A few years after the term film noir, along with derivatives such as neo noir and indie noir, more or less vanished from the trade press and academic publishingâwhere it flourished during the 1990s and early 2000sânoir once again resurfaced as a qualifying term; this time as Nordic noir. The term Nordic noir and the attention it is given creates a peculiar feeling that history is repeating itself. Attempts to capture the essence of Nordic noir appear to follow the same path that efforts to define film noir once took. Some 60 years after film noir was given its first full-length scholarly treatment, in Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumetonâs seminal Panorama du film noir amĂŠricain , 1941â1953, published in France in 1955, Nordic noir seems equally slippery and as enigmatic as film noir once was. Just when the scholarship seemed to have covered every angle of film noir, including everything that extends from film noir, Nordic noir comes along as if nothing has happened and raises the same kind of questions its predecessor prompted.
The scholarly writing on film noir is vast, and more than a single person can track. One of the challengingâand indeed captivatingâthings about noir (aside from the films, naturally) is that it avoids any clear-cut definitions and explanations. Noir has been studied from multiple angles and contextsâaesthetic, historic, societal, psychoanalytic are among the most prominent. The flexibility of the term has opened up some very rich discussions of theoretical breadth and analytical depth. Yet even after decades of attention to noir, one is left with the (somewhat frustrating) notion that it is impossible to really get what noir is, once and for all. What we are left to do is to suggest certain understandings of the term, or rather, the concept. Given that noir has gone through so many phases, and that as a discursive construct the term has been put to work in so many ways, the idea that there is such a thing as a Nordic noir is by no means strangeâeven though in their 1955 study, Borde and Chaumeton ruled out the possibility.This chapter will pursue the first position and examine Nordic noir within the context of film noir scholarship. While the second position has been dealt with in volumes by Nestingen and Arvas (2011), Bergman (2014), and Forshaw (2013), and the third position has been adopted by Jensen and Waade (2013) and Agger (2011), surprisingly little attention has been directed to Nordic noir as a descendent of film noir (although touched upon by Solum 2016, and by Hill and Turnbull 2017). A re-examination of film noir might shed light on what is meant by the term Nordic noirâand so help answer whether this new noir is closely connected to film noir, a variant of that noir, or a completely different noir all together. Put another way, is it merely a coincidence that Scandinavian crime fiction, film, and TV drama are often classified as Nordic noir, or does the term have roots in film noir itself?
What kind of noir do we refer to when we talk about Nordic noir? At least three different positions can be identified.On the Scandinavian front, the cinema is, finally, traditionally split between mysticism, the theme of prostitution, old-style melodrama, implicit psychoanalysis, and visual research: as of now, itâs hard to see how the inspiration that concerns us [i.e., film noir] could have installed itself there . (Borde and Chaumeton 2002, 125)
- 1.Is Nordic noir derived from film noirâthat is, is it a new breed of noir? After the classic period of film noir, neo noir and indie noir emerged. Now, noir has moved into its next phase, as Nordic noir. This position attempts to understand Nordic noir within the framework of film noir and to draw on the scholarship within this field.
- 2.Or, should Nordic noir be seen as a synonym for Scandinavian crime fiction, formerly known as Scandi crime? At least a decade before Nordic noir was invented as a term, Scandi crime was a hot item in Northern Europe and the US, thanks to the work of Henning Mankell (in particular), Liza Marklund, Karin Fossum, Anne Holt, and Peter Høeg. Then, with the enormous success of Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbø, Scandi crime became a phenomenon of global proportions. Others on the list of internationally bestselling Scandi crime authors include Jussi Adler-Olsen, Hükan Nesser, Leif G.W. Persson, Camilla Läckberg, Arnaldur Indriðason, Unni Lindell, and Gunnar Staalesen, to name just a few. Is Nordic noir merely a rebranding of an existing term, adopted by critics, readers, and sales agents because it sounds more interesting and more sophisticated than Scandi crime?
