Swedish slow TV: The great moose migration [video] | Hacker News Reader

Swedish slow TV: The great moose migration [video]

svtplay.se

264 pointsMasterYoda93 comments

For those who don’t know slow tv was popularized by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) with train journeys and ship routes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_television

But perfected in Sweden with The Great Moose Migration! </silly Scandinavian rivalry>

So the genre started in the UK with Yule log burning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule_log), then was popularised in Norway and perfected in Sweden. Might we expect the slow eastward migration to continue and for Finland to come up with the next masterpiece? The Finns are already somewhat notorious for going long stretches of time without speaking, after all.

(Big hugs to all nations involved of course)

Didn't Germany already do this ages ago? At night, they would broadcast various train trips[0]. I even recall there was a bit of a scandal when they cut out part of the trip through a tunnel, because the screen would be all black for too long.

[0] Just from a single camera at the front of the train, no further editing. I haven't seen the Norwegian and Swedish Slow TV yet, but I get the impression they use multiple cameras. The German version was super simple, but very relaxing in its simplicity.

Agreed.

The wikipedia link above has 2009 as the earliest date.

In Austria you would find random scenic train rides on TV whenever you would switch on the TV in the middle of the night at least from 2002 onward, if not earlier... And I don't think this started in Austria.

Yes, the train rides were in the night programme of ARD during the 90s [1]. Meanwhile, the other public German TV channel ZDF did the contrast program with a different mode of transportation: They had dash cam views of car rides [2].

[1] https://youtu.be/7ycjaWRnETU [2] https://youtu.be/2jI-Sn_X7x4?t=213

We have slow TV for hawk nesting and seal sunbathing in Finland. Unfortunately the seals sunbathing location was figured out one year and they had to stop broadcasting it.

Heh. Did humans do their own sunbathing for the camera?

Check out finnish outdoor survival on youtube

Link please?

https://youtu.be/Gzc2nAhY8OI

Not live TV per se, but a WWF web stream following ringed seals is hugely popular in Finland. The OG version is called Norppalive (https://wwf.fi/en/wildlive/saimaa-ringed-seal/), and it followed Saimaa ringed seals. This year's edition follows Baltic ringed seals (https://wwf.fi/en/wildlive/baltic-ringed-seal/). There may be hours of nothing happening at all, it's great.

the genre started in the UK with Yule log burning

When did the UK start broadcasting yule logs? In the United States it goes back to at least the mid 1960's, and possibly before. Stations in most large cities still air the show, though shorter now (1-3 hours) than before.

Actually, I think Norway has the edge here. The fjord scenery can't be beaten. (And I am Swedish)

Not 100% live (most of the time), but definitely a good candidate for Slow TV is RailCowGirl:

https://www.youtube.com/c/RailCowGirl

Especially good if you love trains, and amazing scenery.

They're also the only national broadcaster I know of that devotes time to classical chess matches which typically last 4+ hours with one piece being moved ever few minutes. It helps that the world champion and best chess player is Norwegian, but slow TV may have made them more receptive.

And people love it. Last year at Boxing Day, 300 000-500 000 viewers in average, close to a million viewers overall [1] - that's ~20% of the population. And the popularity has been high for at least five years now, as it has started to become more of a tradition

Freely available for those interested: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/sjakk

[1] https://kampanje.com/medier/2021/12/kvelden-for-kvelden-mist...

I've heard about this before.

And I'm puzzled.

Are the Scandinavians so bored that they find the dashcam of a train amusing?

When people are given good social security, food, healthcare, education and everything else, do they start to find life boring?

Update: I don't mean any offense to Scandinavians or anybody else.

Update 2: I'm not American, so please don't use the comment section to crap on Americans with the assumption that I'll be offended (and also think about what that reveals about you). This is hilarious.

Update 3: I now realise it's just one person who's doing all the aforementioned crapping (at the time of this update). Maybe that person is having a bad day.

This has nothing to do with Scandinavians, it's just a form of entertainment you apparently do not seem to enjoy.

