
The Origins of Scandinavian Noir - vo2maxer
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/05/06/the-origins-of-scandinavian-noir/
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cs702
As a fan of the "Millennium" Swedish TV miniseries, with a fantastic Noomi
Rapace as the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo[a], I found this piece
fascinating.

I knew very little about "Scandinavian Noir," and in fact didn't even think of
it as a genre until reading the OP.

Now, I want to read the "Beck" novels and also watch its Swedish TV/film
adaptions, if there are any.

\--

[a]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_(miniseries)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_\(miniseries\))
\-- In my humble opionion, the Swedish TV adaptations of Stieg Larsson's books
are much better than the Hollywood movie adaptations, which tend to be much
flashier and have more special effects but don't feel or bite quite as hard as
the Swedish TV miniseries.

~~~
drrotmos
”and also watch its Swedish TV/film adaptions, if there are any”

There’s about 50 or so of them, of varying quality. Most (if not all) of them
feature length.

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arnsholt
Those are more recent,and independent of the novels, but some of the original
novels have been made into movies too. I'm not sure if all the novels have
movies, but I particularly remember watching "The fire truck that disappeared"
on TV as a kid.

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OskarS
It's interesting to read articles like this, describing the culture you take
for granted to outsiders. I devoured Ture Sventon, Kalle Blomkvist and Agaton
Sax as a child, but I had never thought of them in the broader context of
Scandinavian Noir. You can sort-of see the connection, but it's a bit tenuous:
all of these take place in child-appropriate idealized world, they have
nothing of the social realism/commentary of Sjöwall/Wahlöö and the later
Scandinavian noirs. A closer comparison might be The Adventures of Tintin
(obviously not Swedish, but hugely popular in Sweden), which had some of that
"social commentary + detective stories", but even that is a bit weak.

I think it is fair to say that the genre was essentially invented by
Sjöwall/Wahlöö. There isn't much precedence, and you can see strong traces of
them in all of their successors. If you're going to trace their inspirations,
I would suggest that you shouldn't seek it so much in detective fiction, but
rather in things like naturalism and other lefty/socialist fiction movements.
Emile Zola is a better place to look than Dashiell Hammett.

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sandGorgon
what are urban scandinavian noirs that you would suggest to read today ?

(the urban is in context of topics of technology/privacy, etc which are
prevalent in the Dragon Tattoo series)

~~~
mongol
Have not read myself but Åsa Schwarz could be something for you. Security
expert and author

[https://asaschwarz.com/category/novels/](https://asaschwarz.com/category/novels/)

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SiempreViernes
Maj Sjöwall died very recently, the 29:th of April.

~~~
bloak
The obituary I found mentioned Simenon as an influence, which makes sense.

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danielscrubs
I've in the mindset that good chefs can do really good food without too much
sugar, salt and fat, but for someone used to sugar it can sometime feel bland,
until you start to cut down on it and suddenly you appreciate an oyster (for
example) way more. It's the same with action packed, jumping from skyscraper
to skyscraper, kind of movies and fantasy-books.

In that sense the Beck-series with its realism (real police-work) and bland
social surface only needed the social commentary to get a grip of you after a
heavy non-action diet which to me signifies good authors.

