engleski

Nordic Crime Fiction its Transculturation: “Bestsellers to Blockbusters” and TV Series

Nordic crime fiction, in its transmedia production across multiple platforms of novels, films and TV-series, has since the 1990s established itself among the most prominent representatives of the genre. The pioneering series of novels The Story of a Crime (M. Sjöwall and P. Wahlöö, 1965-75) was followed by the internationally acclaimed novels by H. Mankell or S. Larssons’s Millenium triology, disseminated through generations of adaptations, both Nordic as well as through their frequent transculturation (Hutcheon) in American, British and other remakes (e.g. BBC Wallander series or Christopher Nolan's take on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). An extensive literature traces this development from the socially critical Swedish crime fiction to a recent shift towards the so called Nordic Noir, in the process described by R. Stam as “[adaptations’] social or ideological reaccentuation”. Recent research (Agger et al.) offers a more nuanced distinction between the so called “Swedish model” using adaptations of successful novels (“We turn bestsellers into blockbuster” is the slogan of the major Swedish production company Yellow Bird) and the “Danish model” of crime film and television production based almost exclusively on original screenplays. In contrast to a widely held prejudice against TV or mainstream film adaptations and their aesthetic mainstreaming (Stam), the paper will show how TV series format, especially in the tradition of Danish TV-drama, helped reinvent the contextualisation i.e. the socially critical scope attributed to the original Scandinavian crime fiction (with examples of Borgen or The Killing, the latter frequently compared to US series The Wire).

Nordic noir, crime fiction, adaptation, TV-series

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