There's plenty of this stuff. Go on Twitch and you'll find people playing very uneventful video games for hours, and people will hang around to watch it. There has even been sessions of watching grass grow or paint dry, and people watched it.

That's an odd take. A lot of people just like having the TV or radio on in the background and this is a cheap and relaxing kind of content to fill that niche.

Hmm. I see.

Actually, I never put on TV in the background. Either there's something I want to watch or there isn't, in which case I turn off the TV.

I sometimes keep music on in the background. But this is only if I actually feel like listening to music. For instance, I can drive for hours with no music on (and no, my car exhaust note isn't very exciting).

So you jumped to that its because our society is too good?

Dont all americans have like 5 TVs on showing Fox News 24/7?

I don't put on TV in the background either, but the other typical use case of slow TV, watching for 15 or 30 minutes or even an hour to relax and decompress very much resonates with me. Just like I could spend an hour in front of a fireplace, just watching the flames. Nothing "boring" about that.

I think you're puzzled because you imagine people watching this actively for hours.

I think it's more of a nice background, that you keep on while doing something else (working, cooking, living in general), and sometimes check.

Same as a cozy fireplace, or a beautiful view from your window, or even a TV / radio left on whether someone listens to it or not

> When people are given good social security, food, healthcare, education and everything else, do they start to find life boring?

Given??

We work 40h a week and pay taxes.

Social security is not to live on forever, its temporary until you find a job. If you are too sick, then yes you CAN get it forever.

Food? You think we are given food? We have supermarkets. Yes it is good quality as we have GOVERNMENTAL OVERSIGHT, unlike the USA where corporations are free to put raw pesticides in your Mcdonalds borgir.

Healthcare? - Yes paid for by taxes. Not given to us.

Education - Yes paid for by taxes. So that we can work, and pay taxes to fund it.

We BUILT this society. You had your chance and choose to build a hellhole made of roads, cars and 70h workweeks.

"oooh but we do so much inovation!!!" Sweden does too SAAB, Ericsson, Spotify, Minecraft. A nation of 10mil and we built our own jets and subs. Suck it.

Agreed but chill dude, no one needs to suck anything.

If you don't like America don't go there. Nobody's forcing you to move to that — to quote your own words — "hellhole", are they?

In your culture do people typically crap on others and spread hate like you're doing here? Or is it just you?

I mean, seriously, what are you, 12?

I'm tired of people online like you calling us lazy for building a humane society.

Nice strawman argument, and ageism.

Did I call you lazy?

If you felt that I said your lot is lazy, that was a misunderstanding. A miscommunication.

For the record, I'll state it explicitly: I do not think people of Sweden (and the Scandinavians in general) are lazy.

There. I said it.

I have been as explicit as I possibly could, even though there's no reason for me to explain myself to a random rude person on the internet.

In my native language there's a saying that roughly translates to: don't climb up a ladder to get in the way of a bullet going across the sky.

I've committed this mistake.

Let's end this discussion.

On a technicality, if you start calling people 12, bored and possibly even lazy you shouldn't be asking to 'end the discussion' as if you suddenly have been granted the moral high ground.

GPs comment has plenty wrong with it but yours (multiple) does too.

> hellhole made of roads, cars and 70h workweeks

We're (so far) free of the 70h workweeks, at least, but if you're trying to portray Sweden as somehow a car-free haven of environmentally-friendly cycling and walking along the lines of Denmark or The Netherlands, then you're really taking the blind nationalism too far...

> Sweden does too SAAB, Ericsson, Spotify, Minecraft. A nation of 10mil and we built our own jets and subs. Suck it.

...and here was me thinking this was a mild discussion about 'slow TV'...

> 70h workweeks.

Which country? "The average American works 34.4 hours per week, as of May 2019. For people between 25-54, the national average work week comes in at 40.5 hours."

> Are the Scandinavians so bored that they find the dashcam of a train amusing?

Or so at peace with life (knowing that we can get free healthcare and education if or when we need it) that we can find beauty in simple things, like moose migrating. ;-)

Fellow swede here.

