This thesis explores Nordic Noir's indebtedness to and divergence from sources and influences in nineteenth-century British Gothic literature. It examines how the evolution and conflation of these two genres is influenced not only by literary style, but by common preoccupations and socio-political differences, as well as geographic and social liminality between these two very different worlds and periods. A cross-section of ten primary Nordic texts and seven, primarily British, Gothic texts are analysed, alongside supporting literature, media and critical texts, to garner an overview of how the Gothic genre has been adapted and expanded in twenty-first century Nordic Noir.
The study focuses upon the image of the Gothic castle space and how this has developed from metaphor in nineteenth-century Gothic literature to simile in Nordic Noir, the laboratories and castles becoming the metropolitan homes and streets explored in a genre that has gained momentum in a representative, realistic Scandinavian setting. At the centre of this setting remains, throughout the thesis, a concentration upon the gendered norms and expectations that dictate the threat of the Gothic space for both male and female characters, as well as a continuity of symbolic significance, highlighted through the considering of the sublime, uncanny and other key Gothic tropes. The divergence from the use of metaphor in nineteenth-century Gothic literature to simile in Nordic Noir is applicable, in this thesis, to the change of the Gothic monster, who becomes a monstrous man in Nordic Noir, exacerbating the risk to women within the Gothic spaces explored. Broadening previous discussions concerning the Gothic monster, a trope considered throughout will be the development of the focalisation of the maladjusted man and the transitionary period for these characters that connects them to Gothic monsters or creatures.
Chapter One, the Introduction, considers Gothic literature’s influence on crime fiction globally, and locates Nordic Noir within this history of inspiration. Chapter Two goes on to acknowledge the issues of translation in my thesis, considering translation as a form of afterlife and originating a discussion concerning the common cultural preoccupations that perpetuate the translation of Gothic literature and the continued popularity of this genre in translation.
Each chapter going forward focuses upon a different Nordic territory, with Chapters Three and Four looking at twentieth and twenty-first century Swedish literature respectively, due to the quantity and longevity of and controversy surrounding Swedish Gothic and Nordic Noir emerging from the country. These chapters originate a consideration of the cityscape becoming the Gothic castle space, particularly for female characters, the Gothic castle reflected in forms of social oppression illustrated by the Swedish authors studied in this thesis. Chapter Five considers Norwegian Noir and its portrayal of toxic masculinity, and the impact of this upon both Gothic literature and its female characters. Chapter Six concludes the thesis, considering the issues of female and minority agency in Greenlandic-Danish Nordic Noir, and how such agency is governed for minorities of both British nineteenth-century Gothic and twenty-first century Nordic Noir.
The thesis concludes that British nineteenth-century Gothic shares not only literary features with Nordic Noir, but that the importation of Gothic tropes, some commonalities in cultural and socio-political preoccupations connect these genres in significance as well as form, with the propagation of Gothic themes and tropes functioning to interweave the genres, countries and peoples. Ultimately, it highlights a history of social and literary influence and inspiration and expands upon existing research connecting Nordic Noir with crime literature, which was influenced by Gothic literature, in identifying the under-explored influence of British Gothic on contemporary Nordic crime fiction.
