Shubhabrata Dutta
Created by Swedish crime author Camilla Läckberg, ‘The Glass Dome’ is a crime thriller miniseries that centers on criminologist Lejla Ness and a personal tragedy that brings her back to her childhood home of Granas, a village in Sweden. She shares a dark past with the place since she was abducted as a kid and held inside a glass box for many weeks. She somehow escaped, but till now, details about the case are murky, and she herself does not remember who her kidnapper was.
Unfortunately, her trauma returns when another girl in the village goes missing, and it seems like the same perpetrator has also returned. This time, however, Lejla is unwilling to tap out, doing all in her power to find the girl and bring the criminal to justice. Originally titled ‘Glaskupan,’ the psychological drama show incorporates dark atmospheres and settings to showcase the underlying suspense and fear in the narrative, highlighted through the use of diverse locations and eerie backdrops.
The Glass Dome Filming Locations
The production team resorted to several locations to film ‘The Glass Dome,’ namely Sweden and California. Principal photography for the miniseries seemingly began in January 2024 and continued for several months before wrapping up by the end of May of the same year. Being a Swedish show, the story has been captured almost entirely on Swedish soil, with only specific scenes filmed in foreign land. The extensive shooting schedule enabled the team to put various landscapes and cityscapes to good use, especially in the Nordic nation, taking the cast along on a gorgeous trip.
Älvdalen, Sweden
Älvdalen, located in the northeastern part of the country, became a primary filming region for ‘The Glass Dome.’ Owing to the spooky vibe of the narrative that is inherently human, locations were meant to add to the settings the characters find themselves in. Älvdalen, with its fair share of forests and woods, provided the requisite chill to the atmosphere. Isolation is one of the show’s core aspects, which has been highlighted using secluded backdrops of the municipality.
On the other hand, the architecture, which serves as a reminder of the Old Norse times, provides an attractive blend of history and contemporary. This includes the areas around Salong 106, a hair salon located at Dalgatan 106, 796 30, whose name was changed to “Klippiga Bergen” for the show. The urban space around the Morin’s, a bakery at Dalgatan 98, 796 30, became both a filming spot and a place to relax for the entire cast and crew. The nearby houses and buildings have been used to capture scenes having a contemporary setting.
Stockholm, Sweden
The 13th-century old town of Gamla Stan doubled for the urban scenes in the show. It is the core town of Stockholm and comprises cobblestone streets, colorful architecture, and semi-modern environments. The crew utilized all these to add a unique charm while maintaining the vibe of the overall narrative. Gamla Stan is home to the Stockholm Palace and the Tessin Palace, among other hotspots of Swedish nobility, making it culturally significant. While the architecture itself suffices for the representation of history, the modern-day shops and cafes become the face of modern Sweden in the show.
Various kinds of camera setups were required to film certain shots. Rigs were also built to lens wide shots and establishment shots to provide a sense of passing time as well as on cars to follow characters. Thus, a lot of hard work was required to transfer the filming equipment from one location to another, all of which the crew, nevertheless, had a great time doing.
The production crew settled on a studio in Stockholm to film most indoor scenes. The city offers many studios with large spaces, modern equipment, and state-of-the-art facilities, one of which they accessed to recreate visually stunning sets. This helped emphasize the atmosphere of tension in the narrative. Care was taken to ensure that the sets carried the same tone as the outdoor scenes and thanks to the production design team, it has worked like magic.
It needs to be pointed out that the now-inactive Gamla Filmstaden in Råsunda, a Stockholm suburb, served as Sweden’s own Hollywood from the 1920s to the 1970s, considered the golden age of Swedish movies. The studio is where legends like Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo made their debut. The legacy the site carries adds to Stockholm’s significance as a world-class filming location, a reputation the city has maintained with its top-tier production houses.
San Diego, California
The sole location for which the cast and crew had to move out of their country is the Geisel Library in San Diego, California, which was used to capture the introductory scenes of Lejla Ness. Located at 9701 Hopkins Drive in La Jolla, the library is a visually stunning piece of futuristic architecture that carries a geometric/futuristic form. It might have been opted to show the shift in time as we follow Ness from where she is to where she ends up, both physically and mentally.
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