What if we write ' Paskekrim 2022 ' in Google? Different literary proposals automatically appear from the hand of Norwegian publishers for this Easter. The curious thing is that all of them focus on one genre: the black novel.
“Norwegians love to read about crime at Easter! ! Nowhere else in the world is there such roots as in Norway”, underlines the Gyldendal publishing house, which presents for this month 'Gyldendal's Easter Crime Story 2022', a compilation of crime stories by some of the most popular writers in the Nordic region : Knut Nærum, Asa Larsson , Johan Theorin, Jan Mehlum, Tove Alsterdal, and Nils Nordberg. From Sherlock Holmes to the Swedish bestselling author David Lagercrantz . Crossword puzzles and crime quizzes, as well as a podcast, are added to the offer.
Gyldendal's Easter Crime Story 2022.
But, what is Påskekrim and where does it come from? Apparently this hobby dates back 100 years, and is as natural as going skiing or eat chocolate during easter . We might think that it is part of a marketing campaign and has something of it.
At Easter 1923, Gyldendal's publisher, Harald Grieg , published an ad on the front page of the newspaper Aftenposten which read: "Bergen train looted overnight."
The article strategically announced the new crime book by Nordahl Grieg and Nils Lie, two young people with little money but with the desire to write a best-selling novel.
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The funny thing is that many readers fell into the trap of believing that the story was real. “This novel is considered by many to be the first Easter crime and the origin of the tradition,” says Bjarne Buset, information manager at Norwegian publisher Gyldendal at Visit Norway.
The book was a success . It had everything to be: the protagonists were two young skiers and they spent Easter in a wooden cabin.
With this, it became clear that readers were interested in these kinds of stories , so during Easter the publisher began to focus on the genre.
“The genre of dark crime stories with gloomy Scandinavian settings, often referred to as nordic noir , has many fans all over the world . But the obsession with crime at Easter is exclusively a Norwegian thing, ”stresses the editor from Visit Norway.
But there are more reasons why Påskekrim is popular. Normally, Easter is the time when many Norwegians have holidays, more than we can imagine, that is, they have time to rest and read (a lot). They usually do it in cabins, in the mountains or near the sea. “Reading crime novels over Easter goes hand in hand with skiing and eating Kvikk Lunsj chocolate or oranges in the winter sun,” says Buset.