0:00:17 > 0:00:21Scandinavia - a place of haunting natural beauty,
0:00:21 > 0:00:26a Utopian society where beautiful people lead idyllic lives.
0:00:26 > 0:00:31It's the perfect place for murder.
0:00:31 > 0:00:36Over the past decade, Scandinavian crime fiction has become
0:00:36 > 0:00:39a global phenomenon, and the story of its success
0:00:39 > 0:00:42contains all the ingredients of a thriller.
0:00:44 > 0:00:49An atmospheric setting, where the nights can last for days
0:00:49 > 0:00:53and there are many lonely places to hide a body.
0:00:53 > 0:00:56They're grey, they're gloomy, they're cold.
0:00:56 > 0:00:59All these things create the kind of atmosphere
0:00:59 > 0:01:01where bad things can happen.
0:01:01 > 0:01:06A cast of writers as enigmatic as their fictional creations.
0:01:06 > 0:01:11The man with many enemies, who died before any of his books had even been published.
0:01:11 > 0:01:15The woman who experienced a murder first-hand.
0:01:15 > 0:01:20This was not just a note in the paper.
0:01:20 > 0:01:22I knew the killer.
0:01:22 > 0:01:29A plot that asks whether something has gone wrong with the Scandinavian dream of a perfect society.
0:01:29 > 0:01:32It's the light that failed, Scandinavian crime fiction.
0:01:32 > 0:01:33It's the basis of it all.
0:01:33 > 0:01:36It's the fact that everything goes wrong.
0:01:36 > 0:01:40And at its heart is an unsolved murder that traumatised a nation.
0:01:40 > 0:01:43REPORTER: A man approached the couple and shot Olof Palme at close range.
0:01:43 > 0:01:47The prime minister is shot in the middle of Stockholm,
0:01:47 > 0:01:51right in the centre of the city and it's like 9/11.
0:01:51 > 0:01:55From Denmark and Sweden to Norway and Iceland,
0:01:55 > 0:01:59it's a shadowy world peopled with memorable characters -
0:01:59 > 0:02:01Kurt Wallander and Martin Beck,
0:02:01 > 0:02:03Harry Hole and Lisbeth Salander.
0:02:03 > 0:02:08This is an investigation into the mysterious success
0:02:08 > 0:02:10of Scandinavian crime fiction
0:02:10 > 0:02:15and why it exerts such a powerful hold on our imagination.
0:02:27 > 0:02:33Stockholm, Sweden - it's a capital city with a cool exterior,
0:02:33 > 0:02:36where citizens enjoy a life of freedom and prosperity
0:02:36 > 0:02:40built on the foundations of the post-War welfare state.
0:02:40 > 0:02:45Clean, safe, orderly - and the setting for a dark and violent
0:02:45 > 0:02:50thriller that put Scandinavian crime fiction on the global map.
0:02:50 > 0:02:53I started reading it at night
0:02:53 > 0:02:58and it was the first Swedish manuscript definitely in
0:02:58 > 0:03:02many years I actually read through the night,
0:03:02 > 0:03:05finishing at about four in the morning.
0:03:07 > 0:03:09To date, 45 million readers
0:03:09 > 0:03:13have been gripped by The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,
0:03:13 > 0:03:16the first part of the Millennium Trilogy, a series written
0:03:16 > 0:03:21by an author who revitalised the crime story with an injection of
0:03:21 > 0:03:23Hollywood blockbuster thrills,
0:03:23 > 0:03:25Stieg Larsson.
0:03:29 > 0:03:33The key to the success of Stieg Larsson novels
0:03:33 > 0:03:37is in a way very similar to the reason for the success
0:03:37 > 0:03:39of the Harry Potter novels.
0:03:39 > 0:03:43Stieg Larsson knew the genre of crime writing inside out.
0:03:43 > 0:03:45He'd read it for years.
0:03:45 > 0:03:47He read widely, across the genre.
0:03:47 > 0:03:53What he did was pull aspects of different styles, different writers together to come up with something
0:03:53 > 0:03:56quite different from what anybody else had done.
0:03:58 > 0:04:02The success of the series owes much to the mystique that surrounds
0:04:02 > 0:04:08author Stieg Larsson and his most striking creation, Lisbeth Salander.
0:04:08 > 0:04:10He died at 50 without seeing his success
0:04:10 > 0:04:13and he created an utterly original heroine.
0:04:15 > 0:04:18She had a wasp tattoo about two centimetres long on her neck,
0:04:18 > 0:04:22a tattooed loop around the biceps of her left arm
0:04:22 > 0:04:25and another around her left ankle.
0:04:25 > 0:04:30On those occasions when she had been wearing a tank top,
0:04:30 > 0:04:34Armansky also saw that she had a dragon tattoo on her left shoulder blade.
0:04:34 > 0:04:40She was a natural redhead, but she dyed her hair raven black.
0:04:40 > 0:04:44She looked as though she had just emerged from a week-long orgy
0:04:44 > 0:04:46with a gang of hard rockers.
0:04:56 > 0:05:01To make her utterly sociopathic, to make this sort-of tattooed,
0:05:01 > 0:05:06bisexual, pierced Goth - that was really a difficult sell.
0:05:06 > 0:05:09A gifted computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander teams up
0:05:09 > 0:05:14with journalist Mikael Blomkvist to expose the ugly secrets that fester
0:05:14 > 0:05:16behind Sweden's elegant facade,
0:05:16 > 0:05:21starting with an unsolved murder in a wealthy family with a murky past.
0:05:25 > 0:05:29As Salander and Blomkvist dig deeper into the Vanger family's affairs,
0:05:29 > 0:05:33they discover connections to the Swedish Nazi movement.
0:05:33 > 0:05:36It was quite clear that the brothers all joined
0:05:36 > 0:05:40Per Engdahl's fascist movement, the New Sweden.
0:05:40 > 0:05:44Harald continued to be a member until Engdahl died in the '90s,
0:05:44 > 0:05:46and for certain periods,
0:05:46 > 0:05:48he was one of the key contributors
0:05:48 > 0:05:52to the hibernating Swedish fascist movement.
0:05:54 > 0:05:58Just like Mikael Blomkvist, Stieg Larsson was in real life
0:05:58 > 0:06:05an investigative journalist, but the Nazis he was seeking to expose were part of Sweden's present.
0:06:05 > 0:06:09In full uniform, in broad daylight,
0:06:09 > 0:06:13110 Nazis marched through Stockholm,
0:06:13 > 0:06:18shouting slogans like "Smash democracy! Smash the Jews!"
0:06:18 > 0:06:22Although they're shouting racist abuse, which is illegal,
0:06:22 > 0:06:28although they are inciting racial hatred, which is also illegal,
0:06:28 > 0:06:33and although the whole demonstration was actually illegal, the police just let them march.
0:06:35 > 0:06:38If Stieg Larsson had died without writing the Millennium trilogy,
0:06:38 > 0:06:43he would probably be remembered as a brave investigative journalist.
