Ingvar Ambjørnsens hytte-noir

This article considers links between contemporary Norwegian writer Ingvar Ambjørnsen’s novel (2012; ) and the concept of , both in relation to more traditional film noir, to classic hard-boiled crime fiction, and to the recent trend in crime fiction and television known popularly as “Nordic noir”. The author argues that Ambjørnsen reworks key elements of aesthetics and thematics, for example relocating the setting from the more typical “urban jungle” to an equally dark and brooding forest landscape. Ambjørnsen simultaneously activates and dismantles tropes associated with both Norwegian identity (nature, the vacation cabin) and with (the anti-hero, the ) to create a complex social critique of late modern Norwegian society.