If we are to believe a recent UN survey, Norway is the best country in the world to live in. But few people are fonder of killing than Norwegians – at least in the world of books.
The Bridge, The Killing, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, Kurt Wallander, Harry Hole...
The Nordic crime wave has swept the world. Knut Gørvell, director of Norway’s biggest crime festival, describes crime novels as ‘the new salmon’ – referring to the Norwegian largest export industry apart from oil.
What accounts for this fascination with Norwegian and Nordic crime? What is it that attracts readers to these books, films and TV series in particular? Is it the fascination with Nordic gloom and taciturn characters? Is it the winter darkness, the midnight sun or the natural environment, with its vast, desolate landscapes? Or is it the social situation: the lost paradise of a well-ordered, social democratic utopia attacked from within by violence, murder, and horror?
Regardless of the cause, the fact is that this peaceful corner of the world has produced many a ‘murder-loving’ author and reader.
Memorable murder
Jo Nesbø has committed both bloody and spectacular murders in his books, while the ‘grand old man’ of Norwegian crime literature has already been at it for half a lifetime. But none of them beat Unni Lindell, the 61-year-old with more than 150 literary murders on her conscience: ‘In Serpent-Bearer alone there were five murders, in Red Riding Hood there were eight, and my short story collection, My Mother Has a Pair of Scissors in her Back, contains 19 stories and 25 murders,’ Lindell tells us.
Staalesen has about half as many victims on his ‘CV’ as Lindell.
‘In my latest books I’ve tried to cut down the number of murders as much as possible. Even so, I think you have to reckon with two murders a book. I’ve written 24 novels, so that’s 48 murders right there,’ says Staalesen, who can boast what may be crime literature’s quickest murder. ‘It’s already happened before the book begins, in Face to Face: “There was a dead man sitting in my waiting room.” You can’t get a body into a crime novel much quicker than that.’
Some authors are more ‘efficient’ than others: Øystein Wiik, with six Tom Hartmann books and all of 87 murders on his conscience, thinks it’s unfair to calculate on a gross basis.
‘If you divide the number of murders by the number of books published, I think that gives you the fairest assessment of who’s Norway’s bloodiest,’ he says with a smile.
Wiik is responsible for possibly the most memorable murder in Norwegian criminal history: on behalf of the world’s silver foxes, the murderer flays a fur farmer alive before chopping him up and serving the meat to his animals.
‘I’m really proud of the murder of the fur farmer in Requiem,’ Øystein Wiik says drily. ‘Another personal favourite is the opening of White Panther, where a penis pump becomes a pretty painful murder weapon.’
Killing in desperation
Karin Fossum, among the strongest candidates for the title of Norway’s queen of crime alongside Lindell and Anne Holt, is more interested in why murders are committed:
‘Most people kill out of desperation. They’re perfectly ordinary people. I’ve found my niche in a realistic universe and think it’s wisest to write about what you’re familiar with,’ Fossum tells Forlagsliv. no.
Her latest novel, Eclipse (Cappelen Damm Agency), opens with a terrible tragedy: A child falls from a seventh- floor hotel balcony and dies.
‘Child murder has been a recurring theme in several of your books, hasn’t it?’
‘Well, parents kill their children all the time, after all; in fact, I’ve had experience of a child murder like that and was very affected by it. It really got under my skin – I felt and saw the gravity of it in a new way, a way that isn’t described in the newspapers. Murder committed by ordinary people is what it is. After four or five books, I realised that I was writing about murders committed in the heat of the moment, not about premeditated murder – the kind of murder that can strike any of us if things get too intense. We turn into wild animals if we come under enough pressure, you know – we’re primitive souls. Murderers are generally totally out of it at the time of the killing.’
Nesbø is King
Lindell’s 150-plus literary body count is over one-and-a-half times as high as that of Jo Nesbø, whose editor Øyvind Pharo said his score stood at a ‘lousy’ 60 or so a couple of years back.
Jo Nesbø is indisputably the Norwegian author who is most widely read abroad. Norway’s king of crime is a man of many talents: he was a highly promising footballer before injury put a stop to his career, and has worked as a financial analyst and journalist, not to mention being songwriter and vocalist for the popular Norwegian pop band, Di Derre. Nesbø was already well-known in Norway before making his writing debut. That’s why he sent his first crime manuscript to Aschehoug publishers under a pseudonym.
But Jo Nesbø would soon become a global name. When The Leopard went to the top of the British best-seller lists, it was only the second time this had ever happened with a translated novel: the first time was with Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series.
There have been eleven books featuring Nesbø’s crime hero Harry Hole, as well as several stand-alone novels without Hole, and five children’s books featuring Doctor Proctor.
