Copenhagen Noir

But Copenhagen is also something other than the mediumsized capital of the Danes. The Øresundsbro was finished June 1, 2000, connecting Denmark with Sweden-or perhaps more significantly, from a historic perspective, with the Swedish province of Skåne, the former Danish province lost in the mid-1600s after a number of catastrophic wars. We also lost the region’s capital city, Malmø, which was largely Danish and which, in the period after the Swedish annexation, still attempted to preserve its Danish character. The bridge to Malmø has not only stirred a renaissance for this “freedom movement”; it has also connected southern Sweden more closely to Copenhagen than to the country’s actual capital, beautiful Stockholm. Nowadays, Swedes/Skånings work in Copenhagen and Danes live in Malmø. The bridge has transformed Malmø into a large suburb of Copenhagen; generally speaking, our capital could be seen as a Manhattan to a Malmø that, via one of Europe’s longest bridges, has become a northern European Brooklyn! Therefore, it is natural that the Swedish author Kristian Lundberg, who lives in Malmø, is included in this anthology, with a story about his hero, the alcoholic Catholic policeman Nils Forsberg. Lundberg sees Copenhagen as the end of the rainbow, on the other side of the bridge, a big city that in many ways has put Malmø in a different perspective, different from its status as a big Swedish city.

But Copenhagen was once not only the Danish capital. The city was, in fact, the capital of Norway for four hundred years, much longer than Norway’s present one, Oslo. Norway justifiably wrested its independence from Denmark in 1814, but long afterward, even to the present day, Norwegians have held a nostalgic and “metropolitan” love for Copenhagen, Europe’s end and the gateway to Scandinavia. But for Norwegians it must actually be the opposite: for them Copenhagen must still be the gateway to Europe, for the cultural bonds are strong and persistent via history, the royalty, and, in particular, language, culture, and literature. Danes and Norwegians are like close relatives who meet affectionately after a happy divorce, who get along very well. Norway’s greatest crime writer, Gunnar Staalesen from Bergen, naturally sends his hero detective, the sensitive yet hard-boiled Varg Veum, on a mission to Copenhagen. As far back as in one of his first detective novels, Sleeping Beauty from 1980, Varg Veum is at work in the center of Copenhagen, in the district that is more or less red-light, stretching from Central Station toward the “mean streets” where gangsters find their apprentices and hookers their customers. Therefore, it is fitting that this Norwegian author has a place in an anthology about crime and punishment in Norway’s old capital, where Scandinavia begins and ends in a metropolis for the entire region.

All the short stories in Copenhagen Noir are about meaninglessness, violence, and murder in various districts of the city. Written for the most part by Copenhageners, but also by authors-Helle Helle, Susanne Staun, and Gretelise Holm-who now live in the provinces but have spent a part of their lives in the Queen’s city, having absorbed the city and never completely abandoned it. Denmark’s celebrated author from the island of Amager (where the Øresundsbro begins), Klaus Rifbjerg, is of course included, with a historical noir story from that great island, an assimilated part of the capital. But the collection also includes inhabitants of ethnic backgrounds from outside the shadow of the Danish flag. Common for all the writers is a love for Copenhagen and for the dark story of coincidence and necessity, the good and bad luck of humans. In a metropolis that both has a style of its own yet also resembles the other black pearls of cities across the globe: New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Berlin. Enjoy.

Bo Tao Michaëlis

Copenhagen, Denmark

October 2010

PART I. (M

EN AND ) WOMEN

WOMEN IN COPENHAGEN BY NAJA MARIE AIDT

Ørstedsparken