Several of my friends cite Smilla as one of those books they wished never to end. Again and again, I marveled at Høeg’s sure hand as a writer. The novel held up, both times, for different reasons. Since that sweaty summer first read, I’ve returned to the book twice now, once when by lucky happenstance I was able to join an expedition to Antarctica, and once recently. For a stretch there, everybody seemed to be reading Høeg. Greenland, a realm which Mercator maps of the globe distort into a huge mysterious expanse of emptiness, tantalized my imagination. Critics always termed the book’s immediate best-seller status as “surprising.” A thriller-mystery-crime novel set in Denmark and-of all places-Greenland? Not exactly a slam dunk in the bookstore. The term “Nordic Noir” wasn’t in wide use. Scandinavian crime novels, Swedish mysteries, police procedurals and dark thrillers set in the northern climes of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland- such books had not then been declared to be a collective thing. Detectives Beck and Wallander were already popular fictional figures, but the concept of an entire genre coalesced only later. I’m not sure many people did, at least in the United States. Høeg tideĪt that point, I had no real grasp of the genre.

The descriptions of ice, snow, cold, frigidity, and all things Arctic helps cool the blood. I remember taking the novel out onto the fire escape of my apartment, in a search for relief. This had to be during the mid-90’s at some point, since I came slightly late to Smilla, well after the initial publicity splash of its release. I still recall savoring the book during a stretch of murderously hot summer days in Manhattan. The action kicks off in Copenhagen, Denmark but extends to the icy realm of Greenland.įor me, Nordic Noir will always begin with the first example I ever read, Peter Høeg’s wonderful 1992 masterpiece, Smilla’s Sense of Snow.

The story centers on the death of a child and a relentless search for the killer, conducted by an intelligent, spirited, and sexy protagonist named Smilla Jasperson. In 1993, the world applauded Peter Høeg’s debut mystery, Smilla’s Sense of Snow. The proliferation of Nordic Noir means some readers are picking up defining classics after they have been converted and viewing them with a tinted lens.īy Gil Reavill, co-author of This Land is No Stranger A reader’s first foray into a specific literary genre can define their future reading enjoyment and set a benchmark for all novels that follow.

Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg