Ina Wroldsen’s Sea

Sea is built on the Nøkken, a figure from Norwegian folklore—a water spirit that drowns people. Dark thing to base a pop song on. Ina Wroldsen makes it work though. She talks about the song as an ode to Norway and her family, which sounds like something you’d read in a press release, but in the actual song it feels honest, like she’s singing to something private and just letting us listen in.

Wroldsen is Norwegian, did the talent-show circuit as a kid, then did the standard move—to London in her twenties to make a living as a songwriter for other people’s records. Now she’s 33 and putting out her own stuff. Sea is from Hex, her first EP, and it’s exactly the kind of song that makes you understand why she waited. No rush, no hunger to blow up.

There’s something about Scandinavian artists. I keep noticing it. Not all of them, but enough that it feels like a real pattern. They have this way of working darkness and strangeness into music without making it feel forced or theatrical. It just sits there. Could be the light, could be the winters, could be something about living in places where the year has extremes. I have no idea. But it’s there.

What Sea does is sit with you. It’s got a melody, but it’s not chasing a hit. It’s got darkness, but it’s not trying to scare you. It’s just Wroldsen thinking about where she’s from, her family, through this lens of mythology and drowning water. The song holds all of that without breaking.