0:06:43 > 0:06:47He was the Swedish correspondent for Searchlight magazine in this country,
0:06:47 > 0:06:48which deals with the far right.
0:06:48 > 0:06:52And he came to Britain and lectured Scotland Yard on extremist groups.
0:06:52 > 0:06:54He was quite an interesting figure.
0:06:54 > 0:06:59The brazen activities of Sweden's far right in the 1990s
0:06:59 > 0:07:03prompted Larsson to set up a journal called Expo, the inspiration for
0:07:03 > 0:07:05his fictional Millennium magazine,
0:07:05 > 0:07:08and still being published in Stockholm today.
0:07:15 > 0:07:21Expo Foundation has a very specific aim, to investigate
0:07:21 > 0:07:24right-wing extremism in all different forms,
0:07:24 > 0:07:28like organised right-wing extremism,
0:07:28 > 0:07:31xenophobia, different forms of intolerance.
0:07:31 > 0:07:36Larsson's work made him many enemies.
0:07:36 > 0:07:37He was working one night
0:07:37 > 0:07:39at the offices of the magazine
0:07:39 > 0:07:41he worked on
0:07:41 > 0:07:42and saw a group of skinheads
0:07:42 > 0:07:44gathering in the street below
0:07:44 > 0:07:45with baseball bats,
0:07:45 > 0:07:46who were waiting for him.
0:07:46 > 0:07:48He saved his life by getting out
0:07:48 > 0:07:49through another exit.
0:07:51 > 0:07:55Like the old gunfighters in the West, he would sit with
0:07:55 > 0:08:00his back to the wall, his face to the front of coffee shops he frequented.
0:08:00 > 0:08:05A life lived on the edge took its toll on Stieg Larsson's health.
0:08:08 > 0:08:11He smoked all the time when I met him.
0:08:11 > 0:08:13You could see that he didn't look healthy.
0:08:13 > 0:08:15He was fat -
0:08:15 > 0:08:17corpulent, you say?
0:08:19 > 0:08:21He looked tired.
0:08:22 > 0:08:24But he had an energy about him.
0:08:24 > 0:08:27That energy was the product of a desire
0:08:27 > 0:08:32to fight injustice that Larsson had nurtured since his youth.
0:08:32 > 0:08:35Gradually his political interest
0:08:35 > 0:08:39became more focused on fighting
0:08:39 > 0:08:43what he felt as the basic evils of the world,
0:08:43 > 0:08:47which to his mind were fascism in all forms,
0:08:47 > 0:08:51but more basically racism, sexism,
0:08:51 > 0:08:58or the very idea that other people are inferior because of
0:08:58 > 0:09:00some chance of their birth.
0:09:02 > 0:09:06Larsson used journalism to shine a light on prejudice in Sweden
0:09:06 > 0:09:08and he set out to dramatise the issue
0:09:08 > 0:09:13in his novels through the character of Lisbeth Salander,
0:09:13 > 0:09:16a volatile rebel on the margins of society.
0:09:16 > 0:09:19She's ferociously bright.
0:09:19 > 0:09:23She understand things that you almost wonder how she understands them,
0:09:23 > 0:09:26because in some respects her empathy is non-existent.
0:09:28 > 0:09:31She has a very distinctive way of viewing the world,
0:09:31 > 0:09:33but she doesn't fit into the world.
0:09:34 > 0:09:37In the only interview he ever gave about his books,
0:09:37 > 0:09:40Larsson revealed the unlikely source of inspiration
0:09:40 > 0:09:42for Lisbeth Salander -
0:09:42 > 0:09:45a children's book by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren.
0:09:45 > 0:09:50HE READS: 'It was an old idea from the first half of the '90s.
0:09:50 > 0:09:54'I picked up Pippi Longstocking, eight years old.
0:09:54 > 0:09:56'What would happen to her?
0:09:56 > 0:10:01'A sociopath? Wrong,' he said.
0:10:01 > 0:10:07'She has another different take on society from the rest of us.
0:10:07 > 0:10:09'I'll do her 25 years old.
0:10:09 > 0:10:13'She has this outsider perspective,
0:10:13 > 0:10:17'or she has this outsider situation, doesn't know anybody.'
0:10:17 > 0:10:24He has no scale whatsoever when it comes to social competence.
0:10:24 > 0:10:26'That was the idea from the beginning,' he says.
0:10:26 > 0:10:30An outsider with a troubled upbringing,
0:10:30 > 0:10:33Salander is abused and eventually
0:10:33 > 0:10:35raped by her legal guardian,
0:10:35 > 0:10:38portrayed in the film of the book by Peter Andersson,
0:10:38 > 0:10:42an actor who plays the role with a cold menace that emphasises
0:10:42 > 0:10:45his perversion of the father-daughter relationship.
0:11:12 > 0:11:16The abuse of women is a constant theme in a novel punctuated
0:11:16 > 0:11:19with statistics about domestic violence,
0:11:19 > 0:11:23an issue Larsson even raised in the original Swedish title
0:11:23 > 0:11:25of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
0:11:25 > 0:11:28This is the first one. Man som hatar kvinnor.
0:11:28 > 0:11:33Men Who Hate Women is the title.
0:11:33 > 0:11:37I think it's a good front page
0:11:37 > 0:11:42of the book, since it was a magazine and it looks like a magazine.
0:11:42 > 0:11:44Very smart.
0:11:44 > 0:11:50He initially intended this to be the overall title of the series
0:11:50 > 0:11:54of ten novels, because they're all about
0:11:54 > 0:12:00men who hate women. And he would have been aghast that the title has been
0:12:00 > 0:12:04changed in so many languages because he thought this was important.
0:12:04 > 0:12:08Lisbeth Salander might be a victim of the men who hate women,
0:12:08 > 0:12:11but she is also Larsson's avenging angel.
0:12:14 > 0:12:18You've got this messed-up woman who's been sexually abused,
0:12:18 > 0:12:21who's been damaged profoundly by the things
0:12:21 > 0:12:23that have happened in her life,
0:12:23 > 0:12:28but somehow clings on to the kind of humanity that can move her forward.
0:12:28 > 0:12:31She's ruthless, and you would have to say some of
0:12:31 > 0:12:35the routes by which she takes her revenge are appalling,
0:12:35 > 0:12:39but at the same time you find yourself behind her all the way,
0:12:39 > 0:12:41you want her to succeed.
0:12:43 > 0:12:47In this scene, the perspective of victim and abuser is reversed
0:12:47 > 0:12:50as the director uses unsettling camera angles
0:12:50 > 0:12:55to put us in the position of Lisbeth's guardian, now at the mercy
0:12:55 > 0:12:57of his charge and her tattoo needle.
0:13:20 > 0:13:22Is Stieg Larsson a feminist?
0:13:22 > 0:13:24That's the 64,000 question.
0:13:24 > 0:13:27Some women writers have said to me
0:13:27 > 0:13:30those are gloatingly exploitative books,
0:13:30 > 0:13:34in which all the sexual violence is there for us to enjoy,
0:13:34 > 0:13:36and then we're given this writer to say,
0:13:36 > 0:13:39"It's OK, she gets her own back."
