Since I casually gleaned over the Comp Lit section of my course catalog senior year, where I noticed but didn’t give much thought to a class offering on Scandinavian literature, my radar has sharpened on this particular, peculiar breed of writing. The class was called COMP 212 (S)Nordic Lights: Literary and Cultural Diversity in Modern Scandinavia. Here is a clip from the course description:

Mythologized as the land of the aurora borealis and the midnight sun, Scandinavia’s five distinct nations–Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland–are often mistakenly associated with blond-haired and blue-eyed uniformity. Modern Scandinavia, however, is a place of great social and cultural diversity. From medieval Viking sagas to contemporary Nordic rap, the Scandinavian literary tradition is rich in tales of global exploration, childhood imagination, sexual revolution, and multicultural confrontation.”</p>

I didn’t take it. I didn’t even consider taking it, instead opting for a creative nonfiction class and a Shakespeare and Magic class instead (no regrets).

Fast forward two years, and I stumble upon a McSweeney’s (#35, in case anyone is interested) devoted to the same topic: the peculiarity of Scandinavian fiction. Well actually, the issue homes in on Norwegian literature, which I think is an especially interesting country to explore in the way of art, for the reasons laid out later in this post.

I remember reading a foreword that attempted to explain what made it so different. For one, the arts are cherished in countries like Norway, and can afford to be with generous investments made through earnings by the very lucrative oil industry. And money tends to follow that which is held in high esteem. There is the Nordic organization devoted to funding arts and culture where artists and writers can apply for generous grants. There is also the Arts Council Norway: In 2011, the total allocation from Arts Council Norway to the Norwegian cultural sector amounted to 150 million kroner. The allocations provide funding for a variety of projects and activities within performing arts, visual arts, music, literature, archives, museums and more. Finally, there is Cultiva, which was founded when the town of Kristiansand sold off some of its energy stocks to start an arts foundation with an endowment of 1.4 billion Norwegian kroner (approximately $240 million USD). Here is their mission:

The aim of the Foundation is to secure jobs and good living conditions in Kristiansand by providing grants to projects which set up art, cultural, and educational institutions or organisations that contribute to innovation, development and competence-building within the creative milieu of Kristiansand.

Allocation of funding for the arts So needless to say at this point, writers are encouraged and financially backed to write, well, whatever they want to. They don’t necessarily need to write the dredge that constitutes half of the US bestseller’s lists because they don’t have to. They can take risks and explore different paths. They have nothing to lose. Able to go in any direction, the result between two different writers’ works can be wildly different, but a few themes tend to remain the same: loneliness, strangeness, the supernatural, and how f*cking cold it is.

This also (and perhaps especially) extends to crime fiction, which Norway is best known for. The country has introduced to the world Stieg Larsson’s wildly popular Millenium trilogy, including “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” In the wake of Larsson’s success came other Norwegian crime writers, like Jo Nesbo, burgeoning in popularity.

A 2011 Economist article, published at the peak of Millenium trilogy’s popularity, also attempts to explain the je ne sais quoi of Norwegian crime fiction:

“The cold, dark climate, where doors are bolted and curtains drawn, provides a perfect setting for crime writing. The nights are long, the liquor hard, the people, according to Mr. Nesbo, “brought up to hide their feelings” and hold on to their secrets.”

Indeed, Norway and crime fiction go hand in hand, and that is another topic for another day. Another genre that interests me, though, is the traditional Scandinavian narrative. After reading Per Petersson’s short story, “Like a Tiger in a Cage” in McSweeney’s, I decided to delve deeper into his works. He is best known for  ”Out Stealing Horses,” which I read last summer, and again this past winter. It was beautiful in its simplicity; it was never verbose or flashy or annoying. But it also wasn’t terribly exciting, at least from the perspective of someone accustomed to the fast-paced, action-packed stories so often in the spotlight. The basic premise is that of Trond, an old man who’s begun a solitary life, isolated in a cabin in the Norwegian countryside, who begins forming memories that go back to his childhood one summer, also spent in the Norwegian countryside. One episode, of course, is when he and a childhood friend go out…to steal horses. Nothing dramatic happens, and yet, you get so wrapped up in every detail, in every gorgeous sentence. A couple of my favorites:

“Time is important to me now, I tell myself. Not that it should pass quickly or slowly, but only be time, be something I live inside and fill with physical things and activities that I can divide it up by. So that it grows distinct to me and does not vanish when I am not looking.”

and

“All my life I have longed to be alone in a place like this. Even when everything was going well, as it often did. I can say that much. That it often did. I have been lucky. But even then, for instance in the middle of an embrace and someone whispering words in my ear I wanted to hear, I could suddenly get a longing to be in a place where there was only silence. Years might go by and I did not think about it, but that does not mean that I did not long to be there. And now I am here, and it is almost exactly as I had imagined it.”

and

“…everything felt fine at that moment; the suit was fine, and the town was fine to walk in, along the cobblestone street, and we do decide for ourselves when it will hurt.”

That is the story’s final sentence, and a brilliant way to end. Not only does it sound beautiful, but that last bit, “and we do decide for ourselves when it will hurt,” resonates deeply with the idea that Norwegian isolationism and loneliness don’t have to be your fate if you don’t let them be. A Norwegian’s idea of optimism, maybe. There is also an aura of the strange surrounding everything in Trond’s world. There is a sexual tension between Trond and the milkmaid. There’s also twin-homocide, and a father who ups and furtively leaves his son with another woman. There is the blurring of time and geography; sometimes the reader is left wondering where they are in Trond’s narrative, both chronologically and geographically.

All of this is to say that “Out Stealing Horses” does not read like a typical novel. It is beautiful, slow, and strange, like other Scandinavian works I’ve encountered.

I’ll end with a note on the “slow.” Time is an obvious topic that this book deeply explores as Petersson weaves in and out of Trond’s childhood consciousness. I was reminded again of Norwegian pop culture today after hearing a program on NPR about the recent surge in Norwegians’ obsession with “boring TV.” The title of the program was even called “Mind-Numbing TV Shows Are A Hit In Norway.” A description of one such program in Norway:

GREENE: Yes, that is the sound of a ferry as it makes its way around Norway’s majestic coastline. Just a snippet of 134-hour, live broadcast; 2.5 million people - half of Norway’s population - tuned in to watch.

The piece doesn’t explore why boring TV has become so big, but I have a feeling it appeals to the Norwegian sensibility, which consists of an interest in geography, in the slow and steady, in nature, in the weird. Another hit program consisted of men chopping and discussing wood. The “real excitement,” however, came when the action moved to a fireplace in a Bergen farmhouse.  This sort of thing cannot be made up. It apparently appeals to a simpler time in the life of a Norwegian, as well as, of course, their profound interest in wood.

So what to make of all of this? I’m not sure. I just wanted to spell out my amateur-ish thoughts on the state of the arts in Norway, which to me demonstrate the fascinating and beautiful works a society’s artists can produce when they have the financial freedom to do so.