Mikael Niemi: Declaration of love to Sweden

The fact that the world has ever heard of a stretch of land in the far north of Sweden named Tornedal is due to Mikael Niemi alone. In 2002, Niemi's acclaimed novel "Popular Music from Vittula" about a boy friendship in Tornedal appeared in German, and since then we also know that there is as much Finnish as Swedish spoken above that sons of their fathers in the sauna on the pecking order of the widely branched Families are enlightened and that "knapsu" is the worst insult to a man, because that means "softened".

"Popular music from Vittula" ranked number one on Sweden's bestseller list for months and was translated into 24 languages. In 2006, the film adaptation came to German cinema.

After a trip to the science fiction ("The hole in the rind", 2006), as unusual as anything with this author, Mikael Niemi has now completely returned to Tornedal with his new novel. "The Man Who Died Like a Salmon" is a thriller with a brutal murder and police trying to clear it up. But it is also and above all a declaration of love to Sweden's extreme north with all its peculiarities.



Interview with Mikael Niemi

Mikael Niemi

© Dan Norra

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: The world loves thrillers from Sweden, and then Mikael Niemi's new book is a thriller. Have you allowed yourself a little joke with the genre?

Mikael Niemi: Actually, I always wanted to write a detective story, but the reason is a simple one: my father was a police officer in my hometown of Pajala, and now I've written a book about police in Pajala. I just know a lot about that. Not that there were many spectacular crimes in my father's life. But I know how the people who work there are.



ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Your home is always a protagonist of your novels. What inspires you about this landscape?

Mikael Niemi: I grew up there, all my childhood experiences happened there. Nothing shapes you like the place where you spent your childhood. I have traveled a lot, but no place in the world can take the meaning of the Tornedal for me. For example, if Esaias, the suspect, remembers how he was fishing with his father when he was a little boy and kills his first fish and puts out his mother, and then the mother cooks the little fish with potatoes on it - that's me.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Would you say that you have a particularly good memory?

Mikael Niemi: Yes, I think so. Maybe that's because my mother recounted the tiniest childhood stories again and again. Listening makes you more attentive to details. In general, she is a great storyteller.



ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: A tradition that continues her son.

Mikael Niemi: Yes and no. I have the stories inside of me, but I do not like to tell them in front of other people like them. I tried that, I even went to an acting group, but I do not enjoy showing myself in front of others. I want to write down my stories in silence, at my desk, by hand, sheet by sheet. Let others read it afterwards.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: You write by hand?

Mikael Niemi: Of course I'll type it later, into a computer, but I need the feeling that my hand is making something on paper.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: As in "Popular Music", "The Man Who Died Like a Salmon" has fantastic, surreal elements that are not common in a thriller.

Mikael Niemi: Where I come from, people believe in the supernatural, as probably in any rural area. For example, in the Tornedal there is the belief in the blodstämmare. This is a person who, by virtue of his thoughts, can make a wound no longer to bleed.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Have you ever seen something like this with your own eyes?

Mikael Niemi: It sounds weird if I tell it that way, but I've even experienced it. When I was a kid, an old woman stopped my nosebleed. And that's true, over the phone. Apart from that, everyone in Tornedal knows someone who has ever had contact with a dead person, in whatever form. Or you know people who can feel the future ahead. So it all has its place in my books.

ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: After the tremendous success of "Popular Music from Vittula", are you always under pressure to write this success while writing?

Mikael Niemi: No, for heaven's sake, I could not work like that.I write what I want to write without thinking about a market or anything like that. That's the only reason I could go after popular music? with something as crazy as? The hole in the rind? come. I write what I want to write, trying to get as close as possible to my inner pictures. Of course, this never succeeds completely, which is why I can never be completely satisfied with a book. But I think that's the only way to do it: you have to do your best, but you also have to accept your limit.

About the author

Mikael Niemi, born in 1959, was born and raised in Pajala in the far north of Sweden. He studied electrical engineering and worked as a teacher and youth worker. Even before his spectacular success debut "Popular Music from Vittula" he wrote lyrics, children's books, plays and audiobooks. "Popular music from Vittula" was his national and international breakthrough in 2000.

About the book

Mikael Niemi, The Man Who Died Like a Salmon, T: Christel Hilde-brandt, 352 p., 19.95 Eur, btb

An old man is found murdered, in his belly is a fishing spit. It can not be said that such brutal crimes are rampant here in Pajala, in the far north of Sweden, so the young Policewoman Therese Fosness from Stockholm is sent north to help her local colleagues in the investigation. Soon therese Therese no longer believes in Sweden, because they constantly speak up here Finnish, and if one goes out, he does not close his door, but only leans against a broom. And as the police continue their investigation, Therese inevitably learns a few things about himself.

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Sweden, Popular Music, Declaration of Love, Car, Crime, Crime, Mikael Niemi, The Man Who Died Like a Salmon