0:13:39 > 0:13:42They feel that doesn't buy Stieg Larsson a ticket out of that.
0:13:42 > 0:13:47There are people who believe she's a psychopath,
0:13:47 > 0:13:53an antisocial personage who should be maybe put away,
0:13:53 > 0:13:56and that if people acted this way
0:13:56 > 0:14:00it would be disastrous.
0:14:01 > 0:14:04We did have the same discussion in Sweden 50 or 60 years ago
0:14:04 > 0:14:07when the Pippi Longstocking novels were published.
0:14:07 > 0:14:09Lisbeth Salander might be
0:14:09 > 0:14:11a violent sociopath,
0:14:11 > 0:14:13but she has much in common with
0:14:13 > 0:14:16the strong-willed heroine of a Danish novel by Peter Hoeg
0:14:16 > 0:14:21that first introduced Scandinavian crime fiction to a wider audience.
0:14:27 > 0:14:30I'm not perfect.
0:14:30 > 0:14:34I think more highly of snow and ice than of love.
0:14:34 > 0:14:37It's easier for me to be interested in mathematics
0:14:37 > 0:14:41than to have affection for my fellow human beings.
0:14:43 > 0:14:47But I am anchored to something in life that is constant.
0:14:52 > 0:14:57You could say that the two most significant Scandinavian novels
0:14:57 > 0:14:59are published by Christopher MacLehose -
0:14:59 > 0:15:02he published Miss Smilla back then and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
0:15:02 > 0:15:06and the heroines of both don't belong to any one society,
0:15:06 > 0:15:08they can't quite function in any one society,
0:15:08 > 0:15:11because they've got tugs from different parts of
0:15:11 > 0:15:13their past, and the way they were brought up
0:15:13 > 0:15:17and the things that have happened to them in their lives.
0:15:20 > 0:15:23Published in 1992, Peter Hoeg's novel
0:15:23 > 0:15:27follows Smilla's mission to prove that the death of Isaiah,
0:15:27 > 0:15:31a young Greenlandic boy she had befriended, was no accident.
0:15:31 > 0:15:34Now, Smilla is known for, as the title suggests,
0:15:34 > 0:15:37her knowledge of snow, or her feeling for snow.
0:15:37 > 0:15:41At one point she is a researcher
0:15:41 > 0:15:45doing research into snow and crystals,
0:15:45 > 0:15:48and she of course has a past in Greenland
0:15:48 > 0:15:53where knowing snow conditions can be matter of life and death.
0:15:53 > 0:15:58Now, at the outset of the crime novel, the little boy, Isaiah,
0:15:58 > 0:16:04is found dead after a leap from roof of the apartment block.
0:16:04 > 0:16:06Smilla Jaspersen finds that this is not an accident.
0:16:06 > 0:16:11She can read the footsteps in the snow and these footsteps suggest
0:16:11 > 0:16:15he's been chased off the roof and has fallen to his death.
0:16:17 > 0:16:21An award-winning literary novelist, Hoeg's precise descriptions of
0:16:21 > 0:16:26winter landscapes set a benchmark in Scandinavian fiction.
0:16:26 > 0:16:33It is freezing, an extraordinary minus 18 degrees, and it's snowing,
0:16:33 > 0:16:37and in the language which is no longer mine, the snow is qanik.
0:16:37 > 0:16:41Big, almost weightless crystals falling in stacks
0:16:41 > 0:16:46and covering the ground with a layer of pulverised white frost.
0:16:46 > 0:16:50December darkness rises up from the grave,
0:16:50 > 0:16:54seeming as limitless as the sky above us.
0:16:54 > 0:16:58It's a beautifully written book, it's a book of great colour,
0:16:58 > 0:17:01great atmosphere with a great sense of place.
0:17:01 > 0:17:05What's so clever about it is the fact it's a kind of disquisition on language,
0:17:05 > 0:17:09about the different nuances of snow, of different kinds of snow
0:17:09 > 0:17:12which we don't have in Britain. But that's also the key to mystery.
0:17:17 > 0:17:22Smilla's journey ends in the frozen wastes of Greenland,
0:17:24 > 0:17:29a bleak backdrop typical of the Scandinavian crime novel.
0:17:32 > 0:17:36A lot of Scandinavian landscapes are imposing, they're impressive,
0:17:36 > 0:17:39they make you feel like a small person on a big landscape.
0:17:39 > 0:17:42They're grey, they're gloomy, they're cold.
0:17:42 > 0:17:45All of these things create the kind of atmosphere
0:17:45 > 0:17:48where bad, difficult things can happen,
0:17:48 > 0:17:52and I think a lot of Scandinavian writers use this to great effect.
0:17:54 > 0:17:57The climate reflects
0:17:57 > 0:17:59the minds of the people.
0:17:59 > 0:18:02I had an English friend, he had a woman in Finland
0:18:02 > 0:18:04and he spent ten years in Finland,
0:18:04 > 0:18:07and the woman left him after the first year.
0:18:07 > 0:18:09He said, "I'm getting so depressed, what's wrong?"
0:18:09 > 0:18:12And I said "The wrong thing is that you're in Finland."
0:18:12 > 0:18:16Then he eventually went back to London and he was fine in two weeks.
0:18:16 > 0:18:20You need to be from the Nordic countries
0:18:20 > 0:18:24to stay alive happily here, I think.
0:18:34 > 0:18:38Of all the landscapes that might challenge humankind's instinct for survival,
0:18:38 > 0:18:40few are bleaker than Iceland,
0:18:40 > 0:18:44home to the brooding weather-obsessed crime novels
0:18:44 > 0:18:46of Arnaldur Indridason.
0:18:46 > 0:18:51Indridason writes for people who recognise the locales,
0:18:51 > 0:18:57who understand the terrors and dangers of the wilderness of Iceland.
0:18:57 > 0:18:59It's a place where people can disappear.
0:19:07 > 0:19:09It was still raining.
0:19:09 > 0:19:13The low-pressure fronts that moved in from deep in the Atlantic
0:19:13 > 0:19:18at that time of year headed east across Iceland in succession,
0:19:18 > 0:19:22bringing wind, wet and dark winter gloom.
0:19:24 > 0:19:28Little wonder that Indridason's main character,
0:19:28 > 0:19:31Detective Erlendur, is so depressed.
0:19:32 > 0:19:34And it's the long dark nights,
0:19:34 > 0:19:38which in those books become the long dark night of the soul,
0:19:38 > 0:19:41usually for the detective, who is usually going through a bad time.
0:19:41 > 0:19:44There are very few detectives who have good happy personal lives,
0:19:44 > 0:19:47certainly in Scandinavian crime fiction.