This year, Jo Nesbø’s lead character has been neither Harry Hole nor Doctor Proctor: after some hesitation, he agreed to take part in Hogarth’s major Shakespeare project, in which Shakespeare’s classics are given a makeover.
Jo Nesbø chose Macbeth – a gruesome tragedy, and one of Master Shakespeare’s bloodiest. That’s saying a lot.
Modern Macbeth
Nesbø takes a play from the early 1600s that deals with events that took place five hundred years earlier and transforms it into a black and brutal story of nearly 600 pages set in an era close to our own times.
Jo Nesbø’s Macbeth is a hard-boiled, suspenseful crime novel set in a thoroughly corrupt city where the blood flows and eternal raindrops from the black sky mingle with the blood in the streets. Right at the centre of the plot stand Police Commissioner Macbeth and his beautiful, cynical partner, Lady.
The premise is that in Nesbø’s nameless and corrupt (Scottish) city, the job of police commissioner is more important than that of mayor – and this is precisely the post the power-hungry pair initially set their sights on. But first the virtuous new police commissioner, Duncan, must be got out of the way.
In Shakespeare, Duncan is King of Scotland, while Macbeth is a bold and skilful general who has just driven a Norwegian-Irish army out of the country as the play opens. After that he meets three witches who predict that he will become king and that no man born of woman can kill him.
The witches are led by the queen of witches, Hecate. In Nesbø, Hecate is a man instead of a woman and he doesn’t just rule over three modern witches but all the drug trafficking in the dark, rainy coastal city too. These witches tempt Macbeth into thinking that he can become… not the king, but the police commissioner. And that no man born of woman can kill him, either.
Macbeth’s antagonist, Macduff, is simply called Duff in Nesbø’s version, but his destiny is the same for both writers. And when Macbeth and Duff eventually find themselves face to face, it’s a life and death battle.
‘Nordic Gloom’
Although Jo Nesbø is definitely Norway’s best-selling thriller writer by publication, another author sells most copies if we combine the sales of all the books this person has published: Jørn Lier Horst. The former policeman has enjoyed a fairytale commercial success at home. Not only have his crime novels about detective William Wisting done extremely well, the productive Horst has also written two thriller series for children that sell in enormous numbers. It hasn’t been unusual for Horst to claim ten of the fifteen top spots in the best-seller list for children’s books.
Horst has a few theories about why Scandinavian crime has been such a hit abroad:
‘I think I’ve got a bit closer to solving the mystery after many meetings with foreign crime readers. Nordic crime fiction is often seen as more sophisticated than, say, American thrillers. Readers tell me how they’ve discovered that crime writing can be more than just a story about a crime. The authors have high ambitions and bring their own form of vitality and quality to the genre, ‘Horst says. He adds:
‘Readers are really fascinated by the “Nordic gloom” created by winter darkness, the midnight sun, and vast, desolate landscapes. The taciturn, slightly introverted Nordic crime heroes have their own dark aura; they are lone wolves in a barren, cold part of the world, eternally engaged in an uncompromising quest for truth and clarification. And that whole idea of a lost paradise is crucial to an understanding of Nordic crime: the well-ordered, social democratic society that is being attacked from within by violence, corruption, and murder. Crime fiction has turned out to be an excellent tool for revealing the rot in society, the abuse of power, and greed, and therefore lends itself to social criticism.”
Strong Literary Images
Yet Horst highlights that readers find more varied and less predictable imagery in Nordic crime novels. Although it’s true that economical, sober prose is most in evidence here too, Hørst says that it is increasingly common to read crime novels whose language very clearly has an intrinsic value:
‘Authors like Karin Fossum, Håkan Nesser and Gunnar Staalesen have clearly striven to rise above the steady marathon prose: we find strong literary images, tight dialogue and a sensitivity to language that enriches the literary experience.’
Horst also sees it as a strength that more space is given to the main character’s private life in Nordic crime fiction:
‘You get to know them from an angle other than the purely professional. And of course their private life reflects the way we live together here in the Nordic countries. Some people are divorced, they may be in sole charge of small children, and there’s clearly more equality between men and women than you see in crime literature from other countries. In crime fiction series, readers can follow their heroes through different phases of their life: they age and change, and the heroes are given the kind of credibility and depth that is required of the characters portrayed in other types of fiction.’
Top Spot in Germany
‘The darkness, the isolation, the natural backdrop, and the Nordic psyche are the nearest I’ve got to an explanation,’ says Samuel Bjørk when we ask him for his theory – based on his travels to many of the 30 countries his books have been sold to. At one point, Bjørk’s debut, I’m travelling alone, reached the top spot on Der Spiegel’s best-seller list.
