“As a Norwegian, [Sense and Sensibility] Felt Like I Was Dropped Down In Your National Football Team, Wearing The… What’s It Called? The Jersey”: Herbert Nordrum’s Having A Literary Autumn

With his autumn double bill of book adaptations, Austen’s romance classic and Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil, the 39-year-old hits the international mainstream and finds himself in his most gruelling role to date. 

“Sorry,” Herbert Nordrum chuckles, his tone somewhere between polite and apologetic. “I usually need a script to speak great English.” Such a caveat is unnecessary – he’s doing a better job of expressing himself than most native speakers. But perhaps unsurprising. Anyone acquainted with the 39-year-old Norwegian – from afar or personally – will know him to be a sincere and quietly beguiling man. Thoughtful, too. The type of actor who finds a distinctive shard of himself within the stained-glassed complexion of each of his roles.

He’s dialling in today from a cabin a little while north of his home city, Oslo, enjoying a “very Norwegian holiday” with his wife and two young children, teaching them how to fish. It’s a well-earned summer adjournment in an increasingly hectic schedule. Nordrum is on the cusp of transferring his stock from rising star – a badge predominantly earned thanks to his endearing, effervescent supporting turn in Joachim Trier’s 2021 Oscar-nominated rom-com The Worst Person in the World – to a leading man known and respected in households around his home continent, and beyond. 

The coming autumn will see Nordrum in two disparate but similarly significant cinematic releases. One British, one Norwegian, both adaptations of classic books. In late September, he appears as the sullen but lovable Colonel Brandon in Georgia Oakley’s interpretation of Jane Austen’s seminal Sense and Sensibility, nestled within a crop of future British acting greats, including Daisy Edgar-Jones, George McKay, Esmé Creed-Miles, and Frank Dillane. Around a month later, as October nears completion, he’ll lead Growth of the Soil ( Markens Grøde), a take from Scandic auteur Hans Petter Moland (In Order of Disappearance, Cold Pursuit) on Knut Hamsun’s 1920 Nobel Prize-winning novel of the same name. The book is a mainstay in the Norwegian literary canon. Put neatly: “Hamsun is kind of our Jane Austen,” Nordrum reasons. 

Similarly cherished in the country is Moland, and this latest effort enjoys critical buzz aplenty when we sit down in July. At the time, it’s already been snapped up by the Toronto Film Festival for its world premiere (a fizz that is translated into acclaim when it eventually meets critics at the showcase’s 51st edition in September). A breathtaking yet subtle epic, painfully real and upliftingly romantic, the story follows Isak Sellanraa (Nordrum) and his wife Inger (played by the “so sharp, so intelligent, very analytical” Asta Kamma August), as they survive and thrive in the unforgiving yet beautiful wilderness of northern Norway.

Filmed in two halves due to seasonal dependencies (the break in shooting between winter and milder weather sequences allowing Nordrum to travel to England for Sense and Sensibility), Growth of the Soil clocks in at over two and a half hours in length. As Nordrum describes, it is the most gruelling and rewarding role he has ever undertaken.  

Made by a compact production team, shot on a budget of not much more than 50 million Norwegian kroner (roughly 4 million Great British pounds), proceedings were devoid of luxury. “It was insane,” Nordrum exclaims. “We were at the most crazy locations, carrying up all the equipment. There were no vans, no cars. If you were lucky, someone had chopped down something you could sit on. Hans wanted to shoot in the worst places you can possibly shoot a film. It was one of those experiences where you’re all in it together. It was a small crew, but filmed very epically.”

 Physically laborious and emotionally taxing, it was a slog of a shoot that tested the limits of Nordrum’s comfort zone. But with risk and adversity comes greater payoff. The fine-tuned stamina and quiet dominance of his performance illustrate a previously unexplored thespianic range. The filming process also allowed room for ample personal growth. “I got to do things that I’ve never done before,” he recalls. “I’m quite a city boy, so I got to learn a lot of stuff: growing food, chopping up my own firewood. I had to make my hands into working hands. It was a steep learning curve. I wasn’t much of a man before, and now I feel I can kind of take care of my life, if I need to.”

The stoic and resilient Sellanraa is a far cry from many of the lighter characters that Nordrum inhabited in the 2010s. After studying at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and then chiselling his acting chops on stage, early recurring roles came in Norwegian TV shows, including cult sitcom Match and breezy drama Young and Promising. 

Then, in 2021, a big-screen breakout. “It was the joy of my life,” Nordrum recounts about his role as the charming and insouciant Eivind, the younger and cooler of the two romantic interests of The Worst Person in the World’s heroine Julie (magnificently played by Nordrum’s long-time university friend Renate Reinsve). Fresh, inventive and emotionally intelligent, it proved a dazzling, funny, melancholic triumph, and one of the definitive romantic comedies in recent memory. “I feel so lucky to have been a part of it. I would never be in this position now [doing] Sense and Sensibility, without Joachim. He opened a lot of doors for me.”