- 3.Finally, does Nordic noir in fact have little to do with crime stories, and little (if any) connection to what we otherwise know as noir? This position pushes the boundaries of the term beyond traditional generic distinctions and focuses on what can be identified as distinctively Nordic, such as atmosphere, landscape, mindset, political system, or the seasonal changes of light. A brief internet search, for example, shows Nordic noir has been used to describe the work of critically acclaimed authors such as Per Petterson and Karl Ove KnausgĂĽrdâauthors that might be in line for a Nobel Prize, yet noir scholarship will fall short in shedding light on their work
The Inception of Film Noir and Nordic Noir
Film noirâthat is, the American studio films from the mid-1940s to the 1950s that today are regarded as film noirâwas first identified as such in France, in 1946. After World War II had ended, when European film production grappled with financial and artistic crises, American films were released in abundance. Upon seeing several crime films, more or less en masse, French critics such as Nino Frank (enthusiastically) and Jean-Pierre Chartier (rather disapprovingly) concluded they were witnessing a new kind of crime drama, termed film noir (in Silver and Ursini 2002). While earlier crime films were largely whodunits with straightforward narratives, the new films noirs depicted sinister characters with ambiguous morals and had complex narrative patterns. It was often difficult to untangle the storyâs enigma of who did what to whom, and why and when. The films Double Indemnity (1944) and Murder, My Sweet (1944) were in particular discussed, as well as The Maltese Falcon (1941), and perhaps more oddly, Laura (1944) and The Lost Weekend (1945) were based on novels by hard-boiled American crime writers such as Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Dashiell Hammett, known to a wide French readership in translation through series published as serie noire, or were otherwise closely linked to this literature in style and tone. Film noir has come to be seen as closely related to the hard-boiled writing that emerged during the 1930s and 1940s, a connection Frank mentioned in his review article.
The emergence of the term Nordic noir also parallels the history of film noir. The lineage from the literature of Scandi crime to Nordic noir film and television drama is underscored by the fact that novels by a large number of popular Nordic crime writers have been adapted as either films or television dramas. Since its emergence, Nordic noir has covered literature, television drama, and film. The term was first put to use by foreign critics. It seems that fewâif anyâNordic authors, film-makers, or TV drama creators make explicit reference to the term in their own work. Nordic noir, as was the case in many respects with film noir, is by and large a criticâs concept.
Precisely when the shift from Scandi crime to Nordic noir took place is difficult to pinpoint, but apparently it happened between 2009 and 2011. In 2009, the three novels in Stieg Larssonâs Millennium trilogy were released as theatrical movies, followed by a reedited (with added material) six-part television series in 2010 based on the adapted films. In 2011, the film adaptation of Jo Nesbøâs Hodejegerne/ Headhunters was one of the most successful European films both at the box office and among critics. And in 2011, the Danish crime series Forbrydelsen/ The Killing (2007â2012) was aired by the BBC, accompanied by a dedicated The Killing blog in The Guardian. Finally, 2011 was also the year of the Swedish-Danish co-production Bron/ The Bridge (2011â2018). Indicative of the success of these titles are the multiple remakes of The Killing , The Bridge , and David Fincherâs adaptation of Larsonâs The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), as well as BAFTA nominations for Headhunters . Nordic noir emerged as a term, it seems, more or less in conjunction with the attention drawn to its screen versions.
Although the cinematic versions of Nordic noir date back to the breakthrough of Scandi crime, with Erik Skjoldbjaergâs Insomnia from 1997, it is within television drama series that the phenomenon has flourished. Today, the TV series The Killing (DR, three seasons, 2007â2012), The Bridge (SVT/DR, four seasons, 2011â2018), and Mammon (NRK, two seasons, 2014â) are regarded as quintessential Nordic noirs. (As is, by the way, the political drama series Borgen , [DR, 2010â2013].) To this list we might add the Danish series Norskov (TV2, 2015â2017), the Norwegian Ăyevitne/ Witness (NRK, 2014), the Icelandic ĂfĂŚrĂ°/ Trapped (RĂV, 2015), and the Swedish Jordskott (SVT, 2015â), among others. None of these are adaptations of novels, but rather have been developed from original screenplays and produced by the national public broadcasters in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland. Nonetheless, each series has much in common with qualities that characterise Scandinavian crime fiction. The main characters often struggle to keep their personal lives together, and the crimes they are involved in (as investigators or victims) throw a grim light on flaws in society that extend beyond the crime itself. In a Scandinavian setting, what is novel about these series is the combination of a crime drama coupled with the markers of quality TV drama. By the late 2000s and early 2010s, Nordic television drama, with the respective public broadcasters taking the front seat, experienced a substantial reorientation (in terms of budgets, artistic ambitions, and scheduled screen time) towards high-end TV series. At the forefront of this new strategy was the production of crime dramas.
In summary, just like film noir, the term Nordic noir was identifiedâand coinedâby foreign critics and coincides with the international release of a number of critically acclaimed TV series and films (evidently in 2010 in the US ...