Nordic Noir Quotes

I jotted down Oslo After Death. This would be a great title for a book, I thought. That is what I do sometimes. I jot down titles for books that I one day intend to write.

Why has Scandinavia been producing such good thrillers? Maybe because their filmmakers can't afford millions for CGI and must rely on cheaper elements like, you know, stories and characters.

Ever since the '70s, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo were the godfathers of Scandinavian crime. They broke the crime novel in Scandinavia from the kiosks and into the serious bookstores.

Thanks to the success of Henning Mankell and Peter Hoeg, there wasn't the same stigma attached to writing genre thrillers in Scandinavia as there was in many other cultures. Quite the opposite, in fact.

[The Girl in the Spider's Web] can't be anything other than a sequel, but a couple of books have been skipped, so it is different, in that sense. It's really taking a very strong central character and thinking, how do you execute this? It's quite different.

The Swedes got there first - their dramas were always the darkest and most upsetting, and we used to love them when I was growing up in Denmark. Now us Danes have caught up.

It was great fun to do because of the central character. With The Girl in the Spider's Web, the girl is really the central character. She's the whole thing.

Northern Sweden holds a special kind of magic. It's cold, lonely, and the people are tough and silent, or so the stereotype says. This is Asa Larsson's home turf and I find as much joy in reading her closely observed descriptions of the environment, as in following her intriguing plots.

If you want to start reading Swedish crime fiction, you have to start with Sjowall and Wahloo.

I haven't seen 'The Killing'.

My liking for Scandinavian crime fiction led me into exploring literary writers from the same countries.

Part of the reason why Scandinavian crime has been so popular is the landscape. It is just so strong and alien. Although without taking anything away, you should probably also never discount the fact that blood does look particularly good against snow.

The pace of Swedish crime fiction is slower - Stieg Larsson's the exception. And I think we use the environment more.

Scandinavian crime fiction has become a great success all across the world and rightfully so. Sjowall and Wahloo ushered in a whole generation of Swedish crime writers, many of whom are now available in English.

I'm a big fan of Scandinavian series like 'Bron' and 'The Killing.'

You can count on Scandinavian literature for a certain kind of darkness, a modern mythic style.