Nordic Noir Research Articles

Fashion in Copenhagen films and TV shows

This article examines the representations of fashion and clothing through the history of Copenhagen films and TV shows. Because a comprehensive study of Copenhagen media does not yet exist, we have reviewed, compiled and analysed many examples of historical and contemporary films and television shows that have a special relationship with the city and its fashion. We examine the ways in which the city is mediated, how various film genres (including social realism, historical costume dramas and contemporary lifestyle dramas) and TV shows (ranging from historical and political dramas to Nordic noir crime series) use the characters’ clothing as signifiers and representations of class, careers, lifestyles and identities. The clothing and fashion in these works reveal many underlying cultural messages, motivations of the characters, as well as important social, cultural and political commentary on the city as a microcosm for society at large. Our methodology is grounded in cultural history, fashion history and media analysis, with a particular attention to the cultural, political and urban transformations in Copenhagen over the decades, and the role fashion plays in the city’s cultural landscape.

North Actually

The article discusses and examines Larsson’s thus far five crime fiction novels to investigate how the formation of identity are connected to the peripheral North—the “real” North of the globally popular crime fiction subgenre Nordic Noir. Certain key concepts will be used to examine the novels: hyperlocalisation, neo-romanticism, anthropomorphism, borders, and history. This article will argue that in Åsa Larsson’s novels, place and its nature, borders and history are crucial in identity formation, and the place with its nature, climate and animals is an active agent in all the narratives.

‘Northern, not Nordic noir’: A Norwegian case study on crime series and strategies for transnational television

This article discusses transnational television and what strategies public service broadcaster NRK Drama has pursued to make the Norwegian crime series Monster: Brutally Far North travel. Monster was the first Norwegian-language television series bought by a major American cable network, Starz. Using the concept of production values, we argue that NRK has made a series that is able to ride the Nordic noir wave of success while also offering a new northern Norwegian version of the western. These two factors made Monster a good fit for the American market. The series is a result of strategic changes within NRK Drama and a commitment to the private and regional film business. Furthermore, NRK views drama productions as key for reaching audiences and has increased their budgets significantly. The analysis encompasses the industry context, media articles, the ‘North’ as location, the series itself and interviews with important stakeholders.

Genres at work: A holistic approach to genres in book publishing

This article presents a holistic approach to the study of genres in book publishing that includes formal aspects of literary texts, marketing strategies and categorisations used by producers, and perspectives on how these labels are perceived by readers and critics, as well as a temporal and spatial understanding of how genres evolve. The empirical point of departure is the recent boom in Nordic Noir, exemplified by the following three Swedish authors successful in the 21st century: Lars Kepler, Jens Lapidus and Camilla Läckberg. The discourses surrounding Nordic Noir and how these authors and their writing relate and get related to it are used as an example of how book-trade genres operate in multiple and complex ways, and how genres produce effects that move back and forth among creators, producers and consumers. It proposes a twofold model, where genres are understood as constituted by all of the relations between these areas together. Through Kepler, Lapidus and Läckberg, the article shows how Nordic Noir has emerged over the years; how it changes with its publishing context; and how the genre’s internal discrepancy between literary content and marketing and reception is a crucial component in understanding Nordic Noir.

Nordic Noir’s Exemplary Microcosm: Promoting Core Design Principles for Group Efficacy

Nobel-winner Elinor Ostrom’s Core Design Principles for group efficacy are used by the Evolution Institute to explain the success of Nordic societies. These principles are offered as an evolutionary foundation for a new social paradigm at all levels, from the local to the global. This article argues that Scandinavian internalization of these universals inform the progenitor of the Nordic noir crime genre, the Martin Beck decalogy The Story of a Crime (1965–1975). The popular genre became a discourse medium for social adaptation, and Beck’s exemplary microcosm can serve as an ideal for those who seek to emulate Nordic success.

The Nordic noir brand

Editing the volume Nordic Noir, Adaptation, Appropriation with Linda Badley and Jaakko Seppälä made evident historical changes in the role of adaptation in Nordic audio-visual culture. An earlier generation of auteurs such as Aki Kaurismäki used adaptation to align themselves with aesthetic and philosophical bodies of texts, what we might call ‘networks of similarity’, following Luis M. García Mainar. In the rise of Nordic noir since the millennium, Nordic cinema and television’s networks of similarity change. The auteurs used adaptation to establish modernist originality of vision. In the current moment, this quality has diminished, and adaptation increasingly figures in broader, more densely cross-referential networks of similarity, of which Nordic noir is arguably an instantiation. These are defined by aesthetic and sociopolitical associations, more so than originality. These associations figure in practitioners’ and textual consumers’ use of response to and replication of the noir texts and their networks in a variety of media. This activity can be understood as a type of branding that aligns with attempts at national and regional branding.

