Nordic noir in the UK: the allure of accessible difference

Abstract

This article takes a closer look at the recent success of Nordic noir in the United Kingdom considering especially the ways in which this particular aesthetic or popular cultural form has come to function as a medium for intercultural communication wherein the perceived Nordicness of the genre plays a central role in negotiating social and cultural desires and challenges pertaining mostly to the receiving culture. Nordic noir, I argue, is not merely a fleeting fashion but a publishing and media phenomenon that tells us something about particular patterns of cultural consumption in the first decades of the twenty-first century United Kingdom.