I enjoy picking mushrooms and bow making.

You must be bored. ;-)

You may want to test it yourself;

* Along the coast: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/hurtigruten-minutt-for-minutt and https://tv.nrk.no/serie/svalbard-minutt-for-minutt and https://tv.nrk.no/serie/sommerskuta-minutt-for-minutt

* Train: https://tv.nrk.no/program/PRHO63004009

* Hiking: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/monsen-minutt-for-minutt and https://tv.nrk.no/serie/besseggen-minutt-for-minutt

* Driving: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/sommerbilen-minutt-for-minutt

* Singing: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/salmeboka-minutt-for-minutt

* The opera: https://tv.nrk.no/program/MKDE21000318

* Moving reindeers: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/reinflytting-minutt-for-minutt

A sidenote: NRK has made many of these series available as torrents [1]; for example, you can find various resolutions or the same train route filmed at each season. It attracted some attention at the time: https://torrentfreak.com/norwegian-tv-launches-bittorrent-tr...

[1] https://nrkbeta.no/bittorrent/

Train dashcam videos are an absolutely awesome way to chill and relax, it's almost meditative. Great way to spend a break at work, for example, and probably much better for one's mental health than almost all the crap that's on normal TV.

Here in Czech Republic some of the most popular YouTube videos are tram dashcam compilations. Featuring exciting moments like "car is parked too far into the road and obstructs the tram, owner has to move it" and "tram rings bell at tourist unknowingly standing on the track".

Looking at the state of the world, I'm happy that that's often as much excitement as we need here.

I love watching trains

So, basically moving wallpaper.

Is there a tech angle to this submission? I'm not complaining or asking for one, but sampling the stream I wondered if there might be one that I failed to see: most of the time a random wildlife webcam would show a scene too boring even for slow TV, but if you have hundreds of them, some will likely have something interesting going on.

Continuously getting eyeballs on hundreds of streams to select one for the show would be incredibly expensive (the linked streams seem to be more condensed than a 24/7 selection?), but it would be the perfect ML playground: feedback is solved, viewer metrics has been an established field for half a century, wrong answers are zero cost and you could create something that simply did not exist before: real time wildlife where there's actually something to see. (or maybe almost realtime, because the human showrunner might decide to allow a few minutes of serenity from the ringbuffer before the action that triggered the detector walks into view, that would still be good enough for "today, at the current time of day")

I think having the view always be on something "interesting" would spoil what I personally find enjoyable about this stream. I've had this open in a little PIP window all day while I work. I enjoy the nature sounds and sometimes see a reindeer trot past or a bird, which is cool. And when a moose comes up it's all the more exciting, because it's a unique occurrence. Then you go to the chat and see other viewers excitedly post about how beautiful the moose is. I think if the stream showed something exciting all the time it would take something away from the flare of happiness when you see a moose or other interesting animal in-between the calming sounds of nature.

I completely agree! It's like the difference between fishing in a stocked pond versus wading a trout stream, between taking a whole afternoon to cook a meal from scratch versus getting fast food, or between watching a classic play and watching a Michael Bay movie... Yes, technology gives us the ability to remove all downtime and have only action all the time. But I don't think I'd want to.

Fast paced cuts to wherever the most action happens this second would certainly ruin it, but somehow I doubt that a true representation of how little happens in a single camera angle would be the answer. Setting the parameters for sighting rarity would still be a form of, well, creativity?

This submission, at least for me, pulls the "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" lever.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Just the setup is impressive

>How many cameras are there?

In total there are 7 night cameras, 26 remote cameras, 1 manual camera and 1 drone. All interconnected by 22,000 metres of cable via 15 hubs.

https://www.twitch.tv/svt_slow

Nice, has more English information.

Also, twitch chat!

Seems a bit more like 'still' than 'slow'.

Slow is just enough energy for something to be happening: a video from a train is 'slow'.

Videos of nature, that's almost 'still' or almost, it's actually kind of a different experience.

Something is happening though, the moose are migrating.