Concentrated Noir: Reinforcing and transgressing genre boundaries in Echo

Nordic Noir has emerged as an increasingly codified set of aesthetic, political and philosophical televisual elements. Echo compresses these elements, subjecting them to the crucible of short film. This article investigates the dramatic potential of stripping back cross-genre tropes to reveal the defining characteristics of a newly emergent format.

New in Translation: Icelandic Literature in Translation: New and Noteworthy Titles for 2021

Notebook 9 new in translation Icelandic Literature in Translation New and Noteworthy Titles for 2021 by Björn Halldórsson SINCE THE MILLENNIUM, the availability of English translations of Icelandic literature has grown exponentially. It is impossible to dismiss the effect of Nordic Noir in this development, as the increase in Icelandic authors available in English seems to directly correspond to the postmillennium rise of the Icelandic crime novel—which was considered a fringe element on the domestic literary scene before 2000. Around 2010, however, one can see a burgeoning overseas interest in Icelandic writers on the more eclectic end of the spectrum, sought out by smaller publishers focused on works in translations (e.g., Open Letter, Deep Vellum, and the “littlebig ” Amazon Crossing). Through these new avenues, Icelandic writers such as Bragi Ólafsson, Kristín Ómarsdóttir, Oddný Eir, and Ófeigur Sigurðsson have found their way into the hands of anglophone readers who respond to their work in part because it does not fit so snuggly into the genre-driven Western publishing world. Below you will find a handful of such titles to be published in 2021. Andri Snær Magnason On Time and Water (Tíminn og vatnið) Trans. Lytton Smith Open Letter Books / Serpent’s Tail SET TO BECOME the “big Icelandic read” on the international market in 2021, Andri Snær Magnason’s On Time and Water continues the legacy of his previous work: his essaycollection -turned-documentary Dreamland and his cli-fichildren ’s-book-turned-play The Story of the Blue Planet. On Time and Water draws its title from a poem by Steinn Steinarr, one of Iceland’s foremost twentieth-century modernist poets. In the book, Magnason tries to make the reader arrive at an understanding of the imminence of the threats that humankind faces in the era of climate change—an era we have already entered. Even so, he is acutely aware of the challenges of instilling new perspectives as well as the average person’s tendency to dig in their heels when asked to reconsider their way of life. To this end, he shows remarkable restraint, not swamping his readers in numbers or ominous comparisons but instead taking the time to try a variety of approaches—historical, fantastical, and personal—in the hope of getting them to reconsider their ideas of time and the future in terms of climate change. Sjón Red Milk (Korngult hár, grá augu) Trans. Victoria Cribb Sceptre / Farrar, Straus & Giroux WITH CONTROLLED LYRICISM, Sjón purports to use a mere 120 pages to render an entire lifetime—albeit one that is cut short. It would be wrong to call his subject, Gunnar Kampen , an antihero, but as the founder of a fledgling Nazi party in the recently urbanized Reykjavík of the postwar years, he is certainly a man set against society and his own time. In a series of glimpses and snapshots, we pass through his life as a child and a young man and are witness to his gradual drift toward national-socialism and the creeds of racial superiority . At one point, the book turns into an epistolary novel, as we read through Gunnar’s personal letters to his friends and family as well as such influential postwar Nazi figures as Madame Devi-Mukherji and Göran Assar Oredsson, the founder of the Swedish National Socialist Party. In these letters we can see the duality of Gunnar’s nature: a loving brother and son as well as a staunch advocate of an abhorrent political movement. His writings in the service of his cause are at times reminiscent of the sort of enthused manifestos and misinformation found in today’s alt-right message boards, where young men in search of purpose and validation are at risk of being lost forever. 6 WLT SUMMER 2021 Auður Jónsdóttir Quake (Stóri Skjálfti) Trans. Meg Matich Dottir Press READING QUAKE, by Auður Jónsd óttir, almost feels like sitting through an extended panic attack. The protagonist , a young mother, appears to the reader as the quintessential tabula rasa. Lacking name, purpose, and language, she suddenly returns to consciousness in the book’s...

