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For thousands of years, moose have crossed rivers, navigated thawing forests and quietly followed ancient trails toward their summer pastures in northern Sweden.
A 24-hour live stream gave millions of viewers front-row seats to watch every unhurried step of the journey.
But on Sunday night, the seventh season of Den stora älgvandringen (The Great Moose Migration, also translated as The Great Elk Trek) ended, after nearly three weeks of uninterrupted footage streamed via SVT Play, the platform of Sweden’s national broadcaster.
Since its debut in 2019, the series has grown from a niche public broadcasting experiment into a cultural phenomenon, attracting close to 9 million viewers in 2024.
“We are very satisfied,” said Johan Erhag, SVT’s project manager for the series. He confirmed the team has captured 478 hours of footage, with 26 remote cameras, seven night-vision ones and a drone streaming uninterrupted footage since its launch on 15 April.
The last showing of the season concluded at 10pm local time on Sunday, with cameras capturing 70 moose (also known as European elk) making the spring crossing through Sweden’s Ångerman River – about 180 miles north of Stockholm.
The Great Moose Migration is part of a growing fascination with “slow TV” – a genre that took off in 2009 when Norway’s NRK aired a real-time, seven-hour train ride from Bergen to Oslo.
The concept has since found cult status across Europe, with broadcasts featuring 12-hour knitting marathons, a 134-hour sea voyage, and even a crackling fireplace stream that topped Netflix’s UK charts on Boxing Day.
Cashing in on its popularity, SVT has even been sending out push notifications when the first moose appears, while a dedicated Facebook group with more than 76,000 members now shares sightings, screenshots and speculation about the next appearance.
Though official viewing figures for this year’s season have yet to be released, SVT has already confirmed the moose will return next spring for an eighth edition.