Yeah, tomorrow, maybe...

I hadn't seen this kind of content before and was waiting for a while til I figured to skip forward and, by the 24th hour, the counter (which I figured must mean moose but it doesn't say) was still at zero zero zero.

I can see the appeal but the title is a bit unfortunate if you aren't already familiar with it.

Swiss train journeys are nice: https://www.rts.ch/play/tv/emission/slow-suisse?id=10943405

Maybe the Swiss are the pioneers of this format. Around 20 years ago, there used to be a multi-hour helicopter flyover of Switzerland broadcasted on National TV „SF1“ on certain mornings. Similar to this one: https://youtu.be/AX57EYPASDs . It was always nice to wait until you see your home area. Of course, truly 24 hours or multi-day is on another level.

Quite nice to have this up on a second monitor while working on something that doesn't need two monitors.

The counter "000 över älven" means so far none have crossed the river. Should I hold my breath?

They will be broadcasting for two weeks, so maybe not hold your breath....

Not unless you can hold your breath for a long long long time.

I alternate between this and this "Blue tit nest cam" from Germany. Very relaxing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d88nua75yJA

Careful there. Nest cams can turn ugly all of a sudden.

Speaking from experience?

There have been a few incidents on UK's BBC Springwatch where they've been watching birds that have been eaten/killed. Parental/sibling killing of chicks is pretty common.

A Møøse once bit my sister ... No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies

You know... it's kinda ironic when the humour of a British troupe that was so radically innovative is quoted over and over again to the point that most people recognize it.

Is like reheating a souffle, every time you do it, the taste gets more stale.

I was so fortunate to see that movie in a movie theatre when it came out, without knowing what to expect... And I miss that surprise so much...

Is there a way to get rid of the right sidebar with the flying smileys, hearts and other reactions? Seems to defeat the purpose.

Yes, it's a bit hidden. Hover over the video to reveal the settings icon (cogwheel). From there you can disable the chat sidebar.

Thank you!

There was czech version 10+ years ago, kind of and it got hacked, people were calling back to TV to ask if it was real https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDHkOd9hBJE

I can also recommend https://afar.tv

Here is some more information, including a map with the camera positions: https://kontakt.svt.se/guide/den-stora-algvandringen

I used to constantly have a webcam on from moosegarden.com just to have banckground moose lounging around. Sadly cam is gone but I recommend visiting them if you get a chance.

Det är bra grabbar, fortsätt upvotea så tar vi över den här plattformen med svenska fanan högt i vinden

Amerikanarna har ingen chans / The Americans haven’t got a clue ;)

Jänkarna vet inte vilka de kommer att möta, när de snart vaknar så ska de möta kungens vrede

I don't know. I think there are probably more Dutch here than Swedes.

(Not based on a rigorous scientific survey. May not be accurate.)

Since there is at least 2.5 times more people that speak Dutch I have no doubt that it is probably the case.

Go back to Reddit please

Så er der måske brug for lidt moralsk støtte fra en skandinavisk nabo ;-)

Trivia question.

How many moose do you think get shot during hunting season in Sweden?

It is about 100k.

That's a lot, and apparently it only adds up to around 1% of all meat consumed in Sweden (2015).

Neat little visualization https://www.svt.se/special/algjakten-i-siffror/

The link title is wrong. It is not Live TV.

One of the program is: https://www.svtplay.se/video/34674843/den-stora-algvandringe...

Live is today in https://www.svtplay.se/video/34674843/den-stora-algvandringe... or https://www.twitch.tv/svt_slow

Is this a covert op? Are we suposed to be looking for russian agents sneeking across the border? Drug smugglers? Slow tv? We might look at a trail camera for weeks without seeing anything. I dont understand.

Its relaxing background TV...

And we do see nature and the moose!

My favourite is "Watch ice melting on Lake Inari". 1st of June is usually the kayak launching day, but this year it may be 1st of July. I blame Greta. We need more Global Warming. https://www.windy.com/-Webcams/Finland/Mainland-Finland/Inar...

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