{"id":26668,"date":"2025-02-17T10:00:41","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T10:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/?p=26668"},"modified":"2025-02-18T11:03:45","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T11:03:45","slug":"five-books-to-read-if-you-love-scandinavian-noir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/arts-social-sciences\/five-books-to-read-if-you-love-scandinavian-noir\/","title":{"rendered":"Five books to read if you love Nordic\/Scandinavian noir"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know the drill: In a cold and dark place, perhaps at the frontier of human civilisation, a murder has taken place. With fading light and a small community of suspects, our hero must find the killer before the community is driven apart by suspicion in these so-called Nordic-noir films. Samuel Sargeant<\/a>, Lecturer in Creative Writing at The Open University, and himself a published author in the genre, has curated five books for you to devour.<\/p>\n

1. Winterkill<\/em><\/strong> by Ragnar J\u00f3nasson<\/strong> (published by Orenda Books, 2021)<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the last book in Ragnar J\u00f3nasson\u2019s international bestselling Dark Iceland series. When the body of a 19-year-old girl is found on the main street of Siglufj\u00f6r\u00f0ur, Police Inspector Ari Th\u00f3r battles a violent Icelandic storm in an increasingly dangerous hunt for her killer.<\/p>\n

Claustrophobic, chilling and filled with a complex array of characters, J\u00f3nasson takes us on a journey into the rural heart of Iceland in which the landscape is as much a character as the engaging but exhausted police inspector.<\/p>\n

Ragnar has an excellent sense of pace, and readers seeking a tense page turner should look no further.<\/p>\n

2. Fatal Isles<\/em> by Maria Adolfsson<\/strong> (published by Zaffre, 2021)
\n<\/strong>Maria Adolfsson has been given a rare accolade, to be credited with the invention of a new genre: Anglo-Nordic noir with her novel set in the fictional islands of Doggerland.<\/p>\n

It follows Detective Inspector Karen Eiken Hornby, who has returned home. She’s a dedicated, if flawed, protagonist who has become all too reliant upon alcohol and smoking. Someone who fits the mould of the Nordic noir.<\/p>\n

If the pressures of her duties were not enough, the challenges she faces by being a woman detective in a small, isolated and traditional community further serve to drive a wedge between her and the people she is trying to help.<\/p>\n

When she and her boss, Jounas Smeed, spend the night together she knows this will only invite trouble. Trouble that is compounded when Jounas’ ex-wife is found brutally murdered.<\/p>\n

This is Maria Adolfsson\u2019s debut novel, and there is much to appreciate here in her ability to create a convincingly believable island state in the middle of the North Sea.<\/p>\n

3. Pine<\/em> by Francine Toon<\/strong>\u00a0(Black Swan Ireland, 2020)
\n<\/strong>Less a straight Nordic noir, and more a neo-gothic thriller set in the Scottish Highlands, Toon still effectively captures the anxieties and claustrophobia of isolated communities.<\/p>\n

Among the pages, Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands. Once again, the landscape is as much a character as the protagonist, in which it seems to reach out to take the lost unto itself and drive its inhabitants to extremes.<\/p>\n

Women disappear, men drink to forget and anger and fear slowly begin to take over as Lauren attempts to learn what happened when a local teenager, Anne-Maire, vanishes.<\/p>\n

But Lauren is no detective, and this adds an extra layer of tension as she attempts to unearth the secrets of her small community.<\/p>\n

4. Dead Sweet<\/em> by Katr\u00edn J\u00fal\u00edusd\u00f3ttir<\/strong>\u00a0(Orenda Books, 2023)<\/strong>
\nOne of a new wave of Icelandic authors writing Nordic noir, Katrin has all the hallmarks to be recognised as a titan of the genre. She was a member of the Icelandic parliament from 2003 until 2016 and her knowledge of political machinations shines through her text.<\/p>\n

In this novel her protagonist is Sigurd\u00eds, a young police officer, attempting to solve the murder of a prominent wealthy and respected government official and businessman \u00d3ttar Karlsson, so why was he killed? And was he as innocent as he looked?<\/p>\n

While initially set in Iceland, and providing a wonderful insight into the people and culture, the novel is globe spanning: taking Sigurd\u00eds to Minnesota and back to face her own childhood trauma.<\/p>\n

This is an atmospheric and unsettling thriller, full of well-timed reveals and twists, and was long listed for the Waterstone Debut Fiction Prize in 2023 when translated into English.<\/p>\n

5. The Dancer <\/em>by \u00d3skar Gu\u00f0mundsson (published by Corylus Books 2024) <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00d3skar Gu\u00f0mundsson made quite the impact with his debut novel,\u00a0Hilma<\/em>. In 2015, he was awarded the Icelandic Crime Syndicate\u2019s Drop of Blood award for the best crime novel. Now he is back with a new series beginning with The Dancer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When Ylfa, a rookie officer, and her boss Valdimar, are given the case of a long-forgotten body found in the middle of a Reykjavik park the duo must unravel a complex series of murders where nothing is as it seems.<\/p>\n

\u00d3skar has a talent for creating compelling and complex villains, and he is at his best here. For a noir thriller novelist, \u00d3skar writes with both compassion and empathy, but that makes the horrors all the more visceral.<\/p>\n

If you like your villains complex and your morality questioned then\u00a0The Dancer<\/em>\u00a0by \u00d3skar Gu\u00f0mundsson, translated by Quentin Bates, is for you.<\/p>\n

Picture: Yaroslav Shuraev for Pexels<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know the drill: In a cold and dark place, perhaps at the frontier of human civilisation, a murder has taken place. With fading light and a small community of suspects, our hero must find the killer before the community is driven apart by suspicion in these so-called Nordic-noir films. Samuel Sargeant, Lecturer in Creative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":26669,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,3],"tags":[858,869,1525,1640,2524],"class_list":["post-26668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-literature-music","category-arts-social-sciences","tag-faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences","tag-fass","tag-news-home","tag-ou-home","tag-scandinavian-noir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26668"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26719,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26668\/revisions\/26719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}