0:19:47 > 0:19:49Erlendur's cheerless personal life
0:19:49 > 0:19:52is portrayed with a hint of pitch-black humour
0:19:52 > 0:19:54by director Baltasar Kormakur
0:19:54 > 0:19:58in the film Jar City, with actor Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson
0:19:58 > 0:20:00delivering a bone-dry performance
0:20:00 > 0:20:04as he tucks into an Icelandic delicacy of sheep's head
0:20:04 > 0:20:06while babysitting his junkie daughter.
0:20:38 > 0:20:42When you read a writer like Indridason from Iceland,
0:20:42 > 0:20:47those books are really quite dark and grim and difficult,
0:20:47 > 0:20:51but they're shot through with
0:20:51 > 0:20:55dark and awful bits of humour.
0:20:55 > 0:20:58People laugh at the worst sort of things,
0:20:58 > 0:21:01but that also reflects a kind of reality.
0:21:01 > 0:21:04When life is grim and dark, people find something to laugh at.
0:21:07 > 0:21:09Laughs are at a premium in Jar City,
0:21:09 > 0:21:13a macabre story about missing organs and genetic manipulation,
0:21:13 > 0:21:16inspired by a controversial real-life plan
0:21:16 > 0:21:19to create a DNA database of every Icelander.
0:21:21 > 0:21:26Jar City is one of the very best Scandinavian modern crime novels,
0:21:26 > 0:21:28and one of the best modern crime novels.
0:21:28 > 0:21:32It's interesting that that's a book driven by the hatred and fear
0:21:32 > 0:21:34of the surveillance society.
0:21:34 > 0:21:38It's based on a true life case of the availability of
0:21:38 > 0:21:41genetic material to one company.
0:21:41 > 0:21:46The Jar City of the title is human organs in jars.
0:21:46 > 0:21:48It's a horrific novel.
0:21:50 > 0:21:52And you keep all these secrets.
0:21:52 > 0:21:55Old family secrets.
0:21:55 > 0:22:01Tragedies, sorrows and death, all carefully classified in computers.
0:22:01 > 0:22:04Family stories and stories of individuals.
0:22:04 > 0:22:07Stories about me and you.
0:22:07 > 0:22:12You keep the whole secret and can call it up whenever you want.
0:22:12 > 0:22:15A Jar City for the whole nation.
0:22:18 > 0:22:22Dark secrets, bleak landscapes, grim weather
0:22:22 > 0:22:25and famously long winter nights.
0:22:25 > 0:22:30It's a world where the first chink of light comes as a blessed relief.
0:22:32 > 0:22:37The longing for the summer, the longing for the returning of light,
0:22:37 > 0:22:42of course it's a pagan tradition, but something that is deeply ingrained in all Scandinavians.
0:22:48 > 0:22:51Midsummer in Sweden.
0:22:51 > 0:22:53If you'd been here in the '60s,
0:22:53 > 0:22:58you could be forgiven for thinking you were in paradise.
0:22:58 > 0:23:02Anyone in this permissive society can buy contraceptives in the street
0:23:02 > 0:23:04or pornographic magazines.
0:23:07 > 0:23:11A liberal Utopia of free love and welfare for all.
0:23:11 > 0:23:12Or was it?
0:23:14 > 0:23:18I came to London for the first time in '66 and '67.
0:23:18 > 0:23:24'67 was the flower power summer, and then they said, "Oh you're from Sweden, the country of free love."
0:23:24 > 0:23:28"What?" I was 17 and I had no experience of
0:23:28 > 0:23:31free love in Sweden whatsoever, so that was definitely a myth.
0:23:31 > 0:23:35We made one or two films with some naked bodies and that was it,
0:23:35 > 0:23:38but we were never the country of free love, I can tell you.
0:23:40 > 0:23:44There was even a feeling in some quarters that the fabled welfare state,
0:23:44 > 0:23:50designed to use Sweden's post-war prosperity to fund healthcare and benefits,
0:23:50 > 0:23:52had failed to live up to expectations.
0:23:54 > 0:23:58That sense of disillusionment prompted two left-wing reporters,
0:23:58 > 0:24:04Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, to begin work on a series of ten crime novels
0:24:04 > 0:24:10that pioneered the idea of using detective fiction to analyse the state of the nation.
0:24:10 > 0:24:13The template for Scandinavian crime fiction.
0:24:16 > 0:24:19They began it all. They began it all in the sense of taking the police
0:24:19 > 0:24:25procedural of Ed McBain and putting it down in modern Scandinavia.
0:24:25 > 0:24:30They also added this social dimension, they gave it a Marxist perspective
0:24:30 > 0:24:35and that's unfashionable now, but that political perspective is what's lived on from their work.
0:25:18 > 0:25:23In 1965, Sjowall and Wahloo began to write crime stories
0:25:23 > 0:25:26about a unit of the Stockholm police
0:25:26 > 0:25:28led by Inspector Martin Beck,
0:25:28 > 0:25:33stories with a hidden agenda they called "the project".
0:25:55 > 0:26:00For the fact of the matter is that the so-called welfare state abounds
0:26:00 > 0:26:02with sick, poor, and lonely people,
0:26:02 > 0:26:07living at best on dog food, who are left uncared for
0:26:07 > 0:26:12until they waste away and die in their rat hole tenements.
0:26:12 > 0:26:15Their novels were subtitled as the story of a crime,
0:26:15 > 0:26:19the crime of the social democrats
0:26:19 > 0:26:23leaving the working class behind.
0:26:23 > 0:26:29The welfare state doesn't seem to live up to its socialist ideals
0:26:29 > 0:26:31from the left perspective.
0:26:31 > 0:26:35Maybe that is what all Scandinavian crime fiction is about, the death of the dreamers.
0:26:35 > 0:26:40It is the light that failed, Scandinavian crime fiction, that is the basis of it all.
0:26:40 > 0:26:42It's the fact that everything goes wrong.
0:26:44 > 0:26:50It was quite surprising reading those books because the image of Sweden that we had in this country
0:26:50 > 0:26:56was that it was this socialist paradise, and that although the taxes were high, they had found
0:26:56 > 0:27:00this marvellous golden mean, where everything was lovely.
0:27:00 > 0:27:03Then you read the Martin Beck novels, and you think,
0:27:03 > 0:27:06"Wait a minute, this is quite a different picture we're seeing here."
0:27:10 > 0:27:16The overtly political subtext of the books marked a radical first in Swedish crime fiction,
0:27:16 > 0:27:22and Martin Beck became the prototype for the classic Scandinavian detective.
0:27:25 > 0:27:30'Martin Beck sat on the green bench in the subway car and looked out
0:27:30 > 0:27:33'through the rain-blurred window.
0:27:33 > 0:27:36'He thought about his marriage apathetically,
0:27:36 > 0:27:40'but when he realised that he was sitting there feeling sorry for himself,
0:27:40 > 0:27:46'he took his newspaper out of his trench-coat pocket and tried to concentrate on the editorial page.
0:27:46 > 0:27:49'He disliked the subway,
0:27:49 > 0:27:55'but since he cared even less for bumper to bumper traffic, and that "dream apartment"
0:27:55 > 0:28:01'in the centre of the city was still only a dream, he had no choice at the moment.'