His Swedish agent, Astri Von Arbin Ahlander, launched hotly contested auctions in several countries – in which the largest single advance was 3.6 million kroner for a three-book deal. Since then, Samuel Bjørk has sold close to 1.5 million copies of his two first books worldwide, about half a million of them in Germany.
This autumn will see publication of the third book in his series about Mia Krüger and Holger Munch, The Boy in the Headlights.
‘After the success, there was an awful lot more pressure. Put it like this, I’ve had a few sleepless nights,’ says Frode Sander Øien (aka Samuel Bjørk).
Salomonsson is Number 1
Samuel Bjørk is far from the only Norwegian crime novelist to have a Swedish agent. There’s little doubt which of the Nordic agencies has the finest stable of crime writers: Salomonsson Agency represents established Norwegian stars like Jo Nesbø, Jørn Lier Horst, and Anne Holt, as well as new critics’ favourites like Heine Bakkeid and Ingar Johnsrud.
What’s more, Niclas Salomonsson & Co boasts a whole catalogue of Swedish crime stars, like Lars Kepler, Leif GW Persson, Arne Dahl, Maj Sjöwall and Pär Wahlöö.
‘A lot of foreign publishers comment on the high literary standard of Scandinavian authors and what fantastic plot-builders these writers are. The high quality is the main reason for their success,’ says Tor Jonasson, who has been Salomonsson’s key literary agent for years. ‘Although we work with many of Scandinavia’s foremost thriller writers, the genre the authors are working in isn’t the most important aspect. The quality of their books is the main thing. Salomonsson Agency would be strongly positioned even without the crime novelists.’
To be fair, although Norway, Denmark, and Iceland all eventually caught up, it was the Swedes who got the party started. As early as the 1960s, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö made their debuts, and the duo eventually became a major export. But it was in the 1990s, with Henning Mankell and his Wallander novels, that Nordic crime really made its way into the world. Many others followed, but the most notable cases in the 2000s were Stieg Larsson’s unique posthumous hit, the Millennium Trilogy, and Jo Nesbø’s terrific breakthrough.
All this was reinforced by TV dramas like The Bridge and The Killing. Earlier this year, we had confirmation that the production company FLX is working on the first-ever Swedish original series for Netflix, based on Malin Persson Giolito’s thriller, Quicksand.
Portrayals of Society with a Critical Edge?
Hans H. Skei, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo, highlights the fact that foreign media, especially in Britain, perceive Nordic crime novels as exotic, and as portrayals of society with a critical edge.
‘They have only a vague notion of us as a welfare state. So when cracks start to show in this welfare state, the way they do in crime literature, this is seen as social criticism,’ Skei tells NRK.no.
He refutes the idea that ‘social criticism’ is the correct label for it. He also thinks it’s wrong to treat the Scandinavian countries as a single unit.
‘From an outsider’s point of view, everything probably looks pretty similar here in the north, but all the Scandinavian countries have their own specific cultural situations. I think it’s odd that all the authors are stuck in the same “Nordic Noir” pigeonhole,’ Skei says to NRK.no.
Nordic Noir or not, one author who would be happy to see more social criticism, psychology, and finesse is the well-known Swedish author, Håkan Nesser.
‘A lot of crime authors idolise violence far too much. We don’t need all the gruesome details about all the murders that are committed. It’s totally unnecessary,’ Nesser says.
For 20 years, Håkan Nesser has been a leading figure in Nordic crime. He has written more than 30 books – both crime and ‘regular’ novels – which have been translated into around as many languages and have sold roughly 20 million copies. The 69-year-old Swede is often held up as one of the authors who deserve most credit for the fact that Nordic crime has become such a popular international phenomenon.
Does it Crowd out other Literature?
His feeling is that the crime wave has swept too far inland.
‘If you go into an airport bookshop, nine out of ten titles are crime. The genre has crowded out other literature far too much. At the same time, I feel as if a lot of authors idolise violence for violence’s sake. It’s totally unnecessary to portray all the damage a bullet does to tissue and organs as it ploughs its way through the body. Details like that are irrelevant to the intrigue or suspense in the book.’
Nesser clarifies that his criticism isn’t directed at crime as a genre but only at the over-the-top bloodshed you find in many books.
‘Crime fiction has room for psychologising, social criticism, philosophising and a great deal more. It is a broad, open genre that offers many opportunities, but perhaps it has gotten too popular for its own good? In the early part of this century, the interest in crime exploded, but not all of it is equally good. Too much of what gets written is based on a tired police procedural formula and the authors trying to hide their literary shortcomings by smothering the reader in grotesque details of brutal murders.’
He attributes the strength of the crime wave to the post-modernist period when storytelling wasn’t valued so highly in literature:
‘Writers were prioritising form over storytelling. But people would rather read good stories and that’s what they got from crime fiction,’ Håkan Nesser claims.