As Americans, we might equate this to the Native Americans' spiritual views toward the land and the earth. The Scandinavian people before the Christianisation of Scandinavia were deeply entrenched in the Norse sagas and to this day, particularly in the North, this pagan aspect in their gene pool remains an integral part of Sweden's national character - in particular where it concerns nature. These sagas revolve around stories of mythic proportions where we see the earth reappearing from the water where an eagle over a waterfall hunting fish on a mountain is of special significance where wooden slips were used for divination where the savage butchery of human beings was a matter of conquest where the sons of two brothers could widely inhabit the windy world and where it was said "that they will consume the morning dew, and will produce generations of offspring" and where the human internal rhythm is deeply affected by a jarring unnatural sequence of daylight that invades Nordic nights, and conversely where night snuffs out daylight for weeks on end. I often have to remind myself that modern Scandinavia has its roots in the Norse sagas that are replete with stories of viking gods, fantasy, brutality, and a resplendent mythical nature. Publishers often compare Ekman's book to Peter Høeg's beautiful language in Smilla's Sense of Snow as well as the chill found in Renko's Gorky Park: though, in having read both of these, in the former the language is more lyrical and evocative and in the latter it is a more significant crime story than what is found in Blackwater. Blackwater is another prime exemplar of this type of book, and granted, to a much greater degree steeped in such mysticism. The above I wrote in my review of and in response to Camille Ceder's Frozen Moment, the first example of a Swedish book I've read that alluded to a Swede's almost mystical attitude toward the woods. There are writers who set their novels in the more rural and sparsely populated settings, lending a decidedly chill atmosphere to the stories (the Swedish have an almost mystical attitude towards wooded areas and trees).
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