Murder for export

What lies behind the boom in Swedish crime fiction? To answer this question, we need to go back to the 1960s and 70s, says literary scholar Karl Berglund. Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö managed to introduce something new to the market with their socially critical and realistic portrayals in the Martin Beck books. This socially critical approach was then carried on by authors such as Henning Mankell, Liza Marklund and Stieg Larsson. But it was with the Millennium trilogy that it took off in earnest.

“Stieg Larsson broke the glass ceiling of how big a Swedish popular author can become abroad. Before him, we had no examples of authors becoming such a mega-blockbuster. He opened a lot of doors”, explains Berglund, Associate Senior Lecturer in literary studies, who has studied the Swedish book market and the spread of the crime fiction genre in his thesis and subsequent studies.

Stieg Larsson’s success also established an infrastructure for selling our literature abroad. Swedish literary agencies emerged and have since continued to play an important role in the success of crime fiction. At the same time, they have also paved the way for the sales success of other types of books outside the country's borders, such as Jonas Jonasson’s The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared.

Contemporary realism spiced with murder

The term ‘Nordic noir’ began to be established just after the turn of the millennium. And it includes not only Swedish crime novels, but also books from other Nordic countries and TV series from Denmark. Trying to find a common denominator for what is currently covered by the term is impossible, according to Berglund.

“Nordic noir is a market construct, and by that I mean there is nothing distinctive about it except that it is set in one of the Nordic countries. The genre is diverse and heterogeneous – it can include everything from the hard-boiled to the puzzle to solve, to things that lean towards the more supernatural or towards romance.”

A crime story from Maria Lang's time was almost exclusively about the mystery, but as the genre has broadened, the books today can be described more as contemporary portrayals.

“To put it somewhat bluntly, some types of crime fiction are contemporary realism spiced with a murder investigation. This has become the way many of our great, widely popular stories are written today.”

The rise of the crime fiction genre is partly due to the high level of commercialisation of this type of literature, but also because it has attracted more and more authors who want to reach a wide audience.

Security in troubled times

There are no major studies that provide an answer as to why we seem to enjoy reading about dark subjects so much. But there is plenty of speculation, says Berglund.

“One psychologising theory is that this type of literature may create a sense of security. In a troubled world, the crime novel offers a description of dark things, but it is done in a controlled form and in a way where the reader knows that things will work out. You get that frisson while never being truly scared.”

Crime novels also have the attraction of creating an enigma, a case that is solved but where the outcome is unknown, thus generating curiosity.

Crime novels dominate audiobook market

Evidence that the genre appeals to our curiosity can be found in one of Berglund's later studies investigating the audiobook medium. After accessing listener data from a book-streaming service, he was able to see that crime novels were not only the most popular, but were also the books that most people wanted to finish listening to.

“We can see that the crime novel medium is superior when we measure how much of a book people listen to. They clearly listen to a much greater extent than in other genres, precisely because they want to know what happens next. This seems to be a format that works extremely well for the audio medium.”

Other trends he has observed include a shift in the centre of gravity in Sweden. We used to read mostly British and American crime fiction, but now we have mainly become consumers of our own crime literature.

“We used to have an import culture when it comes to crime fiction, but now we’ve become an export culture.”

Flagship of the Swedish book market

In an ongoing study, Berglund has investigated the proportion of Swedish literature that has been translated together with two colleagues. What they found was that the crime fiction genre accounted for around 40 per cent of all translations in the 20 years following Stieg Larsson's breakthrough.

“It’s almost half of the translated books in terms of number of titles. If you were to look at how much they sell, it would be total dominance. Stieg Larsson sells more than P.O Enquist abroad. To compare the crime fiction genre to a flagship of the Swedish book market in terms of its commercial importance would be an understatement.”

Alex and Sigge’s podcast refer to a German publisher who says that people no longer want any more Swedish crime novels, but that romance is the name of the game now. Do you think romance will become more popular?

“They’re both right and wrong. I think people are definitely looking for something new; they don't want another Stieg Larsson. But what I seem to be seeing is that the crime fiction genre is like a living organism, it’s very good at usurping trends and tendencies. Many of the more recent crime novels I've read contain quite clear novelistic elements, such as Camilla Läckberg's more recent books.”

What do you predict will be the next big thing in the genre? What should authors be writing to get rich?

“Something that has become very big in the US is various hybrids between fantasy and romance, known as 'romantasy'. There are already hybrids between romance and crime fiction in Sweden, but my prediction is that this will become more established in the future. Perhaps we’ll be talking about Nordic 'crimance' in ten years' time.”

Sandra Gunnarsson