Svandis Dora Einarsdottir stars as the female Chief of the Narcotics Division in the Netflix crime series Entrapped (2022). In Entrapped, the third season of the Scandi noir series, the Icelandic police force is investigating the brutal murder of a young man who lived in rural Iceland with a pagan cult which is engaged in a land dispute with a motorcycle gang with ties to Denmark. The Chief of the Narcotics Division, Sonia, comes to rural Iceland to take over the case from the guilt-ridden Chief of Police, Andri, played by Olafur Darri Olafson. Icelandic actress Einarsdottir, who is known for the TV series Lava Field and is soon to be seen in the Icelandic series The Mayor, spoke to us via Zoom from her home in Kópavogur in Iceland.

You are playing a rather tough Chief of the Narcotics Division in the Netflix series Trapped and Entrapped. What was the appeal of the role of Sonia for you?

I love the fact that she is the boss. They wrote the character as if she were a tough guy, but she is indeed a woman, even though she kind of has a male energy to her. We wanted her to be feminine, and so for instance she wears high heel boots and dresses very feminine, but she is still very tough. I was very pleased to be able to create a character who is not a pushover and who is a decision maker. It does not matter so much whether she is a woman or not, she is just very good at her job.

In Iceland, we have many strong female role models from our sagas, and I grew up with strong female role models – like my mother’s sisters, who were policewomen. I was named after them both, actually. My mother’s sister was among the two first female officers to work in Iceland, so she told me all the stories of when she was young and had to fight to be respected in the police corps.

And in general, what is the appeal of the TV series Entrapped, which is a crime show – a Scandi noir – now in its third season? What made you want to be part of it?

It is a very popular series in Iceland, the cast is amazing and I really love the main characters, so I have been watching them and followed them and felt I knew them. When I was offered the role I was flattered. There was something about Sonia that made me really want to play her too. She is this strong female cop. I have always wanted to work with Baltasar and I have known him for many years. We both have horses and share our love for horses, so we have always connected through them, but have not yet found a project to work on together. So I was happy that we could finally do it.

You mention the creator behind the series, Icelandic director and producer Baltasar Kormakur. He directed a few episodes. How involved is he during the shooting process? And how inspiring is it to work with him?

He is very inspiring, and it is great to work with him. He did not direct all the episodes, but had wonderful directors take over for him. He is a big presence, but he gives his directors space to work on their own. That shows strength, I think, that he trusts his team. I loved working with director Katrín Björgvinsdóttir, who studied in Denmark and is a name that you should look out for.

Baltasar Kormakur has built a studio outside of Reykjavik. How much did you shoot there and what do you think of this endeavor?

We shot quite a lot of our scenes there and I think it is really amazing. Most of the first two series were shot in the north in Seyðisfjörður. But when we shoot in the studio it is easier, as you can go home to your family after work. We did not spend many months in the north in the dark and in the snow. We spent two weeks in the area up north to shoot the exterior and to establish the location of the series, but they built the police station, my office and everything else in the studio. So it is a huge step for us to finally have this studio in Iceland. Especially since we cannot rely on the weather.

And there are big projects coming to Iceland. They just started shooting the HBO series True Detective here, and with international productions using the studios, we get more money and are able to finance more local productions. It has a domino effect.

You play opposite Olafur Darri Olafson, who plays the lead as the Chief of Police Andri, and who has created an international name for himself. What was your collaboration like?

He is an amazing artist and an amazing human being. He has made a good career for himself and it is wonderful to see when an amazing talent who is also a wonderful human being gets appreciated. Because it is not about becoming a big star for him, it is about the art. It is about the appreciation of art and story telling. That also motivates and pushes me to master my craft even better. Hopefully it will lead me to be able to tell more stories and have an effect on even more people. Don’t we all want to change the world?

The series takes place in rural Iceland and the landscape is very dramatic. What does the Icelandic landscape add to a crime series like Trapped and Entrapped?

It adds a lot. We have such a special landscape and the environment sets the mood. It affects the mood a lot that they are driving through a landscape of moss, lava fields or glaciers. There is such variety to the landscape and it is beautiful but it is also rough. It is raw. So I very much think it affects the mood of the films that we are making. I think it affects us more than we even realize.

You are from Iceland, so the landscape is normal for you, but for foreigners it has a mystique to it. If you were to describe what Iceland is like to someone who has not been there, how would you describe it?

It is magical, mystical, dramatic and powerful. Schizo – or maybe I should find another word for it. It is not the most beautiful word but it is so dramatic. The landscape and the weather shift very rapidly. There is a special force and energy here, especially if you believe in it. It is very spiritual.

We also grew up respecting nature. It is very powerful here and it can be dangerous. It gives and takes. So you respect nature and find something bigger than yourself in nature. Something spiritual. There is something mystical in nature, we believe.

Why do you think it is that the film industry in Iceland is pretty large compared to the country’s size?

Storytelling is in our roots. It is part of our DNA. The sagas. We don’t have the big houses, the big cathedrals, because we have always been a poor nation. The only thing we had was story telling. That was our joy. In every home in Iceland, there is a bookcase. Everyone reads a lot and that is part of our heritage. We tell stories. That is what we have here in Iceland. Film is just another way of telling a story, so it comes naturally to us. It is in our DNA.

What is next for you?

I am currently shooting a series called Backfire, which is an eight episode series and very well written. I play the female lead opposite Ingvar E Sigurðsson. He plays an old handball legend, who has lost everything, moved to Denmark and is just drinking all the time and finds himself in a very bad place in life. His old buddies from the handball team in Iceland make sure he returns and is forced to be the coach for the women’s team. But he is old school and this is not his cop of tea.

My character has also been a professional handball player in Sweden, and I return to Iceland and become part of the team, but it is very difficult for us to work together because we are more or less the same character. So it deals with the gender issues in sports – how men and women are treated differently in the handball association. So it is about equality.