Halfdan is back, and he's still not trying to sell you Oslo. The deadpan Norwegian from Visit Oslo's breakout 2024 campaign — the one who looked down the lens and told viewers "I wouldn't come here" — has returned for a festive follow-up, and the destination's marketing team has gone bigger and stranger: a horror-themed Christmas musical.
The original "Is It Even a City" film became an unlikely hit by doing the opposite of every destination ad you've ever seen. Halfdan's gloomy, anti-tourism routine struck a chord precisely because it refused to flatter the city, racking up more than 25 million organic views across platforms and picking up a Silver Lion at the Cannes Lions awards, according to Visit Oslo. What looked like a joke turned out to be one of the most effective destination campaigns in recent memory.
For the sequel, the team behind it had self-imposed rules, explains Tord Baklund, a Visit Oslo project manager who worked on both films. The new video had to be set in winter — because that's when Oslo's hotel beds sit empty — and it had to star the same actor who made Halfdan a minor internet celebrity. The result leans into Scandinavian darkness rather than fighting it: a Christmas musical with a horror streak, playing on the long Nordic nights that most destinations would rather hide.
It's a clever bit of positioning. Oslo in winter genuinely is dark, cold and quiet — and instead of pretending otherwise, the city's marketers are turning those exact qualities into the appeal. Horror fans, lovers of cosy-dark Nordic atmospheres, and anyone charmed by honest, self-deprecating humour now have a reason to book a December trip rather than skip the season entirely. It's anti-marketing that still does the one job marketing has to do: put people in hotel rooms during the slow months.
For travellers, the takeaway is simple. Norway's capital is at its most atmospheric — and its most affordable — precisely when conventional ads tell you to stay home. Think mulled wine, museum days that stretch into long evenings, ski trails on the city's doorstep and a legitimate case for embracing the dark rather than dreading it. If the campaign does its job, Halfdan's grim warnings will fill beds in January and February instead of July.
The viral formula isn't guaranteed to work twice, of course. Follow-ups to breakout ads often fall flat, and the bar for this one was deliberately high. But if the first film taught the travel industry anything, it's that travellers respond to honesty — even honesty delivered by a man insisting you go anywhere else.
