A look into the quiet fears, cold landscapes, and the psychological depths that shape Scandinavian thrillers today
Swedish author Malin Stehn, known for her psychologically layered thrillers rooted in everyday anxieties, spoke to her Serbian colleague and fellow crime writer Lazar Jovanović on the occasion of her participation at Belgrade Thrillerfest. In their conversation, she reflects on the thin line between reality and fiction, the global pull of Scandinavian noir, and why ordinary people in extraordinary situations remain at the heart of her storytelling.
To what extent is your fiction rooted in real events or people? At what point does reality give way to imagination in your novels?
Usually, my ideas for my thrillers come from my own worries. I realise that I worry a lot, and I’ve always been a worrier. So I use my worries and then my imagination. Often, I combine my own worries with maybe something that I see in the newspaper. For Happy New Year, for example, the idea came when I was at a New Year’s party. And my daughter, it was her first time celebrating without me. And I was worried, and I started to think what could happen. And so thoughts were spinning. The first book was about, you could say, one theme in Happy New Year. Which is parents not really taking care of their kids. Or maybe they try, but they don’t always succeed. And for my second novel, I wanted to switch. So it’s about a parent loving her child too much, maybe. I know you can’t love your child too much, but she has set all her hopes on one of her kids. And expectations, and when something happens to this kid and his soccer career. She is devastated, and she blames his friend. And there is a break-up between two families, and so on. And I was a soccer mom, so it’s a bit of my own thoughts. But of course, I switched them up a bit. I hope I wasn’t that much over the top. So it’s a mix of reality and imagination.
Do you follow a particular writing routine, and how do you go about structuring the novel? Are you more of a meticulous planner, or do you prefer to let the story take its own course?
I usually know the start and the end, sort of. Not in detail, but sort of. Because I realise that if I don’t know the ending, it is often that you go out and write stuff that you need to edit hard. So if you have a plan forward, it’s easier. You have to edit anyway, but I like to have a rough plan for my writing. But most of the story and new details come during writing.
How do you explain the global appeal of Scandinavian thrillers? What sets them apart from others in the genre?
I think maybe the fact that they are not just entertainment. That we often describe society in an open and critical way. We find things in society, to, I mean, it can be social issues or environmental issues. Well, many things in society that you can go into and dig into. I think maybe that’s why. And maybe it’s also because we have this natural melancholy. It’s a bit, maybe it’s the weather or the long, dark winters, I don’t know. Anyways, the stories get us all. Yeah, yeah.
I worry a lot — and then I imagine
With so many established voices in the field, how difficult is it to carve out your own space in the Scandinavian noir genre?
It’s hard. I believe that 423 crime novels were published in Sweden alone last year. So it’s hard to be heard in all this noise. But I think, from the beginning, I didn’t think much about that. I have just written the story I wanted to write. And it was a story about ordinary people finding themselves in extraordinary situations and acting in despair, and what happens. So it’s more character-based. I didn’t want to write about superheroes or policemen who can do anything. I wanted to write about ordinary people. No, no, no.
When we spoke about writing about real people and real events, do you think that when you write about something real and from reality, does it represent more of a challenge, or does it make it easier for the writer to write about something they know about?
When we spoke about writing about real people and real events, do you think that when you write about something real and from reality, does it represent more of a challenge, or does it make it easier for the writer to write about something they know about?
For me, it’s easier. I mean, then I think it’s… I mean, even though you write about a person who is working with rocket science, or if he’s a teacher, we are still human beings and we act alike, I think. As I write extensively about human psychology and how we act and react, I think that’s not necessarily difficult.
The only thing is that I need to do research about rocket science. Yes, not about people so much. But I think as I write about human beings and their relations, well, and that’s what’s interesting to me.
So, well, I think it’s… I wouldn’t… No, I don’t know. What was the question? It was if… If writing about real events is more of a challenge, or is it… Because, of course, nothing of what I write about has happened in real life. I mean, it is my imagination, but, of course, it’s a bit from real life. But it’s not true crime, it’s fiction.
Ordinary people act in despair — that’s the story
No, of course, of course. More relating to people, for example, if you’re making a character that is someone you know, do you feel responsible towards making this person exactly as this person is in real life?
Yeah, I never write about people I know. Never, actually. I take bits and pieces of different people. And sometimes, of course, I can have one person in mind from the beginning, but then in the end it becomes a new person, the person in my book. So, no, I would never write about people I know.