STINA SWENSSON YEAR WALK SERIES

PICTURE: A clear example of visual darkness from the game YearWalk. As the weather locks everyone inside the small town, social issues that could normally be ignored or pushed back have no choice but to arise and create tensions.

STINA SWENSSON YEAR WALK SERIES

The whole plot of the Icelandic TV series Trapped (“Ófærð”) revolves around the fact that a snowstorm blocks all ways of travelling to the remote Icelandic town. In Faceless Killers, for example, it is a recurring theme every 2-3 pages, or every time Wallander goes to a new location.

Henning Mankell’s Wallander often complains about the weather in Ystad as well. Weather is frequently a catalyst for darkness in the Nordics, including Arnaldur Indriðason’s depictions of Iceland, the first 50 pages of Jar City are a case in point where the characters repeatedly mention rain, storms and lightning. It is usually written from a police point of view, and deals with societal issues such as racism, gender inequality or pedophilia.Įxamples include both visual and narrative ‘darkness’. Nordic Nóir as a genre is associated with an often gloomy, bleak, dark and grim mood – all well-fitting to the literary description of darkness. Just as Eminem’s “Darkness”, pop culture in and out of the Nordics point to problems that often go overlooked in a political context. Importantly, it is often used to help to shed light on key societal questions, sometimes ironically. Darkness in the context of the Nordic region, too, can relate to different things, but it is often associated with negative images of culture, society and geography, whether the darkness is literal (long winters, lack of light), or suggested (societal concerns, cultural issues).

Darkness itself is a complicated concept to define, even in a specific context, because it applies to many different things: evil and beauty in literature mental illness crime or horror in pop culture the opposite of enlightenment in history the night and day cycle in natural sciences the “dark web” in technology etc. The idea of “darkness” is often used in both Nordic Nóir and video games to talk about the Nordic countries it is as if the two are inseparable. Lysiane Lasausse Definitions of darkness in Nordic Nóir

Stina swensson year walk