a longing you did not know you had, she is irresistible. You rise and walk toward her.

A stench penetrates your nose as you draw closer, a smell of earth and ancient decay as if from an open grave with decomposing parts from a corpse and rotten wood. Your consciousness whispers helplessly: Flee! Flee! But your body simply continues to walk toward her.

At first, she is a shy animal that bolts from human touch. The dress twirls around her feet as she backs away from you without dropping you with her gaze in which slivers of the moon glitter.

“Stop, wait,” you say in the language that is yours and you know she understands. She lowers her gaze and her arms and stands still. You see that her feet are half sunken in a large tuft of the softest moss. It is here she has led you. In a sweeping motion, she lets her dress fall and stands naked before you.

You will never remember exactly how it happened but soon you yourself are naked. You embrace her and you sink down into the moss that answers with an ethereal sigh. You are hers and she is yours and the moon slowly rolls across the sky.

You don’t know how much time has passed when she takes your face in her cool hands and asks for your name. You no longer think that it is strange that you understand her since you exist outside time and space. You say your name and she repeats it in a languid whisper as if savoring something exquisitely delicious and desired. You don’t know why a cold shiver runs down your spine when she does this.

Something about the mood changes, as if the air has thickened and your breath is blocked in your chest. Even the woman seems to notice. She lifts her head and a greenish light falls over her translucent skin, under which a worn and ancient face emerges. Glossy, poison- green veils drift across the sky.

“The Northern Lights!” she hisses and rises to her feet. She slowly backs away from you while the searing green glow illuminates a body that is as knotted and twisted as a wind-blown pine. The woman stops and listens. Her nostrils quiver.

In the distance, the sound of barking dogs cuts through the silence of the forest. They are approaching quickly and the woman’s face twists in a disgusted grimace as she utters: “Odin’s dogs!” She makes a gesture to reach for her dress but the blood-thirsty dogs are approaching at lightning speed. She briefly meets your gaze and her mouth twitches before she turns and runs.

For the first time, you now see her back which isn’t there. Where her back and buttocks should be, there is simply a gaping hole. In the green light of the sky, the inside of the cavity glints as spongy and soft as rotten wood. A puff of stale air like the sludge from the bottom of the tarn washes over your face as she rushes away into the forest. You have been with the

Huldra.

Then Odin’s hunt is upon you. There is glistening and banging, the heavy thud of hooves thundering through the woods and bestial roars deafen you. The trees themselves appear to bend and tremble before the onslaught that makes the ground vibrate so that the rug of pine needles jump like drops of water on a hot plate. You hold your hands over your ears and the chatter of your teeth echoes through your skull in a rhythm drummed on a skeleton drum. Everything goes black and you fall down on your mossy bed.

You wake from the cold in the early dawn, naked and curled up like a child in the dew- wet moss. Your skin is covered in goosebumps and your limbs are so stiff that you are forced to crawl away to the place where your clothes have fallen. Your hands shake and you have trouble putting on the damp pieces.

You make your way onto your feet. Slanted rays of sun fall in between the trees and reveal a world showered by morning dew. Everything glitters and up in the tree tops the small birds sing, expanding the space above your head. A new day trickles out into the cracks left by the terrors of the night. And yet you can’t stop shivering.

You stumble over to the rock face where you end up standing, staring at the fourteen letters, the four words. You understood the Huldra’s tongue and now you even understand what is written. GE INTE DITT NAMN. Do not give up your name.

You gave up your name. You saw her lick her lips and taste it like a delicacy. Something of yours fell into her possession but you do not yet know what it is.

You feel a pang of hunger in your belly. The cold water from the stream lessens it a little and you decide to follow it so that you can at least be sure to have access to drinking water. You can live for many days without food but not water. You may be sentenced to wander around in this forest for a long time to come.

The burbling of the stream accompanies you and the morning sun sprinkles crystals across its surface. Your clothes are slowly drying on your body as the day wells forth and nature awakens. There is a fresh smell of dewy moss and sap-rich spruce, serenaded by myriad birds. Where the rays of the sun are playing, everything radiates in countless shades of green and you can’t resist it. You stop and open your arms, allowing nature to pour into you with all of its beauty until your chest aches with a longing to become one with all this. Only with some effort, do you compel yourself to continue to walk.

After half an hour, the stream disappears into a pipe that runs under a road. You crawl up the embankment and when a lorry loaded with timber drives by, you put out your thumb. The vehicle slows down and stops with a loud squealing of brakes.

