On top of the world: mapping the Nordic crime fiction boom based on translation data

Figures & data

Table 1. Composition of the dataset by source language.

	Crime fiction	Other fiction	Total
Danish	926 (10%)	1,949 (12%)	2,875 (11%)
Finnish	428 (5%)	2,872 (18%)	3,300 (13%)
Icelandic	544 (6%)	1,515 (9%)	2,059 (8%)
Norwegian	1,251 (14%)	4,781 (29%)	6,032 (24%)
Swedish	5,737 (65%)	5,224 (32%)	10,961 (43%)
Total	8,886 (100%)	16,341 (100%)	25,227 (100%)

Figure 1. Share of crime fiction of all translations: percentage per year.

Figure 2. Crime fiction translation events: count per source language and five-year period.

Figure 3. Translation events of crime fiction and other fiction: count per source language.

Table 2. Top 25 Nordic crime writers by number of translation events.

	Author	Language	Translation events	No. of target languages
1	Henning Mankell	Swedish	347	38
2	Camilla Läckberg	Swedish	333	33
3	Håkan Nesser	Swedish	264	29
4	Arnaldur Indriðason	Icelandic	253	36
5	Jo Nesbø	Norwegian	227	31
6	Jussi Adler-Olsen	Danish	212	34
7	Lars Kepler	Swedish	195	31
8	Arne Dahl	Swedish	175	27
9	Karin Fossum	Norwegian	164	31
10	Liza Marklund	Swedish	155	25
11	Yrsa Sigurðardóttir	Icelandic	153	34
12	Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö	Swedish	148	21
13	Leif G.W. Persson	Swedish	136	23
14	Stieg Larsson	Swedish	134	43
15	Michael Hjorth & Hans Rosenfeldt	Swedish	131	28
16	Åke Edwardson	Swedish	129	18
17	Anne Holt	Norwegian	124	20
18	Mari Jungstedt	Swedish	123	17
19	Kristina Ohlsson	Swedish	113	23
20	Anders Roslund & Börge Hellström	Swedish	112	28
21	Mons Kallentoft	Swedish	108	22
22	Viveca Sten	Swedish	107	18
23	Anders de la Motte	Swedish	104	25
24	Åsa Larsson	Swedish	102	25
25	David Lagercrantz	Swedish	100	39

Figure 4. Scatter plot of Nordic crime writers (n = 408) per source language: number of translations and number of languages translated into.

Table 3. Three subsets of Nordic crime writers divided per source language.

	Danish	Finnish	Icelandic	Norwegian	Swedish	All	Share of authors
1. Truly global (≥ 30 languages and/or ≥ 150 translation events)	1 (8%)	0 (0%)	2 (15%)	2 (15%)	8 (62%)	13 (100%)	3%
2. Widely disseminated (≥ 20 languages and/or ≥ 50 translation events, but not in 1. truly global)	4 (9%)	2 (5%)	0 (0%)	5 (11%)	33 (75%)	44 (100%)	11%
3. Remaining translated authors	65 (19%)	44 (13%)	17 (5%)	63 (18%)	162 (46%)	351 (100%)	86%
All	70 (17%)	46 (11%)	19 (5%)	70 (17%)	203 (50%)	408 (100%)	100%

Table 4. Number of translation events and share of database per target language (and with all languages with a share below 1% collapsed into “Other languages”).

	Target language	Translation events	Percent of NNTB
1	German	977	11.1
2	Danish	672	7.6
3	Dutch	587	6.6
4	Finnish	575	6.5
5	English	568	6.4
6	Norwegian	514	5.8
7	French	481	5.4
8	Polish	477	5.4
9	Czech	446	5.0
10	Italian	387	4.4
11	Spanish	294	3.3
12	Estonian	247	2.8
13	Russian	232	2.6
14	Swedish	220	2.5
15	Icelandic	189	2.1
16	Portuguese	176	2.0
17	Hungarian	174	2.0
18	Bulgarian	152	1.7
19	Greek	148	1.7
20	Romanian	125	1.4
21	Japanese	120	1.4
22	Latvian	99	1.1
23	Croatian	93	1.0
24	Serbian	93	1.0
25	Chinese	91	1.0
26	Lithuanian	87	1.0
27	Slovak	86	1.0
28	Turkish	85	1.0
	Other languages	491	5.5
	Total	8,886	100

Figure 5. Translations of Nordic Noir for all target languages with over 2% of the translations in the NNTD and with Nordic languages excluded: count per five-year period, 2000-2019.

Figure 6. Translations of Nordic Noir for target languages originating outside or at the borders of Europe (and with languages <10 translation events collapsed): count per five-year period, 2000-2019.

Figure 7. Translations of Nordic Noir to Nordic languages: source language count per five-year period.

Figure 8. Translations of Nordic Noir to Nordic languages: target language count per five-year period.

Table 5. Outbound versus inbound translations for the Nordic languages: count and ratio 2000-2020.

	Outbound, all target languages	Outbound, Nordic region only	Inbound	Ratio, all languages	Ratio, Nordic region only
Danish	926	203	672	1.38	0.30
Finnish	428	44	575	0.74	0.08
Icelandic	544	100	189	2.88	0.53
Norwegian	1,251	357	514	2.43	0.69
Swedish	5,737	1,466	220	26.08	6.66

Data availability statement

The data on which this study is based, “Nordic Noir in Translation Database”, has been peer reviewed and made publicly available by the Post45 Data Collective at https://data.post45.org/the-nordic-noir-in-translation-database-2000-2020/. See Berglund, Gulddal, and King (2024).