0:28:01 > 0:28:06Beck is very much a human character.
0:28:06 > 0:28:10He's flawed, he has a difficult relationship with his wife, and with his family.
0:28:10 > 0:28:13Some of his relationships with his colleagues are difficult.
0:28:13 > 0:28:19He's kind of dyspeptic and gloomy, and he's not in any sense heroic,
0:28:19 > 0:28:24but he's a man who thinks about his place in the world, and he thinks very carefully about his job.
0:28:24 > 0:28:27He's thoughtful and he's compassionate.
0:28:29 > 0:28:31I think he's very modern.
0:28:31 > 0:28:37He's rather cool in the sense of being you're never quite sure what he is thinking at any given time.
0:28:37 > 0:28:39Slightly existential approach
0:28:39 > 0:28:40to the problems around him,
0:28:40 > 0:28:42and completely in touch with
0:28:42 > 0:28:43what is happening in society.
0:28:43 > 0:28:47He knows his society inside out,
0:28:47 > 0:28:50which not every copper does.
0:28:53 > 0:28:57It was realistic, it was not romantic,
0:28:57 > 0:29:01it was a hard-working police officer,
0:29:01 > 0:29:03easy to like,
0:29:03 > 0:29:07not very happy, not very lucky with women.
0:29:07 > 0:29:12I believed in him, you can't believe in Agatha Christie the same way.
0:29:12 > 0:29:17The realism of the novels was considered shocking for the time.
0:29:47 > 0:29:50Looking back more than 40 years later,
0:29:50 > 0:29:56Maj Sjowall still fondly recalls the long nights she spent with Per Wahloo putting the world to rights.
0:30:33 > 0:30:36Per Wahloo died in 1975,
0:30:36 > 0:30:41just as the final book in the series was published.
0:30:41 > 0:30:44The Terrorists would be his epitaph,
0:30:44 > 0:30:48and its plot about a political assassination in Stockholm
0:30:48 > 0:30:51would prove eerily prophetic.
0:30:52 > 0:30:57Shocked Stockholmers who heard the news of the tragedy hurried to the scene of the crime...
0:30:57 > 0:31:01As he and his wife, Lisbet, walked home from the cinema entirely on their own,
0:31:01 > 0:31:05the murderer simply walked up to the Prime Minister and shot him twice in the stomach...
0:31:05 > 0:31:08Olof Palme had taken an evening off to go to the cinema with his wife.
0:31:08 > 0:31:14A couple of hundred yards from the cinema, a man approached the couple and shot Olof Palme at close range.
0:31:14 > 0:31:16Mr Palme collapsed in a pool of blood.
0:31:16 > 0:31:19The killing of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme
0:31:19 > 0:31:26on February 28th 1986, sent shockwaves across Scandinavia.
0:31:26 > 0:31:31They used to say that we lost our innocence when Palme was shot,
0:31:31 > 0:31:38and of course in a way it's true because the Prime Minister was shot in middle of Stockholm,
0:31:38 > 0:31:39right in the centre of the city.
0:31:39 > 0:31:45It's like 9/11 - you know where you were, how you heard the news
0:31:45 > 0:31:49the first time, and we were in shock after that.
0:31:54 > 0:31:57Swedes perceived the state
0:31:57 > 0:32:02as a benevolent entity, which is their hope and their father figure, in a sense.
0:32:02 > 0:32:07And obviously the prime minister then symbolises the state,
0:32:07 > 0:32:09regardless of which party
0:32:09 > 0:32:15he happens to come from, so killing the prime was an attack on...
0:32:17 > 0:32:20..the benevolent mainstay of society.
0:32:20 > 0:32:24Despite a lengthy manhunt and countless conspiracy theories,
0:32:24 > 0:32:28the murder of Olof Palme has never been solved.
0:32:28 > 0:32:33The inability of the police to solve the murder has become
0:32:33 > 0:32:36a wound that cannot heal in Sweden,
0:32:36 > 0:32:39and something most crime writers
0:32:39 > 0:32:43more or less explicitly return to.
0:32:43 > 0:32:50It was the end of the dream of this harmonious, happy, just,
0:32:50 > 0:32:52controlled society.
0:32:52 > 0:32:58It's a mystery that continues to cast a shadow over Swedish society.
0:32:58 > 0:33:03There was the sense that these things, these kind of arbitrary,
0:33:03 > 0:33:07brutal political assassinations, couldn't happen in Sweden.
0:33:07 > 0:33:11Swedes suddenly had to realise that the world was a dangerous place.
0:33:11 > 0:33:14It was kind of the scales falling from the eyes,
0:33:14 > 0:33:19it was that kind of moment, but it led to all kinds of reassessments
0:33:19 > 0:33:23of that social democrat ideal - how intact was it?
0:33:23 > 0:33:27It made Swedes realise they were kind of like the rest of the world.
0:33:27 > 0:33:32Then it seemed that all the other troubles of the rest of the world flooded in.
0:33:36 > 0:33:40With borders crumbling after the collapse of Communism and membership
0:33:40 > 0:33:45of the EU ratified in 1994, a new wave of migrants sought refuge
0:33:45 > 0:33:52and opportunity in countries like Sweden, creating tensions in what had once been homogeneous societies.
0:33:56 > 0:34:04There was in Scandinavia from the beginning of the '80s a growing sense of insecurity towards
0:34:04 > 0:34:09the outside world, what will become of our countries with the pressures
0:34:09 > 0:34:12of globalisation and neoliberalism.
0:34:12 > 0:34:19Those anxieties are at the heart of a series of acclaimed crime stories set in the small port of Ystad
0:34:19 > 0:34:25and written by an author who had grown up with the radical politics of Sjowall and Wahloo,
0:34:25 > 0:34:28but now found a country struggling to open up to the world...
0:34:28 > 0:34:31Henning Mankell.
0:34:32 > 0:34:37It was 1988 and I realised that the problem with xenophobia
0:34:37 > 0:34:42and racism was growing heavily and very fast in Sweden.
0:34:42 > 0:34:44I decided that I wanted to write about that.
0:34:44 > 0:34:50And since these kinds of expressions, xenophobic reactions
0:34:50 > 0:34:54to certain things, is to me a criminal gesture,
0:34:54 > 0:34:58I decided to use the crime plot and to write about that.
0:34:58 > 0:35:05I wanted to describe how difficult it is to be a good police officer.
0:35:05 > 0:35:12Mankell's creation, an angst-ridden detective in the Martin Beck mould, would go on to become
0:35:12 > 0:35:15the a TV staple - the definitive Scandinavian detective,
0:35:15 > 0:35:18Inspector Kurt Wallander.
0:35:18 > 0:35:22'Maybe the times require another kind of policeman, he thought.
0:35:22 > 0:35:27'Policemen who aren't distressed when they're forced to go into a human slaughterhouse
0:35:27 > 0:35:31'in the Swedish countryside early on a January morning.
