“Bergen train robbed in the night!” The newspaper headline was dramatic, and the story equally so: As travelers in jubilant vacation moods were enjoying their journey across the mountains, a group of students descended on the train and robbed it, before making their getaway on skis. The paper was inundated with calls from people who’d missed a small but vital little box, stating, “Price: 2 kroner, Gyldendal.” It was an ad for a book from a major publisher.
The PR stunt to launch the novel, Bergenstoget plyndret inat!, has gone down in Norwegian history as the moment that sparked a beloved national phenomenon: During the Easter holiday, we all read and watch crime stories.
The fake headline ran in Aftenposten and other Oslo papers on Saturday, March 24, 1923, just days before that year’s Easter break, a national five-day weekend in Norway when people like to tuck into a paperback. Within days, more than 7,000 copies of Bergenstoget plyndret inat! had been sold. Adding to the intrigue was the fact that in the book, the heist happened on April Fools’ Day in 1923, which was only days away. Was it actually going to happen? People were agog, and the young publisher who came up with the stunt, Harald Grieg, realized he’d hit on something big—the next year, he pushed more crime novels for Easter. Other publishers followed suit, and soon radio and TV were all aboard with crime season.
Påskekrim—pronounced “poh-ska-krihm,” literally “Easter crime”—is the cultural phenomenon of reading and watching crime stories around Easter. It’s such a natural part of the spring holiday that until I left Norway at age 19, I assumed it was universal, like Easter eggs. But Norway stands alone with its hunger for crime at Easter.
The seasonal ritual for many Norwegians is the same: a five-day break where you can pack a rucksack with hot dogs, chicken-shaped marzipan, and Kvikk Lunsj, a Kit Kat–esque chocolate bar. Then it’s time to gather up friends and family, drive into the woods, strap on some skis, and strike out across the white landscape. If you’re lucky, you’ll be staying at an old cabin—there will be no electricity or running water, the crockery and bedding will be whatever your grandparents brought there in the ’70s, and no one has updated the Donald Duck & Co comics since the ’90s. This is the scene for hunkering down with your crime novel and reading by candlelight while the forest outside is the blackest black and no one can hear you scream. But you feel completely safe—at least until you have to go to the outhouse.
Norwegian crime writer Alex Dahl spent her childhood Easters in the mountains too, although her accommodations—at Høyfjellshotell in Rondane National Park—at least had plumbing. “We did the Påskekrim thing for sure, and went cross-country skiing high up in the mountains,” she tells me over a video call from Sandefjord. Dahl has published six crime novels, including Playdate, which has been adapted into a Disney+ series called The Stolen Girl, just out this week. “I think a lot of Norwegians have very similar memories of Easter, because everybody does the same stuff: the oranges in the backpack, the marzipan, the Solo [orange soda], and a book.”
Today, the Påskekrim tradition is guaranteed to send Norwegians into a bookshop. In the week before Easter 2024, 46 percent of adult books sold were crime novels, according to the Norwegian Booksellers Association. But the characters responsible for the initial hoax had no idea the effect they’d have on the publishing industry at large: Harald Grieg and the ghostwriters of the book—his brother, Nordahl, and Nils Lie—were likely looking for a fun way to make some quick cash. “I don’t think they realized how impactful the marketing would be,” Siren Marøy Myklebust, an acquiring editor at Gyldendal publishing house, wrote in an email.* “But crime and Easter go well together, because we have public holidays with low expectations and lots of time.”
“Many crime novels are released for Easter, with lots of attention from bookshops and the press,” added Marøy Myklebust. The annual Krimfestivalen, timed to Easter, is a three-day book festival that celebrates local crime writers such as Jo Nesbø, Anne Holt, Thomas Enger, Jørn Lier Horst, Karin Fossum, and Gunnar Staalesen. This is also when Rivertonprisen, a prestigious crime writing award, is awarded; Eva Fretheim has just been declared this year’s winner for her “subdued psychological” novel, The Bird King.
But while the origin story helps explain Påskekrim, does it really make sense for this extremely peaceful country to be so keen on crime? There’s only about 30 murders per year in the entire country, and they are mostly solved. But if you read Nordic noir, you’d think every sleepy village hides a gruesome scene. “We have this incredibly peaceful society, so I wonder, from that vantage point, maybe it feels more bearable to go to the dark side?” Dahl suggests. “Because it’s not something we’re routinely faced with.”
Norway is also marked by long, dark winters, and vast landscapes devoid of people: “There may be a collective sense of a dark loneliness, as found in the literal nature,” Dahl adds. An oft-ignored trait of Norway, a steady presence in the Top 10 happiest countries in the world, is also how it can sometimes feel claustrophobic: “It’s a society that has fairly strict moral normative control,” says Dahl. “It can be quite structured in terms of who you can be. I think there’s a rebellion in people against that kind of thing.”
Dahl’s first English-language book, The Boy at the Door, was inspired by a walk along beautiful beachfront villas in Southern Norway, where everything looked so nice and so safe. “I remember feeling quite disturbed by that. There has to be something dark underneath this odd veneer,” says Dahl. “Nothing’s ever that perfect.” It may not often resort to murder, but Norway has its fair share of domestic violence and suicide, and the regular human range of mental health issues, dark thoughts, affairs, and secrets. “We have to deal with this darkness in our society,” says Dahl. Maybe this is why Nordic noir is full of antihero detectives, and why the stories are more complicated than good or bad. “I think Nordic noir is quite intelligent. It goes darker and deeper. Maybe that’s one of the reasons it’s so popular.”
This Easter, all of Norway will be getting their crime fix in the coziest setting possible: The staple decor includes daffodils, pastel-colored eggs, bunnies, and yellow chicks—sometimes wielding a weapon or dripping in blood. Maybe Påskekrim is a bit like Halloween, which isn’t traditionally celebrated in Norway—it’s a holiday where people can face their fears by poking fun at what scares them. We can enjoy being spooked when we know we’re actually safe, because that’s when we can really feel the rush of the thrill.
* Translated from Norwegian.