Climate Change in Literature, Television and Film from Norway

Environmental and climatic change has become a frequent motif in contemporary Norwegian literature, television and film, and Norway has the worldwide first organization of writers committed to climate action (The Norwegian Writers’ Climate Campaign, founded in 2013). In this article, we argue that Norwegian climate change fiction and related works draw on elements that relate to specific national and/or Nordic cultural, societal and historical aspects, and that these elements give these works their distinct identity. We focus on four such aspects: (1) references to Norwegian petroculture (since the Norwegian economy is largely based on the export of fossil fuels); (2) an (imagined) intimate connection between Norwegianness and nature, and thus of what often is seen as a typical element of Norwegian national identity; (3) notions of “Nordicity”, and (4) an atmosphere of gloom and melancholia in many of the works (which often has been ascribed to Nordic landscapes, and usually is characteristic for the genre of Nordic noir).

Geopolitical Television Drama Within and Beyond the Nordic Region

Abstract This article presents a framework for thinking about the intersections between geopolitics and Northern European television drama by examining the contemporary Nordic Noir genre of crime drama. Nordic Noir features not only the double plot that combines sociopolitical critique with crime drama, but also a third “gaze” that engages aesthetics and territorial features that further individual series’ geopolitical critique. Nordic Noir has become especially attuned to contemporary geopolitical issues specific to its setting (climate change, East-West rivalries, etc.), through which viewers engage with region-specific geopolitical codes and visions. However, what happens when Nordic geopolitical television drama series are exported and transculturally adapted to different geopolitical and cultural realities? By examining the Southeast Asian localisation of The Bridge (Viu/HBO Asia, 2018–) that transforms Nordic Noir into “tropical noir”, this article critically reflects on the geopolitical power and societal engagement of the Nordic Noir template both within and beyond the Nordic region.

The Geopolitics of Nordic Noir: Representations of current threats and vigilantes in contemporary Danish and Norwegian serial drama

AbstractThe “golden age” of Scandinavian television has often been associated with Nordic Noir crime dramas, yet many of the acclaimed serials also engage with geopolitical themes such as migration, cross-border crime, military conflicts, and global terrorism. In this article, we examine the ways in which Nordic Noir contributes to discourses on such topics. We look specifically at the dramasOkkupert[Occupied] (NRK, 2015–),Ørnen[The Eagle] (DR, 2004–2006),Nobel – fred for enhver pris[Nobel – Peace at any Cost] (NRK, 2016), andKriger[Warrior] (Netflix, 2018–) as they explore potential threats to Scandinavian society and the Nordic welfare state through the distinct figure of the vigilante veteran. Returning soldiers, as we argue, are particularly productive of geopolitics because they are shown to be adept (even well suited) to dealing with the geopolitical uncanny. They, in fact, problematise the positive Scandinavian self-image. While Scandinavian society, as can be inferred from the dramas, has become hypocritical and complacent owing to a very high standard of living, the veterans are the only people adept at responding to threats and crises.

Nordic Noir from Within and Beyond: Negotiating geopolitical regionalisation through SVoD crime narratives

Abstract In this article, I show how a vision for the Nordic region exists as a banal Nordism, based on years of content exchange, Nordic co-production models, and public funding opportunities. I document how new commercial players have been able to gain a very large market share in only a few years, significantly disrupting the reach of public service broadcasters in the Nordic region. The three largest contemporary commercial players on the Nordic market – Viaplay, HBO, and Netflix – have been able to, in very different ways, tap into the ideology of banal Nordism and the geopolitical unity of the Nordic region, and they have done so by producing and acquiring content that has deep associations with one of the Nordic region's main international brands: Scandinavian crime fiction and Nordic Noir.

Landscape, Geopolitics, and National Identity in the Norwegian Thrillers Occupied and Nobel

Abstract Focusing on the use of landscape in the Norwegian series Occupied (2015–2020) and Nobel (2016), this article examines the ways in which cityscapes and panoramas of the natural environment are employed as affective, as well as aesthetic tools for storytelling within a geopolitically inflected framework. Drawing on literature from popular geopolitics, geocriticism, and visual politics, my analysis interrogates the ways in which geopolitical codes and visions manifest via televisual fiction, reflecting a variety of insecurities associated with Norway's current position in world affairs, as well as contemporary challenges to Norwegian national identity. This article also discusses how these two series have adapted key geovisual elements of the what I deem the “near Nordic Noir” style to focus more explicitly on geopolitical questions, linking Occupied and Nobel to other geopolitically inflected series from Nordic Europe.

Anthropocene slow TV: Temporalities of extinction in Svalbard

In Norway, slow television, an internationally popular format that approaches Nordic noir in export value, has been primarily concerned with entertaining viewers by showing Norwegians (and interested outsiders) their own country. The January 2020 NRK release of its slow TV programmeSvalbard minutt for minutt(Svalbard Minute by Minute)focuses on this Arctic region, juxtaposing striking images of its native fauna with the remarkably well-preserved ecological crime scenes of its Anthropocene pasts.Svalbard Minute by Minuteconstitutes a daring mash-up of nation-branding nature programme and extractivist history documentary, via both non-fiction modes of place and process views, in which the two strains reinforce one another to pose difficult questions about the future for viewing audiences.