0:35:31 > 0:35:36'Policemen who don't suffer from my uncertainty and anguish.'
0:35:45 > 0:35:52Conveying Wallander's inner turmoil on screen presents the kind of challenge that actors relish.
0:35:54 > 0:35:57Kenneth Branagh plays him with theatrical intensity,
0:35:57 > 0:36:04but it takes a Swede like Krister Henriksson to channel the melancholy spirit of Ingmar Bergman,
0:36:04 > 0:36:08as we see in a scene where opera music is used to emphasise Wallander's solitude
0:36:08 > 0:36:11in the Swedish TV version.
0:36:17 > 0:36:23The Swedish prototype for a detective is that - Wallander is, even -
0:36:23 > 0:36:27you're tired, depressed, you're almost suicidal,
0:36:27 > 0:36:31but that's also the Ingmar Bergman type.
0:36:31 > 0:36:37We are not supposed to talk like I do, we are supposed to sit there and stare blankly out into the darkness.
0:36:43 > 0:36:45That is the picture you have
0:36:45 > 0:36:47of a Swede, isn't it?
0:37:17 > 0:37:23Wallander's gift for police work has come at a price, something the Swedish TV series explores through
0:37:23 > 0:37:27his awkward relationship with his daughter, Linda, a junior police officer.
0:37:48 > 0:37:52The off-screen dynamic between actors Krister Henriksson
0:37:52 > 0:37:59and Johanna Sallstrom brings an intimate realism to this scene about Linda's decision to become a cop.
0:38:46 > 0:38:50Henriksson brings an air of world-weary disenchantment
0:38:50 > 0:38:54to a character weighed down by the horrors he has witnessed.
0:38:54 > 0:39:00Krister Henriksson's performances are very subtle and understated, and we study him intensely when we know
0:39:00 > 0:39:04he's had a bad emotional experience, it's not going to be on the surface.
0:39:04 > 0:39:08We have to read it in the crinkle of an eye.
0:39:08 > 0:39:14In this scene from an episode called The Container, we see Wallander's reaction of mute shock
0:39:14 > 0:39:20when he arrives at the final resting place of a group of refugees who died on their way into the country.
0:39:29 > 0:39:34All the evils of the world wash up on the shores of Ystad
0:39:34 > 0:39:40in Mankell's novels and the 26 stories he created specially for Swedish TV.
0:40:09 > 0:40:13The problem with immigration, that's now a kind of sore point.
0:40:13 > 0:40:17Swedes prided themselves on their liberalism, but they had to admit that
0:40:17 > 0:40:21it's a problem for them, the way it's a problem for the rest of the world.
0:40:21 > 0:40:27What we're watching now, according to Henning Mankell for instance, is Sweden's fall from grace, isn't it?
0:40:27 > 0:40:31There must be something rotten in the state of Sweden.
0:40:33 > 0:40:36Mankell's bid to explore national anxieties through
0:40:36 > 0:40:42the prism of murder in a small town has taken its toll on the fictional citizens of Ystad.
0:40:44 > 0:40:48In Mankell's novels I suppose there have been a couple hundred murders
0:40:48 > 0:40:55in last 20 years or so, whereas in reality I can't think of a single one.
0:41:00 > 0:41:03Don't go to Ystad, you'll get killed before tomorrow.
0:41:03 > 0:41:04So, yeah. No.
0:41:04 > 0:41:07That's where realism ends.
0:41:10 > 0:41:17Ystad might be a town under siege from external forces, but further west among Norway's mountains
0:41:17 > 0:41:21and fjords, it is the evil within tiny communities
0:41:21 > 0:41:25that fascinates poet turned crime writer Karin Fossum.
0:41:31 > 0:41:36'The village lay in the bottom of a valley, at the end of a fjord,
0:41:36 > 0:41:38'at the foot of a mountain.
0:41:38 > 0:41:43'Like a pool in a river, where the water was much too still.
0:41:43 > 0:41:47'And everyone knows that only running water is fresh.
0:41:51 > 0:41:55Well, I live in a small community myself.
0:41:55 > 0:41:58It's a small village, it's a church,
0:41:58 > 0:42:01it's a school, it's a lake, it's a mountain.
0:42:01 > 0:42:06If someone gets killed I will probably know
0:42:06 > 0:42:09either the person itself
0:42:09 > 0:42:13or some of the family or the relatives.
0:42:14 > 0:42:20The pressures that can build up in a small community are at the heart of novels steeped in
0:42:20 > 0:42:25the psychological intensity of Norway's national playwright Henrik Ibsen.
0:42:25 > 0:42:30Ibsen is one of the great purveyors of this kind of thinking,
0:42:30 > 0:42:34that social situations, the social environment
0:42:34 > 0:42:41can create social outcasts who may act irrationally
0:42:41 > 0:42:45and in Karin Fossum's novels violently.
0:42:45 > 0:42:48Karin Fossum is a very interesting writer
0:42:48 > 0:42:54because she understands the relationship between killer
0:42:54 > 0:42:57and victim, she understands that these things generally don't happen
0:42:57 > 0:43:02in an accidental kind of way, that there are connections and reasons,
0:43:02 > 0:43:07and I think she writes with great compassion for both sides
0:43:07 > 0:43:12of the equation, if you like, for the person who finds themself killing
0:43:12 > 0:43:14and the person who ends up being killed.
0:43:15 > 0:43:21Fossum brings a poet's sensitivity to stories that deal with emotion rather than mystery.
0:43:23 > 0:43:29Many crime stories, they start with a picture of the dead body.
0:43:29 > 0:43:35If you don't know the dead body you won't be moved by the story,
0:43:35 > 0:43:41you won't feel anything, and my passion as a writer, sometimes even my problem as a writer,
0:43:41 > 0:43:46is that I'm trying to make you feel something.
0:43:46 > 0:43:47I want to move you.
0:43:47 > 0:43:52I'm not trying to be clever or to make clever plots.
0:43:52 > 0:43:59I don't care too much about the plot, it's not important to me, but I would like to move you emotionally.
0:44:05 > 0:44:09Karin Fossum's empathy for both killer and victim
0:44:09 > 0:44:13is rooted in her personal experience of a traumatic crime.
0:44:14 > 0:44:21Someone I knew very well committed a murder many years ago.
0:44:21 > 0:44:26I had known this person for 18 years,
0:44:26 > 0:44:32and suddenly this was not just a note in paper.
0:44:32 > 0:44:37I knew the killer, I knew the victim - the victim was a child.
0:44:37 > 0:44:39I knew the flat,
0:44:39 > 0:44:41I had been there many times.
0:44:41 > 0:44:44I knew the exact specific room.
0:44:46 > 0:44:52And I thought, "But this is a good person, it can't be!"
0:44:52 > 0:44:55It was a very, very strong experience for a writer,
0:44:55 > 0:45:00and suddenly I understood this can happen to anyone,
0:45:00 > 0:45:05it could have been my father or my brother, and every time I read about
0:45:05 > 0:45:11a murder, I think, "He has a mother, he has a brother, he has children."
