I first came across it in the mid-1990s
when in Lund, southern Sweden. My husband was doing things chemical; Lauren and
I came along for the ride. I was gripped by a dark detective show in Swedish,
and I couldn’t speak a word. I switched on the Swedish subtitles, which helped slightly.
I’d no blinking idea what was going on, but I loved it.
Nordic noir is a phenomenon. Stieg
Larsson’s trilogy. The Wallander series. The stories convert effortlessly into
TV and cinema. Borgen, The Killing … So, where did it all start? And why is it
so successful?
The BBC4 documentary had cool interviews
featuring Scandinavian authors describing their work in flawless English. It
waxed lyrical on the landscape, the icy wilderness, the long, dark nights, the
loneliness. How Sweden, in particular, suffered a crisis on the shocking assassination
of prime minister Olof Palme. Is the fact that the murderer has never been
caught the reason of an increasing uncertainly in this nation’s confidence as a
flagship of modern democracy?
What it didn’t say was that much of its
more recent success, in my view, is down to to the strong personalities of the
women, which they combine with deep, yet troubled compassion. Very nordic.
But NN has been around for AGES and in
different guises. Going back a few decades, it’s clear much has been written on
the Scandinavian awkwardness with Nazism versus its own supposed neutrality. Larsson’s
obsession with exposing neo-Nazis is said to have inspired his plot in the
Dragon Tattoo series, which edges back into the past with the Vanger family’s
brutal proclivities.
In a fascinating little blog on the
subject, the author asks soul-searching questions about how Sweden might have
fared if Germany had won. Swedes have begun to examine their country’s murky
relation to the Nazis, with some famous names popping up: Ingvar Kamprad, the
founder of IKEA, was said to have once joined the movement (1942-1945). She
also references Ingmar Bergman and even Queen Silvia herself. http://nordicnoir.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/first-nordic-noir-1905/
So, is the mystery about Nordic noir the guilt
about a shady past lurking beneath the image of the squeaky-clean Utopian
society? Always good fodder for thrillers and mysteries.
Finally, I hit pay dirt, an exhaustive
discussion by Nils Nordberg of the history of Scandinavian crime writing. It’s
an intriguing analysis of Scandinavian crime writing – beginning as early as
1839, predating Edgar Allan Poe. http://www.crimetime.co.uk/mag/index.php/showarticle/2746
I can’t take credit for any of the
following: I’m just glad I found it. I couldn’t possibly condense it all, so here
are some highlights (or lowlights?).
Some of the earliest crime stories in the
world were penned by a Norwegian, one Mauritz Christopher Hansen (1794-1842), a
poor man of letters. At the end of 1839, Hansen published the short novel
Mordet paa Maskinbygger Roolfsen ('The Murder of Engineer Roolfsen’), written a
year and a half before Poe published ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’.
As the 1800s continued, Nordic audiences tended
to sympathise with the villain. The autobiography of master thief Gjest
Baardsen, written in prison, was one of the most popular books in those
mid-19th-century years.
In 1897 came ‘The Adventures of Karl Monk’,
a former Head of the Kristiania (Oslo) CID-turned private investigator. Conan
Doyle was by now immensely popular with the increasing middle class. Norway
itself, although still poor, now had steam engines, electricity, telephones and
bicycles – a busy capital city complete with an underworld. Echoes of Baker
Street?
The 1930s has endless appeal and it was fascinating doing the research for Half Life, a mystery thriller set in Norway in 1936. When the idea first came to me, I did a cheeky mash-up of ‘film noir’ in a Nordic setting.
Casablanca on Ice, where a handful of like-minded individuals, sensing dark
forces on the horizon, stand up for a good cause. If you’ve ever seen Dark
Journey, with Conrad Veidt and Vivien Leigh (1937), you’ll get the idea. http://halflife-pkrjd.blogspot.co.uk/
I’d never heard of the dashing Sven
Elvestad, a prolific and wildly successful journalist. His life would make a
great movie. Jernvognen (1909, ‘The Iron Chariot’), is a murder mystery that anticipates
Christie’s ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ by by 17 years. He published 90
titles. In later years he used a ghost writer to meet demand.
From 1910 to 1925 he had books published in
17 languages, including Hungarian, Spanish and Serbo-Croat. Few were translated
into English, though, but Fænomenet Robert Robertsson (1925, The Case of Robert
Robertson) was published in the USA and received high praise by no less of an
authority than Dashiell Hammett. Cor. It’s £98.91 on Amazon!
His books dealt with characters from all
walks of life, his stories the perfect template for the modern age of speed and
technical innovation. I believe this predates the way modern Nordic noir
authors use the crime novel as a template for exposing the weakness in
21st-century Scandinavia.
Curiously, Elvestad was early to interview one
Adolf Hitler. Despite earlier criticism of war, in his later years Elvestad became
an admirer of Mussolini and Fascism, which might account for the fact he’s
little known in the UK at least.
Øvre Richter Frich (1872-1945) was another
journalist-turned-fiction writer, a common trait, it seems. He specialised in Jules
Verne-style adventures. The hero is Fjeld, a blond (Aryan?) giant, fore-runner
to Bulldog Drummond. Frich became increasingly anti-Semitic, proto-Fascist and
reactionary, although the early work is still rather fun. Allegedly.
By the time we approach WW2, it gets edgy.
Muren (1936, ‘The Wall’), written by journalist Torolf Elster (1911-2006). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torolf_Elster
Set in Germany, it concerns the secret
machinations of the Nazis at a time when most Norwegians were ‘still blind to
the dangers of Nazism’ when ‘Graham Greene had barely started to develop the
political thriller into something more than Ruritanian intrigue’. Muren
introduces psychoanalysis as a method of detection – the secret is buried in a
childhood trauma that the main character, a young pianist, has suffered. How
modern is that!
Scandinavia has a dark history. Could one
argue that only now is it coming to light?
Personally, I’d love to see a Scandinavian
version of Historien om Gottlob (‘The Story of Gottlob’), set after a passenger
ship has been torpedoed. Lifeboat survivors tell stories to pass the time, but
the stories meld together. Its theme is the rise of Fascism, yet it was
published in occupied Norway in 1941. ‘Maybe the censor failed to read between
the lines.’ There’s another movie.
So before WWII, Norwegian crime fiction moved
on from Elvestad romanticism and became more realistic. Nordberg argues that the
‘bloodless plots of the British Golden Age detective story’ didn’t seem
credible in a Norwegian setting, nor did the ‘noir’ American world of gangsters
and hard-boiled detectives. So that’s where Half Life fits in. Not Chandler,
because there’s no cop, but to a world where righteous, ordinary people decide
to take a stand.
Mr Nordic Noir, alias Nils Nordberg, is an education.
Still, I hope our villain in Half Life is
sufficiently dastardly to match up to his standards.
So, Nordic noir is as much part of
Scandinavia as its complex history. Perhaps the earlier books will attract the
attention of translators. A new audience awaits.
By Pamela Kelt
Great article! You may be interested to hear that a new translation of Elvestad/Riverton's most famous book, Jernvognen, has been published by e-book imprint Abandoned Bookshop. Let me know if you'd be interested in taking a look at it.
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