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Reading Recent Scandinavian Crime Fiction

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Reading Recent Scandinavian Crime Fiction LITERATURE OF CRISIS : READING RECENT SCANDINAVIAN CRIME FICTION A Thesis submitted to University of North Bengal for the Award of Doctor of Philosophy in English By MANDIKA SINHA Supervisor Professor Soumyajit Samanta Department of English University of North Bengal May, 2019 ABSTRACT The five nations of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland make up Scandinavia which lies in the northernmost regions of Europe. In the international sphere, they are put under this umbrella term of Scandinavia as they are neighboring countries who share many similarities. The one common thing they share is that all these nations follow the Scandinavian welfare model also known as the Nordic welfare model. Following the chaos of the post-war years, these nations felt the need to come up with a solution to the low standard of living of their citizens. This led to the establishment of the welfare model which was based on the social and economic well being of the citizens with the government providing universal healthcare, education, childcare, and good retirement benefits. The government promised to look after the well being of the individual based on the tenets of equality. This model has been hailed as a success throughout Europe and the rest of the world as Scandinavian countries continue to top the world happiness chart. They have been celebrated as the most peaceful and affluent nations in the world. Parallel to the image of the success of the Scandinavian welfare model is the global phenomenon of Scandinavian crime fiction which is a term given to crime novels written by authors hailing from these nations. Following the success of Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, recent years has seen the international market flooded with crime novels from Scandinavia which deal with the darkest and most disturbing themes. These books have also been adapted into film versions reaching a wider audience. The BBC series based on Wallander has transferred Scandinavian crime fiction to the small screen as well. These TV series have been well received highlighted in the fan base for crime series like The Killing and The Bridge which has been adapted to suit the taste of the larger international audience. Besides the huge success of these novels in the popular front, these novels have gained attention due to their literary merit and critical acclaim. The sheer number of Scandinavian crime writers who are gaining international acclaim is astounding when compared to the population of these nations. Hence, the question arises as to why are these happiest nations in the world producing some much of crime novels which deal with themes of death and unhappiness? i This thesis hinges on this question and is an attempt to answer it. This study puts selected works of Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum, Arnaldur Indridason, Jussi Alder Olsen and Matti Joensuu under a critical light. In contrast to the image projected by their respective governments, the crime writers from the five nations of Scandinavia exhibit a distinct departure from the world of idyllic happiness to present a world where chaos is a norm. This study traces the historical and cultural influences on this subgenre to reveal the features which give it a distinct Scandinavian flavor. The objective of my study is to study the genre of Scandinavian crime fiction by way of textual analysis and in-depth study of various characters. In doing so, Scandinavian crime fiction discloses various uneasy truths about this real-life utopia where society is experiencing a change. By doing so, it sheds light into this contrasting image to unearth the reasons for the popularity of Scandinavian crime fiction and its intrinsic literary merit. It investigates the imaginary world of Scandinavian crime fiction to chart out the features which make it unique in the larger world of crime fiction. The five authors taken up for study present a fictional world which is facing problems of the real world. Hence, it reveals a response to various crises where the individual and society at large is attempting to negotiate various threats which have engulfed the rest of the world. This thesis explores themes like xenophobia and crime against women to present a counter-narrative giving voice to stories that have remained untold. In doing so this study foregrounds the use of the site of murder as a site for critique. ii PREFACE Scandinavian crime fiction is one of the distinct subgenre of crime fiction. It has been credited with revitalizing the genre of crime fiction as readers and critics alike have shown renewed interest in it. Crime writers from this region have come into prominence with the production of dark stories set against the backdrop of a gloomy landscape. The volume of work from this region is astounding and begs the question as to the reason for their popularity. Critics have traced the answer to this is in the intrinsic literary merit of Scandinavian crime fiction. At a time of a political crisis spurred by the assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister, followed by a breakdown of the utopian welfare state, Scandinavian crime fiction reworked the genre of crime writing to create an innovative sub-genre. The assassination of the prime minister made the Scandinavian writers and artists confront the fact that their friends, neighbours, or even family—people they know to be good, whom they could never conceive of as perpetrators of horrific crimes—could be pursuing dishonest lives without their knowledge. This unique attitude towards crime explains why Nordic crime writers sympathize with the criminal as well as the detective and the victim(s) in their stories. It also explains the shift in focus from the plot to the characters in the crime novel. In the BBC documentary “Nordic Noir: The Story of Scandinavian Crime Fiction,” author Karin Fossum explained that, if a murder had happened in her tiny Norwegian town, she likely would have known the victim, the victim’s family, and/or even the murderer personally. She would know the murderer as a “good person before they committed this one act.” With this consciousness, Fossum, like other Scandinavian crime writers, aims to depict all parties involved in the crime with this same moral complexity. Audiences will find, then, that these stories are not the same “good vs. evil” mysteries one would expect from Sherlock Holmes or an Agatha Christie novel. I have chosen select crime novels of crime novelist from each of the five Scandinavian countries for an in-depth analysis in this thesis. These are novels from the crime series of Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum, Arnaldur Indridason, Matti Joensuu and Jussi Alder-Olsen. These five crime novelists have all received critical acclaim for their crime novels and are representatives of the subgenre. Mostly written from the 1980s onwards to the present times iii they provide a counter-narrative to the state projected image of an idyllic nation. I have therefore tried to analyse their work in the light of socio-political realism to chart the features of this sub-genre. The Scandinavian crime novel deliberately negotiates this space of utopia vs. disenchantment and this can be traced in the works of all the five authors discussed in this study. Chapterization: Chapter one is divided into three subsections. It begins with a brief definition and introduction to crime fiction tracing its historical and social background. The next section places Scandinavian crime fiction in the larger historical trajectory of crime fiction to show how contemporary Scandinavian crime fiction burst into the scene as a response to various crisis. The last section of this chapter introduces the five authors who have been taken up for a detailed study in the rest of the chapters. Henning Mankell from Sweden, Karin Fossum from Norway, Jussi Alder Olsen from Denmark, Arnaldur Indridason from Iceland and Matti Joensuu from Finland are introduced in this section along with their background details. Chapter two foregrounds the socio-political realism that lies at the heart of the Scandinavian crime novel. It charts out various historical events which had a distinct impact on the shaping of the crime novel form this region. By looking into the crucial events of the five countries that make up Scandinavia, this chapter sheds light into how Scandinavian crime fiction is negotiating the change that these previously homogenous societies are facing. It looks into the question of how Scandinavian crime fiction propels the individual into a moment of crisis to shed light into the larger questions that have hitherto remained in the background. In keeping with the theme of realism, chapter three makes a detailed study of the central protagonist. The lead detectives of all the crime series discussed in this study share a distinctive trait which makes them different from their predecessors. They are drawn as human characters who have their own moments of darkness. They are detectives who realize the futility of their quest as they constantly exposed to the dark underbelly of crime. Most detectives of Scandinavian crime fiction are part of the police force which further discloses the workings of the bureaucracy. They are characters who reveal the disillusionment with the policies of the state. Following the detailed study of the central protagonist, chapter four shifts the focus to the figure of the iv antagonist. Like the way the detective is drawn as a human character, the criminal in Scandinavian crime fiction is presented as neither good nor bad but rather as an individual who is a product of the failures of the state. The presence of the antagonist itself reveals the failure of the welfare model which is supposed to look after the well being of the individual. Hence, monster figures are rare in Scandinavian crime fiction.
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