0:45:11 > 0:45:15Up until this date, he was a good guy.
0:45:16 > 0:45:19'Why did you hit her?
0:45:19 > 0:45:21'Why?
0:45:21 > 0:45:23'I was holding the dumb-bell in my hand.
0:45:23 > 0:45:28'She was curled up with her hands over her head waiting for the blow.
0:45:28 > 0:45:32'Couldn't you have turned around and left?
0:45:32 > 0:45:34'No.
0:45:34 > 0:45:37'I need to know why.
0:45:37 > 0:45:39'Because I'd reached a boiling point.
0:45:39 > 0:45:42'I could hardly breathe.
0:45:42 > 0:45:46'Could you breathe again after she collapsed?
0:45:46 > 0:45:48'Yes.
0:45:48 > 0:45:50'I could breathe again.'
0:45:56 > 0:46:01I'm writing about death, not murder, not killing,
0:46:01 > 0:46:07not psychopaths, but death itself and how it affects us.
0:46:12 > 0:46:18The remote communities in Karin Fossum's books are in sharp contrast to the bustling cities
0:46:18 > 0:46:23that flaunt Norway's status as one of the world's wealthiest nations.
0:46:25 > 0:46:32The discovery of oil in the 1970s transformed the fortunes of a country of just four million people,
0:46:32 > 0:46:39and it continues to shape the Norway of today, as chronicled in the thrillers of Jo Nesbo.
0:46:48 > 0:46:52After the Second World War, Norway was a poor country.
0:46:52 > 0:46:58If you go back to '20s, Norway was one of poorest countries in Europe,
0:46:58 > 0:47:04together with Portugal, Northern Ireland and Greece. But in the '70s,
0:47:04 > 0:47:10the Norwegians, or actually the Americans found oil outside the Norwegian west coast,
0:47:10 > 0:47:14and suddenly overnight, Norway became a very rich country.
0:47:14 > 0:47:21And, yes, I think it certainly changed the soul of the country.
0:47:23 > 0:47:26In Nesbo's world, the battle for Norway's soul
0:47:26 > 0:47:31has left a moral vacuum filled with crooked cops and serial killers.
0:47:31 > 0:47:37You would think that more money would give us more space and better opportunities
0:47:37 > 0:47:43to feel solidarity with the rest of the world, but actually it seems the other way around -
0:47:43 > 0:47:46that money has to some degree corrupted us.
0:47:49 > 0:47:54'The afternoon sun angled across the town and came to rest in Bjorvika,
0:47:54 > 0:48:01'an area of Oslo containing a motorway, a deposit for shipping containers and a refuge for junkies,
0:48:01 > 0:48:07'but it was soon to have an opera house, hotels and millionaires' apartments.
0:48:07 > 0:48:12'Wealth was beginning to take the whole city by storm.
0:48:12 > 0:48:15'It made Harry think of the catfish in the rivers in Africa,
0:48:15 > 0:48:19'the large, black fish that didn't have the sense to swim into deeper
0:48:19 > 0:48:23'waters when the drought came, and in the end were trapped in
0:48:23 > 0:48:26'one of the muddy pools that slowly dried up.'
0:48:28 > 0:48:31Nesbo gave up lucrative careers as a stockbroker
0:48:31 > 0:48:36and member of one of Norway's most famous rock bands to write crime fiction.
0:48:36 > 0:48:39His protagonist is Detective Harry Hole,
0:48:39 > 0:48:43a Norwegian take on the maverick American style of cop.
0:48:43 > 0:48:47It's clear that Jo Nesbo has read Raymond Chandler,
0:48:47 > 0:48:50and Harry Hole may be in Scandinavia,
0:48:50 > 0:48:54but there's an American hard-boiled sardonic quality to him.
0:48:54 > 0:49:00The fact that he's loner essentially and he's not particularly good at relating to people.
0:49:00 > 0:49:04That may be something in the Norwegian way of thinking and our culture.
0:49:04 > 0:49:08We don't want to be part of big things, we want to have
0:49:08 > 0:49:10our own farm,
0:49:10 > 0:49:16our own small fishing boat and get by doing our own thing.
0:49:16 > 0:49:20In Nesbo's dark thrillers, Harry Hole is driven by
0:49:20 > 0:49:23the desire to understand the killers he is hunting.
0:49:23 > 0:49:28Harry has been fascinated with evil for a long time,
0:49:28 > 0:49:33and that has of course to do with
0:49:33 > 0:49:36the writer's fascination with evil.
0:49:36 > 0:49:39I think for me, it started when I was a young boy,
0:49:39 > 0:49:42I can remember in the classroom
0:49:42 > 0:49:44there was a guy who was sitting on the window row
0:49:44 > 0:49:47and he would catch flies in the windowsill,
0:49:47 > 0:49:51and then he would start picking, using tweezers
0:49:51 > 0:49:55to pick off one leg and then the wings.
0:49:55 > 0:50:02Of course this is not unusual, but what fascinated me was the tweezer.
0:50:02 > 0:50:08It was the idea of this boy being at home,
0:50:08 > 0:50:11and planning what he would do when he'd get to the classroom.
0:50:11 > 0:50:19But, anyway, the fascination for what goes on in the human mind probably started there and then.
0:50:21 > 0:50:29He's very much in a Hollywood tradition, and that sets him apart, and also makes him interesting in
0:50:29 > 0:50:33a Scandinavian context because he still writes from within
0:50:33 > 0:50:35a Norwegian cultural context.
0:50:41 > 0:50:47For Nesbo, even the innocent snowman becomes the stuff of nightmares.
0:50:49 > 0:50:55It's a woman who's coming home in the evening, and she comes into kitchen where her husband
0:50:55 > 0:50:59and son is making dinner for her, and she will say, "How nice,
0:50:59 > 0:51:03"you're making dinner for me, and what a nice snowman you've built in the garden."
0:51:03 > 0:51:09They sort of stop and look up at her and say, "We haven't built the snowman."
0:51:09 > 0:51:16So they go into the living room and they look at this big snowman standing in the garden.
0:51:16 > 0:51:20It's too big, and it's too close to the house and it's turned the wrong way
0:51:20 > 0:51:25because it's looking directly into the living room, looking at them.
0:51:25 > 0:51:28That was sort of... You know, I didn't know how
0:51:28 > 0:51:34this scene would connect to the rest of the story, but I knew that was the starting point for a story.
0:51:36 > 0:51:38'"Cordon off the whole area,"
0:51:38 > 0:51:40'Harry said.
0:51:40 > 0:51:43'His throat felt dry, rough.
0:51:43 > 0:51:45'"I'm calling in the troops."
0:51:45 > 0:51:49'"What's happened?" "There's a snowman here." "So?"
0:51:49 > 0:51:51'Harry explained.
0:51:51 > 0:51:53'"I didn't catch the last bit,"
0:51:53 > 0:51:56'Holm shouted. "Poor coverage."
