The 13th of january 2017 is a friday. The weather is cold, around -3 degrees celsius (which is about 26 degrees Fahrenheit), but not especially cold for Iceland. Even though she has to go to work the next day, 20-year old Birna Brjánsdóttir decides to go out to have a few drinks with her friends. 

They have a few drinks and play cards up until midnight, when they relocate to the club Hurra. There is a live band playing and Birna is the first person on the dance floor that night.  Her friends leave at 2 AM, but Birna stays. The club closes at 5 AM and Birna is spotted by the CCTV walking home alone, drunk. And then - she's gone. 

This episode is about a murder in one of the safest countries in the world - Iceland. No-one could believe it because these things simply just don't happen there. Until they do. 

The famous star surgeon Paolo Macchiarini was recruited to Karolinska hospital and institute in 2010.  He had successfully performed transplantations of tracheas from dead donors to living patients and his method was going to revolutionize the medical field. But there was a catch.  This is a story of deceit, science fiction and a naked emperor.

Video clips of Christoper Lyles' (left video) and Yesim Cetir's (right video) tracheas, 5:32 into the clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7pYotdvrfY

Book “Macchariniaffären: Sanningar och lögner på Karolinska” by Bosse Lindqvist, published in 2018. 

https://web.archive.org/web/20160126234638/http://www.svt.se/svts/article2970933.svt/binary/Lancet%202011.pdf Article The Lancet 2011

“The Macchiarini case” - a summary in english 

https://forbetterscience.com/2016/11/02/claudias-trachea/

https://news.ki.se/sites/default/files/migrate/investigation_of_cv.pdf

https://forbetterscience.com/2017/11/07/how-trachea-transplanters-tricked-andemariam-beyene-to-sacrifice-himself-for-a-lancet-paper/

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/university-declines-sanction-doctor-who-referred-patient-deadly-transplant#:~:text=The%20doctor%20who%20referred%20a,his%20own%20stem%20cells%2C%20failed.

Chris Lyles operation

http://www.circare.org/info/pm/Lyles%20Transplant%20Final%20Draft%20for%20Release%20Harvard%20Apparatus%20Nov%2023,%202011.mp4

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/health/research/christopher-lyles-got-synthetic-trachea-dies-at-30.html?_r=1

Beyene’s broncoscopy 2 months post surgery

https://fr-fr.facebook.com/svtdokumentar/videos/10153469082990945/

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Juha Valjakkala and Marita Routalammi are involved both romantically and criminally and sustain themselves by stealing cars, committing burglaries and thefts. In the summer of 1988, Sten Nilsson and his son Fredrick set after the two thieves to retrieve their stolen bike and follow them to the village cemetary in  Åmsele.  Juha and Marita will face a different kind of situation and the consequences will follow them until this day. 

In september 1994, the ship M/S Estonia sank while sailing from Tallinn, Estonia to Stockholm, Sweden.  For the approximately 1000 people aboard, it became a race against time when the lower decks and the staircases became death traps in the matter of minutes.

In this episode we follow Sara and Mikael, who managed to escape the ship in the middle of the night in the raging storm. Only a fraction of the 1000 passengers survived but the disaster would affect all of them for the rest of their lives.

What happened to the Estonia, and why? New evidence unearthed just last year (2020) can shed some new light on those questions.

Click here to view the video of the rescue:
Video of the rescuing of Sara, Kent, Morten and Paul


The soundtrack for this episode is the song “LBL” by the band Cospe, available on Spotify.

Försvarsmakten

GP

Socialstyrelsen

LT

Aftonbladet

Svenska YLE

Estoniaferrydisaster.net

Livlinan som brast - De överlevande berättar TV4 2002

Estonia - fyndet som ändrar allt, Discovery plus 2020. 

P3 dokumentär - Estonia 2006

Black metal developed from heavy and extreme metal in the late 80’s and early 90’s and is characterized by distorted instruments, guttural or shrieking vocals, lyrics focused on death and destruction and featuring satanic and/or nordic mythological symbolism. The most defining thing about the scene though were the anti-christian, or anti-religious views. Many bands originated from Scandinavia, and especially from Norway where an almost cult-like music scene developed with bands such as Mayhem, Gorgoroth and Darkthrone. 

A suicide, two murders and arson. The common denominator? Varg Vikernes, stage name "Count Grishnakh" or simply "The count", bassist of the band Mayhem. This was the result of the purification of the black metal scene where everyone - fans and band members alike - had to prove their dedication.

https://www.angelfire.com/vi/ofme0/black.html
http://www.diva-portal.se/smash/get/diva2:1110373/FULLTEXT01.pdf
Wikipedia
P3 radio documentary “The black metal murders” aired in 2017
https://missmephistopheles.com/2019/12/10/euronymous-and-varg-vikernes/
Fampeople.com
Murderpedia.org
Loudwire.com
https://metalinjection.net/shocking-revelations/burzums-varg-vikernes-details-his-french-arrest-in-odd-new-blog-posts
“Lords of chaos:The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground”,  Didrik Søderlind and Michael Moynihan from 1997
Documentary "Pure Fucking Mayhem" from 2008

What is it like to starve? The scandinavian countries are known to offer a high quality of life - but has that always been the case? And what do you do when you can't feed your children?

Swedish people love to brag about our country’s wealth, as you can tell, but moving backwards into our past means facing a literal dumpster fire of a society. Today, I’m going to tell you about a time in Nordic history where the rates for crimes such as robbery, murder and theft were sky-high. A time when people were completely at the mercy of nature’s whims. A time of hunger and death. This is the story about the hunger years 1867-1869.

Instagram: @thelightkeepsusawake
Twitter: @Thelightkeepsu1


Sources for this episode:

https://shfstor.blob.core.windows.net/bullarens-hembygdsf-rening/uploads/files/e0514143-79a6-41df-9349-1ccbe06d649f.pdf

Ett satans år (Hell year) 1977

Barnen från Frostmofjället by Laura Fitinghoff 1907

https://allmogens.se/backstugusittare-smaland/

Slakthistoria.se

Svälten (The famine) by Magnus Västerbro 2018

SR

SVT

https://dellenportalen.se/mord-3/mordet-i-strombacka-1867/

"What do you do when you have a big problem? You cut it up into smaller pieces."

Swedish journalist Kim Wall went missing in august 2017 in Kögebukten, Denmark. The last person to have seen her was the eccentric, Gyro Gearloose-esque inventor she had interviewed the night before aboard his self-constructed submarine. Danish and Swedish police now have to work together in order to find her. 

Healers - or witches? The story of the so called Forest Finns is buried deep in the scandinavian soil, but unearthed here piece by piece. Known for their use of magic and belief in nature mysticism, many of the Forest Finns were seen as a threat to the church, to the country and to the safety of its people. 

17-year old Wilma Andersson disappears from her apartment in Uddevalla, Sweden, in november of 2019. This will lead to one of the largest search operations in the country, where both police led and private search parties set out to find her but a gruesome discovery forces everyone involved to face new perspectives.