The year is 2010. Scandinavian crime fiction is hot all over the world. It has been for two or three years. And the interest for Scandinavian crime fiction is very high – be it Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian or Icelandic crime fiction. So you would think the Scandinavians actually did a little something themselves to promote Scandinavian crime fiction, right?
Wrong! They hardly do anything. I have just checked out the websites of the Scandinavian crime fiction associations – you know, the various organizations that hand out all those highly acclaimed crime fiction awards and prices that you’ve noticed if you are into crime fiction? And all the sites could look much better! They are not good looking, inviting and interesting the way they are now.
To start with the site of Skandinaviska Kriminalsällskapet (SKS) – the guys behind the Glass Key Award: SKS has not updated its site since the 29th of June, 2009! And they have still not written about the winner of the 2010 Glass Key Award, Jussi Adler-Olsen, on their site! In addition, the site is not very good looking! So much for promoting Scandinavian crime fiction!
The site of the Finnish crime fiction writers association, the home of the Clue award, also need some visual enhancement, and is only in Finnish. You can’t promote Finnish crime fiction internationally in Finnish! (You can find the Clue Award winners at ScandinavianBooks).
So, then, what about the site of the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy, the organization handing out the prize for Swedish crime fiction novel of the Year? As you can see, it does not look inviting! And it is in Swedish only – the link saying “English” doesn’t work. And the source code (HTML) is not good either; the site is written using “frames” – an outdated technology.
The Danish site, that of Det danske Kriminalakademi, is equally uninviting. Plain, ordinary and does not look up to the standards of the internet anno 2010. And nothing available in English. But at least it seems to be up to date. That’s something, I guess?
The Norwegian site, home of the Riverton club, which awards the Golden Gun Award, looks a little better, but not much. It is quite plain and simple, and nothing is available in English on the site. So if you are an English speaking reader and want to find out more about Jo Nesbo, Gunnar Staalsen and Karin Fossum – don’t go there. No point. And if you look at the page source, you’ll see that it is based on bad Java to insure that it will never be found in the search engines (there is no need for a page of Java to create a plain looking menu?).
There are no crime fiction prizes in Iceland as far as I know. It is, however, possible to find a little bit of information about Icelandic writers on a site operated by the City Library of Reykjavik – but only a few of the author pages are available in English. Fortunately we can read about Icelandic crime fiction at ScandinavianBooks and Eurocrime!
Kind of strange and somewhat sad isn’t it? So much for doing something to further stimulate interest in Scandinavian crime fiction! Good luck with that, guys!
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