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Icelandic Stories: A Conversation with Katrín Jakobsdóttir & Ragnar Jónasson

2023; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 98; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2024.a916060

1945-8134

Iclal Vanwesenbeeck,

Hungarian Social, Economic and Educational Studies

Icelandic StoriesA Conversation with Katrín Jakobsdóttir & Ragnar Jónasson Iclal Vanwesenbeeck (bio) In September 2023 Minotaur Books published Reykjavík: A Crime Story, co-written by Iceland's prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, and Ragnar Jónasson, an Icelandic best-selling crime writer whose Outside is being made into a feature film. Already receiving excellent reviews, this story about a mysterious disappearance comes to a head as the city of Reykjavík celebrates its two hundredth anniversary. In this conversation with Iclal Vanwesenbeeck, the co-authors discuss Icelandic fiction's strong connection to the environment, their shared love of Agatha Christie, a possible sequel, and much more. Iclal Vanwesenbeeck: Katrín, you have a graduate degree in literature that focused primarily on Icelandic crime fiction. In the past, you have published various articles in this field. What inspired you to shift from the academic to the creative side of crime fiction? How did your academic research inform your writing style as a novelist? Click for larger view View full resolution Photo of Jónasson and Jakobsdóttir © by Baldur Kristjansson Katrín Jakobsdóttir: Of course, quite a long time has passed since I wrote about crime fiction as an academic. I started writing about crime fiction in 1999; quite a young student back then, and it felt so interesting because the wave was actually starting then. You know, all of a sudden, we had more than one author writing Icelandic crime fiction. So, it was kind of spreading out; I could feel that it was happening. It was so nice to be a part of something new and exciting, and I was writing about Icelandic crime fiction [End Page 19] until I went into Parliament in 2007. After that, I wrote an occasional article, and of course I have always enjoyed reading, but I had never written anything except nonfiction. I don't have any poems in my cupboards waiting to be published. But it's a very different thing to write nonfiction, write about others' works, than to start writing your own. I think it actually helps a lot to have read so many books on crime fiction and thought so much about what makes a good crime novel, so that was actually a strength. Vanwesenbeeck: Which tells me you are still an academic at heart. Jakobsdóttir: Yes, exactly. Nothing is ever good enough. Vanwesenbeeck: Perhaps to follow up on that, Katrín, in your article "Sjöwall and Wahlöö Meet Philip Marlowe or the Coming of the Icelandic Crime Novel," you note that "during the first half of the twentieth century, the average in Iceland was one crime novel per decade, and that changed in the last decade." You call this new period the springtime for crime novels in Iceland. In Reykjavík, we see this change expressed in a rather playful paragraph where Sunna and her brother Valur have a conversation about crime fiction in Iceland in the 1980s, and Valur tells his sister, who imagines writing a crime fiction novel in the future, "Like anyone would want to read a detective story set in Iceland." Please tell us about the distinctive qualities of Icelandic noir. Did it branch out of Nordic noir? What are some stylistic and aesthetic elements that make it quintessentially Icelandic? Jakobsdóttir: I would say it's a genre within Nordic noir. What makes it different is that, maybe from my point of view, Icelandic crime novels are extremely diverse because it's such a small market. Even in that market you have many writers—[to Ragnar] how many writers?— Ragnar Jónasson: Twenty, maybe more. Jakobsdóttir: —writing crime fiction in modern times. But within that very small group there is great diversity, and that's distinctive because we are a small community, so everybody is filling up a certain space. Jónasson: I think Icelandic noir is also, to be honest, a marketing thing. A publisher will use this for a crime novel to distinguish it as an Icelandic crime plot, so it's a brand in a way. Jakobsdóttir: What is very common in Icelandic crime novels, like the Nordic ones, are...