Hva kan arves? Om skyld, vold og seksualitet i to nordiske krigsminneromaner
Articles
Unni Langås
University of Agder, Norway
Published 2023-07-31
https://doi.org/10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2023.20
PDF

Keywords

guilt
violence and sexuality in Nordic war novels
perpetrator fiction
Morten Borgersen
Steve Sem-Sandberg

How to Cite

Langås, U. (2023). Hva kan arves? Om skyld, vold og seksualitet i to nordiske krigsminneromaner. Scandinavistica Vilnensis, 17(3), 405-422. https://doi.org/10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2023.20

Abstract

During the last two decades, an increasing focus on perpetrators has emerged in Scandinavian literature. This so called perpetrator fiction, with an explicit intention of understanding evil, has portrayed the Nazis and their henchmen in detail. These are frequently described in familial relationships, and their stories are told from a second or third generational point of view. Interestingly, the perpetrators are regularly depicted as perverse persons and their deviant sexuality as part of the problem. In this article, I discuss two Scandinavian novels with the family as a narrative structure and the perpetrator as its main character. The novels Jeg har arvet en mørk skog (2012) by Morten Borgersen and Stormen. En berättelse (2016) by Steve Sem-Sandberg deal with wartime events seen from a present-day I-narrator’s point of view. Both novels incorporate mythology and perverse sexuality, and they ask provocative questions about the causes of wartime violence.

PDF

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Most read articles by the same author(s)

1 2 3 4 5 > >>