0:51:56 > 0:52:02'"The head," Harry repeated, "it belongs to Sylvia Ottersen."'
0:52:06 > 0:52:14Jo Nesbo is part of another trend in Scandinavian crime fiction that does turn for the more bloody.
0:52:14 > 0:52:20Where do you go in Scandinavian crime fiction after you've torn apart the welfare system,
0:52:20 > 0:52:25you have asked all the questions about why people are so violent,
0:52:25 > 0:52:28what is happening to our societies? Where do you go after that?
0:52:28 > 0:52:35And one of the answers in more recent Scandinavian crime is you go into more blood and more violence.
0:52:38 > 0:52:43Jo Nesbo isn't the first Norwegian to use gruesome imagery in his work.
0:52:43 > 0:52:47This is the country that produced an extreme genre of Satanic rock music
0:52:47 > 0:52:54known as black metal, once Norway's most gory and violent export.
0:52:54 > 0:53:02They didn't only talk about being anti-Christ, they actually burned churches.
0:53:02 > 0:53:06I think that people throughout the world, they were impressed with that.
0:53:06 > 0:53:12I can remember going to Mexico many years ago, and I went to this punk market and you would have stands
0:53:12 > 0:53:16there selling Norwegian black metal,
0:53:16 > 0:53:21and they would have written on the cassettes
0:53:21 > 0:53:23"guaranteed Norwegian"!
0:53:31 > 0:53:36Jo Nesbo is just one of many writers carrying the hopes of publishers
0:53:36 > 0:53:40eager to replicate the multimillion-selling success
0:53:40 > 0:53:46that began in Europe with Henning Mankell and reached the world with Stieg Larsson.
0:53:46 > 0:53:48It's something that has to do with marketing.
0:53:48 > 0:53:55I mean, we were successful in Germany and we had a few good writers and these books are selling.
0:53:55 > 0:53:58Stieg Larsson's, for instance, enormously well, but it will pass.
0:53:58 > 0:54:01We used to have good tennis players too, some years ago.
0:54:01 > 0:54:07Stieg Larsson might have done for Scandinavian crime what Bjorn Borg did for tennis,
0:54:07 > 0:54:11but he was destined never to enjoy the fruits of his success.
0:54:11 > 0:54:16He died in 2004, not in a right-wing plot but on his way to work.
0:54:18 > 0:54:22It's the case of the journalist who doesn't look after his body.
0:54:22 > 0:54:26Hold the front page! It's a man who lives on junk food,
0:54:26 > 0:54:29who smokes prodigiously, has a phenomenal nicotine intake,
0:54:29 > 0:54:33an awful lot of coffee, which is certainly reflected in the book.
0:54:33 > 0:54:38If he'd died at the hands of the far right, it would have been with baseball bats outside his office.
0:54:38 > 0:54:41It wasn't... He died because he came to the office,
0:54:41 > 0:54:48the lift was broken, he had to go up six flights of stairs, and his body finally gave out. It's that prosaic.
0:54:48 > 0:54:53The whole situation is extremely sad, Stieg lived to be 50 years old
0:54:53 > 0:55:01and a couple of months, and never in his life had any money.
0:55:01 > 0:55:04Not that he ever wanted any money,
0:55:04 > 0:55:08but he would have liked to have had a fair amount of money
0:55:08 > 0:55:12so that he could maybe hire one or two more people at Expo
0:55:12 > 0:55:14and so do more of his own writing.
0:55:14 > 0:55:19That's about what he was hoping for when he sold his novels.
0:55:19 > 0:55:22He never saw anything of the, by now,
0:55:22 > 0:55:27hundreds of millions involved in the Millennium franchise.
0:55:28 > 0:55:33Larsson did bequeath the world one final mystery.
0:55:33 > 0:55:38There is the mystery of the fourth book, what exists of it,
0:55:38 > 0:55:40it changes on a daily basis.
0:55:40 > 0:55:42It's like the plot of a Stieg Larsson novel.
0:55:42 > 0:55:46Recently, an email has come to light which seems to suggest
0:55:46 > 0:55:49that two-thirds of it were written, which wasn't what we heard before.
0:55:49 > 0:55:52A beginning was written, an end was written,
0:55:52 > 0:55:54it needs something in the middle.
0:55:54 > 0:55:57It has a Canadian setting, a bleak Canadian setting.
0:55:57 > 0:56:01I personally can't see the value of it being completed by anyone,
0:56:01 > 0:56:04because there is such a sense of the three Millennium books
0:56:04 > 0:56:06being this perfect entity.
0:56:07 > 0:56:11Larsson's heroes aren't the only ones whose adventures
0:56:11 > 0:56:12appear to have come to an end.
0:56:12 > 0:56:16Even Wallander is about to hang up his badge,
0:56:16 > 0:56:20and Henning Mankell felt unable to continue a planned series
0:56:20 > 0:56:24about Linda Wallander following the suicide of Johanna Sallstrom,
0:56:24 > 0:56:27the actress whose charisma lit up the screen
0:56:27 > 0:56:30and the set of the Swedish TV series.
0:57:02 > 0:57:07Much-loved characters might have reached the final chapter,
0:57:07 > 0:57:11but the kind of fictional heroes who follow in their footsteps
0:57:11 > 0:57:15will be determined as much by Scandinavia's future as its past.
0:57:15 > 0:57:16What will come,
0:57:16 > 0:57:20what kind of crime fiction will be popular in the future, is hard to say
0:57:20 > 0:57:25but I think the sort of Wallander-type of crime novels
0:57:25 > 0:57:30will still have a place and inspiration for new crime writers.
0:57:30 > 0:57:32What we see in the younger generation
0:57:32 > 0:57:36is that yes, they are still reflecting on particular landscapes,
0:57:36 > 0:57:37particular social situations,
0:57:37 > 0:57:43they are not so much engaged in the directions of their own societies.
0:57:43 > 0:57:45They are much more interested
0:57:45 > 0:57:48in finding out what happens in a globalised world.
0:57:50 > 0:57:53There might not be many happy endings,
0:57:53 > 0:57:55but in societies that tend to crave order,
0:57:55 > 0:57:59there'll always be someone willing to stare out into the darkness
0:57:59 > 0:58:03and make sense of a turbulent and ever-changing world.
0:58:03 > 0:58:06There is a sense that right is done
0:58:06 > 0:58:10at the end of most Scandinavian crime novels,
0:58:10 > 0:58:12but never in a resounding way.
0:58:12 > 0:58:16There is always a sense that there is someone out there,
0:58:16 > 0:58:19he may have put down one particular nasty piece of work or corruption,
0:58:19 > 0:58:23but out there are people-trafficking gangs, out there are sexual abusers,
0:58:23 > 0:58:26but at least for the duration of that one novel,
0:58:26 > 0:58:28justice has been seen to be done.
0:58:28 > 0:58:30Maybe imperfectly, but it's been done.
0:58:43 > 0:58:46Subtitles by Red Bee Media
0:58:46 > 0:58:50Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk