Finland, a country noted for deep felt suicides executed during long dark winter months, has become the happiest nation on earth. This statistical superstition, contrived to feed a social-media diet free of substance and light on evidence, belies one fundamental point: Scandinavia can boast its examples of curious killings and extravagant murders. Little wonder, then, that there has been something of a competition, and in some cases cooperation, between the countries in the making of the genre known as Scandi noir.
The signifiers of this rapidly tiring genre are standard: snipped limps, removed heads, disembodied creatures. This is the stuff that has enticed people whose living standards are the envy of the world. Crime must be exotic in its gruesomeness, spectacular in its execution. It may be presumed in this case that luxury and plenitude produces its own degeneration – but in what form?
In this case, the sadist (presumed) killer has run amok with abandon. Audiences in Scandinavia, and specifically Denmark and Sweden, have been led to believe that the industry behind such works as The Killing has actually been imitated.
Charged Danish inventor and the seemingly disturbed Peter Madsen seems to possess the troubled profile of a Scandi noir protagonist. By disturbing, and doomed chance, Swedish journalist Kim Wall found herself on Madsen’s 17-metre submarine, then found herself, quite literally, in pieces. Her torso had been removed; limbs were found…