Scandinavian Noir

There’s this thing I do when I travel, a habit I picked up in my twenties.

Weeks before my departure, sometimes months, I start looking for a book that will accompany me on my trip. More than something to merely occupy the time, I’m after a book that will help me appreciate the people and places I’ll encounter in a new way.

Before backpacking through Italy during college, I picked up a book about Saint Francis. On flights to Cambodia in 2006 and El Salvador in 2019, I read up on those countries’ histories of war – and how unsung heroes have forged ahead. For weekends with Katie in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York over the years, I’ve read books about the weather, the sports, the history of those cities.

This is one of those good habits, the life-giving kind.

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Generations ago, Norwegians with last names like Sørensen, Berendtsdatter, and Høiland settled in the Pacific Northwest. Economics certainly compelled them to make their arduous journeys. But the lovely interplay of evergreens, saltwater, and snowcapped peaks would have made them feel just a bit more at home in this strange new land.

Last Saturday, one of the descendants of those immigrants – my cousin Anders – got married in Seattle. As I made arrangements for my quick three-day trip, I planned to include ample time outdoors and on foot, taking advantage of the enviable summer climes of the PNW. Then came news headlines about a “once-in-a-millennium heat dome.” (But I digress.)

The book I chose to read for the weekend was Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery (Picador) by Wendy Lesser. It’s not that my aunts, uncles, and cousins are serial killers; all evidence points to them being decidedly law-abiding. But we are Norwegian. So, close enough.

In the first half of the book, “Fiction as Reality,” Lesser devotes 127 pages to a methodical survey of various aspects of Scandinavian culture – from bureaucracy, furniture, and holidays to alcohol, policing, and violent crime. Up to this point, she has not visited Denmark, Norway, or Sweden. Nor, to our knowledge, has she read nonfiction books or watched documentaries about these destinations.

Instead, her descriptions come almost exclusively from the details gleaned from the hundreds of mystery novels she has read by Scandinavian writers like Jo Nesbø, Stieg Larsson, and Lotte and Søren Hammer. (I’ve read several of these books over the years; they belong to the genre one discerning friend is fond of calling ET: entertaining trash.)

Lesser’s premise in Scandinavian Noir, one would have to admit, is preposterous. At the midpoint of the book, she basically admits as much. “Armchair contemplation,” Lesser writes – as “delightfully comfortable” as it may be – has its limits. “To find out whether there is any such place as the Scandinavia I’ve been imagining, it appears I will actually have to go there. And that means you, in turn, will have to come with me.”

In the second half of the book, “Reality as Fiction,” we do indeed follow Lesser to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. And as we do, Lesser herself actually morphs into a character, of sorts, in her own mystery novel. “She” (the only name our protagonist is given) moves into an apartment in Oslo, then Stockholm, then Copenhagen. She learns to navigate the trains and buses and ferries, orders in cafés and restaurants, talks to strangers – and yes, spends time with police officers and detectives.

If it sounds like a weird book, that’s because it totally is. What redeems the preposterous premise, in the end, is that Lesser isn’t content with the Scandinavian caricatures and stereotypes she’s collected from cheap paperbacks. Instead, the plotlines and descriptions that grip her in the novels lead her into deeper curiosity about the people and places she thinks she knows, but really doesn’t. When she finally visits these countries, some of her hunches about Scandinavia are confirmed while others, predictably, get turned upside down.

The books we read should make us curious about this world we inhabit, humble about everything we don’t yet know. Scandinavian Noir is a manifestation of that possibility, which is why I enjoyed it during my weekend with Norwegians – and why you just might enjoy it as well, whoever and wherever you may be.