Nordic Noir is Having a Moment

The image is taken from above. Snow is on the ground, punctuated by tall pines and a single dark road, on which travels a lonely car—a police detective, hastening to some remote site for an investigation.

I love that shot.

It’s the film-and-television version of Nordic noir, a genre that has recently become my favorite of all the mystery and detective series I read and watch. The term was coined just over ten years ago in the Scandinavian department of the University College of London, but brooding Nordic dramas have been around a lot longer than that. They share a dark aesthetic, slow-but-compelling pacing, cerebral protagonists, generally a social commentary, and multi-layered storylines.

There are a lot of good reasons to love the genre. It opens a door to experiencing societies about which many of us are curious—how the Scandinavian balance of socialism and capitalism works from the inside, showing people engaging with its advantages and disadvantages. It reflects another envied facet of Scandinavian life, that of relative gender equality (while Danes or Norwegians will tell you they have a long way still to go, these countries are by far the most progressive in the world in this regard), which commands a lot of respect—at least from me and, I suspect, many other women readers. And there is something strangely compelling about the geography of these stories; even cities like Helsinki and Oslo are less crowded than their counterparts in other parts of the world, and the vista of forests and fjords, combined with the drama of winter darkness and summer sunshine, holds a major fascination.

And then there are the people. American mystery/detective fiction is moving slowly away from requiring its protagonist to have pure motives and a pleasing personality (and English and French mystery/detective fiction never particularly had those requirements), Scandi goes all-out on the detective as always fallible, sometimes irritating, often struggling with some sort of inner darkness. And this is what I love: things don’t all come right in the end for this protagonist. The story may be over, but the character’s life and struggles will continue.

One of the reasons people enjoy reading mysteries is the sense of justice they impart. Real life is unfair, but in these stories evil is punished and the just are vindicated, if not completely healed. I think Nordic noir provides a similar feeling, but it’s contextualized; it’s not the norm, and the multi-layered stories don’t all have neat and tidy endings. The story will go on.

And, seriously—who can resist stories written or populated by people with names like Trygve, Odd, Knirke, Mads, and Silje?

I can’t.