There was this interesting LitHub article that came out a little while back On the Rise of Scandinavian Crime Fiction, which got me to thinking about the Millenium series by Stieg Larsson (of which there are now two more books written by David Lagercrantz: The Girl in the Spider’s Web and The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye). Given that crime fiction isn’t my specialty, when I first read the article, I have to say I wasn’t too surprised, seeing as I could easily call to mind at least a few Scandinavian authors just from my travels through our collection: Larsson, Nesbø, Fossum, to name a few. And with a quick search, there are at least a few more names I recognize, even if I’m not familiar enough to recall them or know much about them (which is not to say I know much about the three aforementioned): Mankell, Indriðason (though I suppose he’s technically not Scandinavian, but Iceland’s Nordic, so close enough!), and Sigurðardóttir (ditto), for example. (There was another article specifically on the emergence of the portrayal of sleepy Reykjavik as a criminal hub in Icelandic fiction.) What’s really interesting, though, is the – not absence, but – relatively low crime rates found in those countries, especially in comparison to North America*. For an area with relatively low crime rates**, and considering Nordic countries are always on the top spots in terms of happiness worldwide, Nordic noir sure is booming – what’s the deal?