For the majority of the world, genealogy is nothing more than a fascinating hobby. In Iceland, family trees take on more importance as, due to the patronymic surname system of taking the name of your father as your last name, the risk of dating a relative is all too real. Hence the online Book of the Icelanders allows you to track anyone’s lineage.
Family history also plays a central role in Satu Rämö’s The Clues in the Fjord, the first English translation of the Hildur series.
Hildur Rúnarsdottir has an interesting genetic trait for a detective, having been passed the power of premonitions from her grandmother. While her ancestor could see detail, Hildur only gets an overwhelming sense ahead of something bad happening, not what. Being the only detective in the Westfjords, Iceland’s most sparsely populated region, that sixth sense isn’t often needed. With an average of one murder per year, her time is more focused on crimes against children.
It’s a subject that tugs at Rúnarsdottir’s emotions, having never solved the case of the disappearance of her two young sisters 25 years ago. Child trauma also features heavily in a newcomer to the town. Jakob, a police trainee on secondment from his native Finland, has chosen the remote internship in part to escape his own child custody issues.
The pair make an unlikely partnership – Hildur who ventures out into the arctic waters to surf, and Jakob, the bearded Finn with a penchant for knitting Icelandic jumpers – but it’s a partnership that soon develops into something fascinating.
When what initially appears to be an avalanche victim turns out to be a murder victim, the region’s reputation as a crime backwater soon changes. When other bodies turn up, both locally and in the capital Reykjavik, it soon becomes apparent the victims are linked, but how? Family trees become an intrinsic tool for investigators, and even in such a small, close-knit community, there are still surprises around lineage.
Rämö paints a richly-detailed world, setting up not only the characters but also the local towns and villages they operate in. We learn about the challenges of life in this most remote part of Iceland and the struggles it faces alongside its stunning natural beauty.
We also learn plenty about our detectives throughout this initial book. Rämö details them carefully, drawing out past histories, their complex familial ties, and the drivers that keep them searching for justice in this remote corner. It could all too easily come across as a set-up for the longer series, but Rämö skilfully balances the essential exposition with a genuinely gripping case for the detective duo to get their teeth into.
The unlikeliness of the duo is what sets this book apart from other similar works. In both Hildur and Jakob, we have police officers battling their own demons as well as the criminal world. Now that is nothing unusual in the world of Nordic Noir, but what works here is the ability to discover this part of Iceland through the eyes of a newcomer. Unfamiliar with the landscape and unable to speak Icelandic, Jakob acts as our gateway for discovering this new territory.
Perhaps that sense of authenticity stems from Rämo’s own background, a Finnish writer now finding her home in Ísafjörður in the Westfjords.
There are enough investigative twists and turns to satisfy the most avid of crime reader but there’s also enough human interest to entertain more general readers. There are plenty of unresolved story arcs for the pair to investigate in future works and this looks like an exciting new addition to Iceland’s already impressive literary crime canon.
The Clues in the Fjord by Satu Rämo, translated by Kristian London, is published by Zaffre