Transformations of the Evil Forest in the Swedish Television Series Jordskott: An ecocritical reading

Abstract This article is an ecocritical reading of the Swedish television series Jordskott. I discuss the effects in the series produced by the combination of the Nordic Noir's style and narrative techniques with elements of other genres, especially Gothic horror. I argue that through the contemporary reworking of the centuries-old Nordic mythology, Jordskott demonstrates how the aggressive powers of nature in Gothic narratives can no more be conventionally explained by referring to the pagan, pre-Christian beliefs, but need to be reconceived in light of the relentless environmental devastation brought about by humankind. The link unveiled between natural ecology and cultural mythology allows the series to surpass the limitations of the regionally informed folkloric story and to evolve into an ecological cautionary tale of global significance.

From Nordic Noir to Belgian Bright?

Shifts in audio-visual production, distribution and consumption have increased pressure on broadcasters as main financiers of domestic content in Europe. However, within the context of internationalisation and digitalisation, there are also new opportunities for the export of European content. By taking a close look at the evolution and increasing popularity of Flemish TV drama, this article identifies key explanatory factors for the export of content produced in a small media market. The analysis also discusses the extent to which the rise in exports may contribute to the increased sustainability of a small and fragile, yet vibrant audio-visual industry.

Through Scandinavia, Darkly: A Criminological Critique of Nordic Noir

AbstractNordic noir is a popular crime genre associated with a region (Scandinavia), a narrative style (unpretentious/socially critical) and a particular aesthetic look (dark/foreboding). Renowned for its psychologically complex characterization and gloomy Mise-en-scène, and spanning best-selling crime fiction, film, and globally successful television drama, Nordic noir has mushroomed from regional niche market to international phenomenon in little more than a decade. A review of both popular and academic accounts of the genre suggest that much of Nordic noir’s appeal comes from its supposed ‘gritty’ or ‘realist’ account of Scandinavian society. This paper, however, adopts a different perspective. Drawing on cultural criminology, ultra-realism and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, we argue that, rather than accurately reflecting the complex social and political problems currently confronting late modern Scandinavian welfare societies, Nordic noir has lost its grip on realism and any meaningful association with actual/established Scandinavian values. Instead, Nordic noir is now functioning as a displacement narrative, a form of cultural expression that allows artists, producers and their audiences to push the region’s social problems outside the realm even of the Imaginary.

The curated representation of Saga Norén: Interweaving narratives of fashion and interiors

Abstract Nordic Noir dramas have dominated the landscape of contemporary television, transforming the crime genre beyond the traditional English-speaking productions whilst forging a path for female protagonists to dominate. This article seeks to analyse the relationship between the narrative, fashion and interiors through the main female protagonist Saga Noren (Sofia Helin) in , the Danish-Swedish production of the Nordic Noir drama.

Adapting social change: Swedish crime fiction as a medium for system correction

Abstract Nordic Noir’s progenitor The Man on the Balcony from 1967 critiques social democracy from a Marxist viewpoint. The novel’s 1993 film adaptation, however, reuses the same crime to challenge neo-liberal globalization. From a story perspective, this is a drastic deviation from ideological fidelity. But a systems perspective shows that the adaptation adheres to functional fidelity for crime fiction as a medium for social discourse. By examining how the two works engage their respective eras’ contemporary issues, we see how Nordic Noir has become a mediator of error correction for Sweden as a social system. Adaptations are therefore expected to show greater fidelity to format than to content, which a systems approach can help facilitate. This perspective also suggests that our nation states – as we lose shared arenas for cultural discourse – will adapt less effectively to changes because it becomes harder to agree on what is real and what is fake.

Modern Mythologies, Crime Narratives, and Developmental Contradictions: Nordic Noir in the “Transylvanian Alps”

The Nordic Noir wave created a connection between a) a distinct poetics of space, atmosphere and couleur locale, b) major lines of expansion of cultural tourism and of the experience and hospitality industries connected to it, and, last but not least, c) the social problems derived from long-term developmental a-symmetries. On the basis of the transposition of a Norwegian crime series format in a Carpathian-Transylvanian setting, the essay evaluates the measure to which the transfer of Nordic Noir visual aesthetics and poetics of plot could also determine the translation of the agenda of tourism entanglement and social responsibility of Scandinavian crime genre series.