Abstract
Nordic noir has been much studied in the recent years. It has been analysed, for instance, from the perspectives of production practices (Hochscherf and Philipsen 2017), place and location studies (Hansen and Waade 2017) and adaptation theory (Badley et al., 2020) and innumerable journal articles have been dedicated to aspects of Nordic noir. None of this is surprising, considering that the ‘genre’ is a derivative of film noir, itself a famously slippery concept: academic works on film noir could fill a small library. Like film noir, Nordic noir can be productively explored from numerous angles, each shedding new light on it and broadening our understanding of what is involved. Furthermore, the endless stream of new Nordic noir series, many of which try to do something new and different, demands researchers to modify existing views on the topic.
Robert A. Saunders approaches Nordic noir from the perspective of geopolitics, asking how the Nordic region is represented in these series and what that can tell us about contemporary political concerns – ranging from globalisation via neoliberalism to right-wing nationalism – across Northern Europe. The foundation of his argument is that Nordic noir is geopolitical television for a number of reasons: the series engage international themes; they build worlds based on situated social, geographical and political understanding; and they interrogate questions of domestic versus foreign identities via narratives. To provide a comprehensive background to his case studies, Saunders looks at the contemporary history of the Nordic region, paying particular attention to the welfare state (its ‘dark side’ included) and challenges related to maintaining it in the evolving world.
Saunders’ empirical analyses focus on Nordic noir in terms of different geographic ‘scales’, the first being the corporeal. He explores how historically-defined organic communities are challenged by transnational pressures in Monster (2017), Trapped (2015–), Midnight Sun (2016) and Fortitude (2015–18). The second scale is the borderland, which is related to questions of how territorial frontiers, international boundaries, demarcated social spaces, bridges, bodies of waters and other liminal zones are narrated in Dicte – Crime Reporter (2013–16), The Bridge (2011–18) and Bordertown (2016–22). The third geographic scale is the nation-state. Saunders demonstrates how political imaginaries bound to territorial realms are represented in Stella Blómkvist (2014–15), Occupied (2015–20), Nobel (2016) and Blue Eyes (2014–15). The case studies provide valuable insights on Nordic noir as geopolitics, demonstrating how the series reveal rather than fix cracks in the welfare state.
From the exploration of Nordic noir on the three geographic scales, Saunders shifts his point of view to issues of adaptation, transplantation and impact on transnational scale. In the chapter that concludes the book he discusses how Nordic noir evolves when removed from the Nordic region. His examples include, for example, Nordic noir parodies, various international adaptations of The Bridge and shows inspired by Nordic noir such as the British Marcella (2016–21). The analyses strengthen the argument that Nordic noir is a global phenomenon, shaping ways in which television is made outside the Nordic region.
Throughout his book Saunders draws from geopolitics, Nordic studies and television studies, situating his work within a larger community of scholarship. The book shines in the first two areas and it certainly does not fail in the third, but it would have benefitted from closer analysis of television style and narration. At times these are replaced with views of showrunners, which are insightful, but do little to explain how the analysed themes are present in the actual works and how they cue viewers towards certain experiences. At times I was left wondering whether Saunders is reading geopolitics into the series or geopolitics from the series. Despite that, the conclusion he provides is solid and compelling: from Nordic noir ‘it is possible to gain a better understanding of how the world actually works’ (p. 185). Overall, Saunders has written a wonderful book that enriches our understanding of Nordic noir, pushing its research towards new directions.