Once upon a crime …
Crime Corner: From folktales to modern mystery
Brought to you by Jerry Holt
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Perhaps the most prized of the parting gifts my students at the University of Bergen bestowed upon me as I took my bittersweet leave of Norway in the spring of 2018 was a lovely illustrated volume of the folk tales of Asbjørnsen and Moe.
Since the book was published in the original Norwegian, the volume has served for me a double purpose: for one, its clear, linear prose has also helped me learn the fledging Norwegian that I have so far mastered. And second, it has allowed me to once again ponder the remarkable connectiion between fairy tales and crime fiction.
Peter Christain Asbjørnsen was a teacher who, in the year 1841, partnered with Jørgen Moe, a bishop, to bring forth a collection of Norwegian folk tales based on the model created by Germany’s Brothers Grimm.
This was the period in Norway when the country’s independence was evolving, and the collecting of legends was thought to be a method of establishing national pride. Indeed it is quite easy to see the influence of the Grimms: the tales of Asbjørnsen and Moe involve youthful and invariably noble heroes who are pitted against raging winds, treacherous seas, and giant trolls. And interestingly, they frequently deal with crime—and violent crime, at that. The titles of some of the tales are indicative: “The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body,” “The Master Thief”; “The Death of Chanticleer,” and “Death and the Doctor” are all included, along with the story with my favorite title: “Reynard Wants to Taste Horse Flesh.” It’s a dark and grisly lot, but then—as many commentators have noted—so are the Grimm tales.
Originally written as cautionary tales for both children and adults, the Grimm stories and some of the Hans Christian Andersen tales, at least before Disney got hold of them for their sanitized movie versions, had some ghastly horrors for content.
In the original “Sleeping Beauty,” for example, the slumbering princess in awakened not by a prince’s kiss, but by being raped by a king, after which she bears twins—heavy stuff!
In “Rumpelstiltskin,” a miller thrusts his daughter into a tower and tells her she will literally be decapitated unless she spins straw into gold by the morning.
In the original “Goose Girl,” an imposter pretending to be a princess is caught and, for punishment, thrust naked inside a spiked barrel and rolled through town. Ingenious!!
But then several versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” feature a sequence in which the wolf serves Little Red pieces of her own grandmother to dine on.
Even worse, in one version of the much-adapted “Hansel and Gretel,” the two children overcome the Devil’s wife by slashing the woman’s throat with a saw.
And then of course there is the beloved “Snow White,” in which, in the original, the evil queen’s punishment for messing with Snow White is to be fitted with a pair of burning hot iron shoes, which cause her to dance to her death in extreme agony.
For more on the horrors that abound in fairy tales, see D.G. Hewitt’s delightful article “16 Classic Tales that Have Disturbing Origins than Told” at historycollection.com.
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We think of the perils faced by our modern heroes of Norwegian crime fiction, and it is difficult not to draw parallels. If ever there were an “Ugly Duckling,” it is Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole, and the larger than death killers he battles are fought in a world where Harry is looked down upon as a kind of drunken pariah. But like the Duckling, Harry has the last laugh again and again, although, since it’s Harry, a hollow one.
Similarly, it is easy to see remnants of the tattered prince on a life-or-death quest in Gunnar Staalesen’s Varg Veum, and there is much of the philosopher king in Inspector Sejer, the creation of Karin Fossum. Perhaps, indeed, it is all one story we are reading—and telling.
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And then there is that middle range of young adult reading, where fairy tales loom very large—just ask Harry Potter. This market is vast, since much is also lapped up by the adult reading population.
A current example is The Arctic Railway Assassin, by British authors M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman, which offers the mystery-solving team of 13-year-old Harrison Beck and his Uncle Nat, who are aboard a super-train (it travels at 10 kilometers an hour) to the Arctic Circle to see the northern lights.
Since this book is part of a series, our stalwart pair is very used to solving mysteries on a train and this time the intrigue involves a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who is doing experiments with sound transmission, from which one nefarious chap has fashioned a “kill code,” which, if used, can murder a victim with sound. Scary! And who doesn’t love a mystery on a train? Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock sure did!
Hal and Uncle Ned are a likable pair of sleuths for this fully illustrated (by Elisa Paganelli) page-turner, and the real joy of the book is that it is crammed full of solid information regarding everything from sound waves to the northern lights. The narrative gives plenty of time to the Arctic landscape, and Norwegians will particularly appreciate the sections that deal with the Sámi people up there at the top of the world in reindeer land.
One character, a Sámi girl named Katarina, tells us: “I am Sami. We are reindeer herders. We honour the reindeer by using every part of them. My bag is made from their hide, my books too. We use their antlers and their bones for tools, and…. we eat them.” Katarina also reflects that she has toyed with becoming a vegetarian, but “reindeer tastes too good.”
It is exciting to see young adult fiction embracing the traditions of folk stories along with futuristic technology, and even more exciting to welcome the many new readers this kind of action narrative will bring. Imagine Murder on the Orient Express coupled with Tom Swift for a good idea of what is happening here. Crime marches on!!!!
This article originally appeared in the August 2024 issue of The Norwegian American.