“One of the world’s best directors right now”, Trier, who has gone on to deliver Norway its first-ever Oscar win in the Best International Feature Film category for the equally wonderful Sentimental Value, holds a rare compassion in his work akin to the great modern humanists like Jim Jarmusch and Mike Leigh. “He’s hyper-intelligent,” Nordrum mediates. “He could be a great psychologist, because he’s a fantastic listener. He understands you better than you understand yourself. He loves people, but he also loves cinema.” Does Nordrum have an inkling of where Trier might veer next? He remains tight-lipped, if so. “I can't say,” he grins coyly.  “I have so much respect for him and his process with things. He’sdefinitely going to make more films, but I don't want to say too much.”

After the breakout moment of TWPITW, 2023 saw Nordrum starring alongside Julia Garner in the harrowing Australian thriller The Royal Hotel, and working closer to home on Swedish bitingly funny satirical drama, The Hypnosis. "You've seen it?” Nordrum says in a shock so viscerally joyful it could only be natural. “Ah, dude, that means the world to me.” It’s well worth a watch too, tragically underseen and dazzlingly chaotic – it also co-stars Nordrum’s Growth of the Soul colleague August. 

After another strong showing in comedic 2025 sperm-donation think-piece Solomamma, this year’s two projects landed on Nordrum’s plate. And Sense and Sensibility is undoubtedly his most substantial meal to date – at least in terms of visibility. Georgia Oakley’s second film – following her BAFTA-nominated 2022 queer drama Blue Jean – will be eyeing up a comprehensive box office return, and will hope to make its mark at the quickly ensuing awards season. For Nordrum, it begets commitments stretching far beyond his work in front of the camera. Press campaigns, for instance, are something he has had prior experience with, but nowhere near to Sense and Sensibility’s magnitude. “It’s a learning curve,” he admits.“I get nervous about saying something wrong, about being perceived in a different way than I want to be. But I do also love it because it’s a part of getting people to watch your film, you know? And you get to talk about how much you love the people you’ve made it with. That’s the best part.”

It’s clear he means it, too. “Georgia Oakley is just a perfect director,” he extols. “She has a way of directing [in which] she doesn’t need to say much. I felt her intuition was always right: where she wanted to put the camera, where she wanted me to stand, how she wanted me in the scene, how she wanted the scene to unfold. It was always exactly the right way.” 

From an outside view, jumping from a modest indie like Blue Jean into a major league adaptation of one of England’s most beloved novels is quite a leap. But Oakley handles the landing with aplomb and sophistication – “[it’s] so cinematic but at the same time grounded and authentic” – with the help of a young cast overflowing with talent and potential. “As a Norwegian, it felt like I was dropped down in your national football team, wearing the… what’s it called?” Nordrum searches. The jersey? “Yeah, your jersey. And I’m slightly confused, because everyone is passing me the ball and letting me play.”

There’s effortless chemistry between the film’s key players. MacKay’s Edward Ferrars and Edgar-Jones’s Elinor Dashwood feel like soulmates from the moment they first make eye contact. The latter’s bond with her siblings, the saccharine youngest Margaret (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) and troublesome middle-child Marianne (Creed-Miles) is seamlessly sisterly. 

Nordrum’s taciturn Colonel with a sorrowful past spends much of his screen time with Marianne. “She’s a very intuitive actor, and very present,” he praises. “She knows exactly what the scene needs and what she needs and how to get to where she wants to go. She’s very inspiring to work with.” 

Brandon’s rival in the courtship of Marianne – Frank Dillane’s younger, more charming Willoughby – is one of the film’s most humorous and emotionally impactful facets. Nordrum’s interpretation of his character is that he is “completely in love with her at first sight. Like, boom, he’s gone, completely fallen.” And the actor used his real-life experience to relate to his on-screen counterpart. “The few times that I’ve fallen in love, I get very shy because I get worried and I don’t know how to act. I don’t know what to say. I probably stumble over my words, and it comes out wrong. [Brandon] felt very true to my personal experience.”

The anecdote is emblematic of the honest, humble and gently humorous Nordrum. Each of his characters feels close to the man depicting them, yet refined to their respective intricacies. He’s serious about his craft, unbothered by the bright lights or fame, ploughing forward with an unyielding desire to work, and to learn from whoever he meets – fictional or otherwise – along the road. “I’m not in a position where I can pick and choose [jobs], but I can direct my focus towards the people and directors I want to work with,” he says warmly before heading out for another spot of fishing. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s a big role or a small role, because every character is really interesting, right? Every person is really interesting when you get to know them.”

Sense and Sensibility is in cinemas now (UK) and from 16th October (US). Growth of the Soil is in cinemas in Scandinavia from 30th October.