Ambiguity and Liminality as Sonic Strategies in The Bridge

The internationally successful Nordic crime fiction series The Bridge/Bron/Broen (Sweden/Denmark, 2011–2018) takes place in the Öresund region, an area situated ‘in-between’ two neighbouring countries, Denmark and Sweden, and deals in various ways with issues related to ‘gaps’ between people and in the society. As a key representative of audiovisual Nordic noir, it is marked by dark and bleak imagery, a ‘whodunnit’ crime plot, and social commentary. But it also employs a notably ambiguous and idiosyncratic audiovisual style, central to which, as this article seeks to demonstrate, is the soundtrack, which consciously breaks conventional boundaries of music and sound design. In tandem with the other expressive and narrative modes, it creates a layer of ambiguity to the series that requires deciphering from the audience, opens outward to the world outside the story, and creates a liminal atmosphere that is symbolically concordant with the story and themes of the series.