Bone Cold

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article on "The growing appeal of Scandinavian fiction, existential malaise and bad coffee"

Laura Miller writes "Take that wintery landscape and add a dead body, then take that mopey main character and make him a sleuth trying to figure out who's responsible for the corpse. Double check to make sure we're not far from the Arctic Circle, and suddenly you have the recipe for an international best seller."

For years I have been a Kurt Wallander fan, the flawed but intuitive policeman, from  Henning Mankell's bleak detective series. I was instantly hooked when I began reading his descriptions of  Ysted and Malmo and the winter deep freeze of his Swedish countryside. On Flickr, one can search through millions of tagged photos and I found bibbi.nelson's photo stream and her evocative images of Malmo...Wallander's world! I followed the seasons of her city and understood the soft muted tones of her images as well as if they were my own.

Laura Miller goes on to say, "Like the Arctic cold, the rigor is bracing, it transports us to a world where charm and glamor barely exist and count for little when they do, a world refreshingly free of flimflam, hype or irrational exuberance. What matters is putting one foot in front of the other and not stopping."

I think our own stolid endurance of a Maine winter is not so different.

Photos: Peculiar Snow Effect, February 24, 2009, Seaview Cemetery, February 24, 2009, Blue Hill Bay, February 24, 2009 and Mount Desert Island, Maine, April 1, 2009.