When you have made your way into the cab and borrowed a towel to wrap around you, you end up sitting there, staring vacantly at the pine trees whizzing past the side windows. The Swedish forest is present everywhere, it encircles you and wants to take you in its lap.

Your recent experience of sublime beauty begins to pale and rational thought returns. As soon as you return to your hotel, you intend to change your ticket so that you can return home immediately, put this behind you and try to forget. As the warmth in the lorry softens your frozen limbs, it begins to feel all the more possible.

In your hotel room, you will charge your phone so that you can read your messages and email, check Facebook and Instagram. You will order food from room service and stream some series that you like. Return to the realm of the rational, to technology and civilization. What happened in the forest is something you will regard as a dream, a magical dream about Sweden and nothing that happened in reality. Yes, that is how it has to be.

But that is not how it is going to be. You gave your name and thereby you gave the Huldra power over you, and she and I are one and the same. It doesn’t matter how far away you travel. You have seen her beauty and been with her. When she calls you by your name, you will return. To Sweden. To the forest. To me.

Situation:

How do you promote a destination where there's nothing to see?

Despite the growing trend of nature-related tourism, Sweden’s tourism board struggled to attract international tourists to the countryside. There was a fundamental problem: compared to Norwegian fjords, Icelandic volcanoes and other epic nature destinations, Sweden’s nature is…quite boring.

In a visually driven category, defined by sight-seeing and Instagram moments, we needed to flip the script and show there’s more to experience a place than what meets the eye.

To attract today’s travellers, who crave something unique, we had to out-drama competition on completely new terms.

Brief:

Make Sweden’s nature interesting and famous among international travellers (focus US & UK) to help grow Swedish tourism – with an extremely limited budget.

Brand objectives:

- Increase destination awareness.

- Increase positive perception.

- Increase intention to travel.

Campaign objectives:

- Earn global attention

- Create engagement

Spellbound by Sweden unlocked a new dimension of the travel experience through the power of sound. It turns category norms upside down and put stories old as time at the center of the zeitgeist. In a time of visual overload, the geo-locked audio-adventure introduced a completely new, more emotional way to experience a place – even its darker sides.

The idea earned global attention and record high engagement – media even sent reporters for a first-hand experience. It broke into lifestyle, entertainment, news media and beyond.

The concept created lasting impact beyond marketing. Providing rich ground for new travel experience ideas, it turned into a business development platform for the tourism industry.

Brand:

- Destination awareness +16%

- Culturally rich destination: +14%

- Travel intent: +5%

Campaign:

- Earned reach: 1.3 BN across 34 countries

- Audio completion rate: 98%

- Engagement rate on campaign site: +144% above benchmark

Visual culture has made traveling less exciting, as nearly every corner of the world is exposed on social feeds. Travellers want to immerse in new experiences, but unexplored places are increasingly hard to find.

Despite this, most destination brands rely on sight-seeing and beautiful scenery, overlooking the potential of non-visual senses like sound to create engaging travel experiences and showcase local culture. Audio media is booming for its power to bring stories to life in intimate and immersive ways. As people seek relief from visual overload, sound offers a new, more emotional way of experiencing a place.

The most powerful emotion is fear, and there’s a cultural appetite for it. While fantasy blockbusters, horror TV, astrology apps and #WitchTok is new, the spine-chilling stories of Swedish forests are old as time. It echoes with stories of supernatural experiences and encounters with mythical creatures. Sweden’s dark side had potential to attract.

Supernatural Sweden

Sweden’s forests may not look exciting, but there’s hidden drama and cultural significance. The idea that nature is alive is deeply rooted in Swedish culture. Today, 1/3 Swedes believe in paranormal activity and 70% rather visit nature than go to church in crisis. 3000 people speak “Elfdahlian” – “the lost forest language” stemming from the Vikings. Swedish forests echoes with eerie stories of supernatural experiences and encounters with mythological creatures like elves, trolls and huldran. These stories have inspired everything from Hollywood to fashion trends – and are seeing a cultural revival.

Spine-chilling zeitgeist

Fantasy and horror dominate entertainment, while spiritual beliefs and practices like astrology, tarot and crystals are taking over internet communities. Niche trend “dark tourism”, where travellers visit haunted places, also reflects the spine-chilling wave.

Visual backlash

66% want an escape from visual stimulation (Spotify, 2022)

36% of daily media consumption is audio (Statista, 2020)