{"id":1066,"date":"2009-10-22T12:09:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-22T19:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/10\/nordic-noir-finally-arrives.html"},"modified":"2009-10-22T12:09:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-22T19:09:00","slug":"nordic-noir-finally-arrives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/10\/nordic-noir-finally-arrives.html","title":{"rendered":"Nordic Noir Finally Arrives"},"content":{"rendered":"

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SOME called 1991 \u2013 a decade and a half after the rumbles in London \u2013 \u201cthe year punk broke.\u201d If so, 2009 is shaping up as the year Nordic Noir finally arrived.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Stieg Larsson \u2013 a Trotskyist sci-fi fan now, inconveniently, dead \u2013 is the movement\u2019s Nirvana, and \u201cThe Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,\u201d a mystery novel with Nordic Noir\u2019s coolest heroine ever, his \u201cNevermind.\u201d The book\u2019s recent sequel, \u201cThe Girl Who Played With Fire,\u201d which continues the adventures of a tattooed hacker and crusading reporter, also kicks ass.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The Exene and John Doe might be <\/span><\/span>Maj Sj\u00f6wall<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/b><\/span> and <\/span><\/span>Per Wahl\u00f6\u00f6<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/b><\/span>, the Swedish husband-and-wife team whose classic \u201860s and \u201870s-era policiers \u2013 \u201cThe Laughing Policeman,\u201d \u201cThe Man Who Went Up in Smoke\u201d \u2013 are being reissued on Black Lizard.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What makes this grim, snowy stuff, with its umlauts and suns hidden for months at a time, so irresistible? You get, in Henning Mankell\u2019s Wallender books, an existentialist detective who resembles \u201cPoint Blank\u201d-era Lee Marvin, dropped into a Bergman movie. (Three of these were just ably <\/span><\/span>adapted<\/span><\/span><\/a> by Masterpiece.) With Norway\u2019s Karin Fossum, penetrating glimpses into the psychology of killers. And with Iceland\u2019s Arnaldur Indridason, storytelling so epic it\u2019s almost medieval.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Modern crime hardboiled fiction first came out of California in the \u201820s and \u201830s, in newish cities where it was easy to fake a past, and where fog and dark alleys kept everything shadowy.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Scandinavia is an old land, overrun for centuries by Vikings swilling mead. But it\u2019s got contemporary problems \u2013 drugs, immigration, global organized crime \u2013 that make these books feel pressing and urgent. That fact that it\u2019s usually overcast doesn\u2019t hurt.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the frontier independence frontier self sufficiency and frontier stoicism, combined with frontier weather, frontier isolation and frontier violence that makes these Nordic books so familiar to a US reader,\u201d <\/span><\/span>Junot Diaz<\/span><\/span><\/a> of \u201cOscar Wao\u201d told me. \u201dAnd yet the extremities of all these tendencies (and the almost alien history of these nations) are what gives them their unique compelling and ultimately terrifying tenor.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If 2009 is the year of Nordic Noir, then, we say it\u2019s about damn time.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Photo credit: <\/span><\/span>chatirygirl<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SOME called 1991 \u2013 a decade and a half after the rumbles in London \u2013 \u201cthe year punk broke.\u201d If so, 2009 is shaping up as the year Nordic Noir finally arrived. Stieg Larsson \u2013 a Trotskyist sci-fi fan now, inconveniently, dead \u2013 is the movement\u2019s Nirvana, and \u201cThe Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,\u201d a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,104,431,337,432,134,175,242,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1066","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-books","7":"category-genre","8":"category-henning-mankell","9":"category-junot-diaz","10":"category-karin-fossum","11":"category-noir","12":"category-nordic","13":"category-raymond-chandler","14":"category-west-coast","15":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}