A Bluestocking Knits

Works-in-Progress

This is the sand-dune-y landscape of a Burberry-Inspired Cowl, which unfortunately got stalled when I cut the ends of wool just too short to graft together, so that I am now resigning myself to ripping out the last balls' worth in order not to have to splice in yet another length.  The good news is that the whole thing took only a few hours to knit, so once I get up the nerve to pull the needles out, it shouldn't take long to actually finish.

Another work-in-progress is the Brahms German Requiem, which we started rehearsing the week before last.  How very lucky I was to be able to sing this in high school -- how lucky I still am, to be a part of it again.

This is a lovely version, a yummy Romantic tempo, and the parts are beautifully balanced.  It's interesting, the different perspectives you get, from the chorus or from the audience; I have to not look at the video at times, as it can be distracting, although educational.  That is some serious stink-eye Nikolaus Harnoncourt gives even before he lifts up his hands!  Rather consoling, in a way, to see that even the Vienna State Opera Choir has trouble with getting their eyes off of their music.

I'm currently reading a "medieval noir" that I found on the new-book shelf at the library the other day.  I think I've got spoiled by Ellis Peters, as I find this one more than a little anachronistic in vocabulary -- "décolletage" for example, a late-Victorian word at the earliest, or even more jarring, "gifted" (in the sense of having presented something as a gift), at the same time that the characters say things like "'How fares your good wife?'" and "'Is that the weapon that committed this most foul deed?'".  There certainly can be a good argument for writing a historical novel in the modern vernacular, since at the time period of said historical novel, the way that people commonly talked was in fact "modern" -- compare, for example, the 1920s Charles Archer translation of Kristin Lavransdatter with the 1990s one by Tiina Nunnally.  And there can be an argument that people in the Middle Ages talked more like the Wife of Bath than like Brother Cadfael, too, I suppose.  Still, there it is.

I went to the library, in fact, for the omnibus Mapp and Lucia volume, thinking that I wanted something terribly, terribly English and 1930s. Have not read any of them before.

I'm also reading one of D.E. Stevenson's "lost" novels again, Emily Dennistoun, the current book of the Stevenson discussion list at Yahoo.  The more I think about it, the more I think this was not only an early work of Stevenson's, but a very early work, and one that she may have not bothered to dig out of the drawer because the things she wrote later were so very much better.  Anyway, here is my choice of something late-1920s for my virtual Stevenson "knitalong" --

I think that Emily Dennistoun would be rather shocked to think that her underwear might be discussed in public, but it is not at all unlikely that she would have actually knitted such things herself.  I was surprised at first to see the number of patterns for "vests and shorts" out there -- this is one of dozens from The Vintage Knitting Lady.  I had not in fact given much thought to knitted underthings, but upon reflection suspect that in Scotland at least, where this novel is set, one might want such things more often than not.

As for "real" knitting, I did start the Kid Mohair Wrap the other day.  Found a number of mistakes in the pattern right off, but once that settled down it has gone very quickly, so quickly that I am rapidly nearing the end of the first ball of Kidsilk Haze and at the same time am becoming increasingly alarmed that I will not finish nine repeats of the crossed-eyelet section, as the pattern assures me I can do, before I get there.

Well, we shall see!

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade"

(Might be about time to read Great Expectations again ....)

Finished The Shakespeare Thefts by Eric Rasmussen, a blithely quick read, but interesting.  The title is somewhat misleading, as there is not really much theft involved -- it is about a project to trace all known copies of Shakespeare's First Folio, the famous 1623 first "collected works" of Shakespeare.  There were 750 copies in the run, of which only 232 are known to still exist, so Rasmussen has made it something of a life's work of his to not only find them all but to examine them minutely, even to the marginalia scribbled by innumerable hands down the centuries, partly just for the fun of it, but partly also so that in the very-real possibility of theft not only the books themselves but the individual pages are identifiable.  He has a light, breezy style that sits somewhat oddly, to my mind, with such a scholarly obsession, but it certainly makes for a good popular introduction to the subject.

I am now working through the four "historical" novels of Joanna Trollope that my public library has -- I say historical in quotes to distinquish them from her "modern" ones, called somewhat disparagingly "Aga sagas" by some.  I pay that no mind, as I've always found her to be an interesting writer, serious yet not at all without humor, and some of her novels I count among those I have reread a number of times.  I did not, I regret to say, much like the first of these historicals I read, Eliza Stanhope, which I thought more than a little formulaic and with little to distinguish it from any other Regency romance writer except perhaps a good ear for dialogue.  I was a little relieved to find out that it was her very first novel.  The Taverners' Place was an engrossing multi-generational family saga, stretching from the 1870s to the 1930s, which I quite enjoyed, although I was rather depressed to realize towards the end that very few of the many marriages were happy.  The third one I read -- because I had (characteristically, I suppose) arranged them in chronological order by historical period -- was the Boer War drama The Steps of the Sun, about which I had very mixed feelings, thinking it well-written but finding it surprisingly difficult to tell the main characters apart -- although in Trollope's defense, this may have been only because I seemed to have the time this past week to read only in three- or four-page bursts, and therefore could never really get involved in the story.  I am now in the middle of The Brass Dolphin, set in World-War-II-era Malta, and am much involved in it, interested in the characters and appreciating Trollope's easy hand at describing the Mediterranean beauty of the island.

Knitting?  Well, yeah, I'm thinking about it, actually.  Got two balls of Kidsilk Haze yearning to cover my shoulders this spring.  Only two.

Nona's Tie One On from knitty?

Plain-but-pretty, probably a quick knit.  Useful too -- and I mean that in the best way, in that the trapezoid shape will actually stay on your shoulders.

Or the Kid Mohair Wrap from Susan Cropper's Pretty Knits, excerpted in Canadian Living?

Perhaps a little impractical? can you actually do anything with this fallng off of your shoulders all the time?  But rather spectacular, certainly, and a lot of wow for only two balls of Kidsilk Haze.

This and That --

We had a booth sale the other day, and I managed to get a good way down the leg of a Welsh Country Stocking -- this is is Paton's Kroy, a bit heavier than the original wool, so I've had to adjust the stitch counts considerably.

But other than this I haven't done much knitting, still absorbed in Swedish church-books.  Found this the other day, which amused me greatly --

Imagine the ruckus when papa found out that little Stina had been looking for a piece of paper and decided to make do with one of those old books in the vestry....

And in bookish news, I haven't seen "War Horse" yet, but came across this charming little video in which three of the actors talk about the book and their childhood reading -- that Tom Hiddleston was rather precocious, it seems!

Cardies and Blue Sapphires

The D.E. Stevenson listers at Yahoo are currently reading The Blue Sapphire, first published in 1963.  I fully meant to participate in this discussion, indeed was delighted when this was the next book proposed, as I not only own it but have enjoyed reading and re-reading it -- but alas, time ran away with me, and they are three-quarters of the way through before I've had a chance even to start.

Nevertheless, for my virtual Stevenson knit-along, here is a 1960s mohair cardigan with sweet-yet-modest scalloped edges, very suitable for the shy Julia Harburn, whose rather dull life is changed when one spring morning she has an unexpected conversation with a stranger on a park bench.  It is, I think, a classic Stevenson novel -- a light, rather madcap romance yet with serious moments, full of lively characters and a bit of poetry for good measure.

(Image from Musings from Marilyn.)

Will of the World

On the new-books shelf at the library the other day, I came across Contested Will by James Shapiro.  Being mildly interested in seeing "Anonymous" sometime soon, I took this home with me, although it is not about the authorship controversy as such, but about the history of it, when it first started being mooted, who were the major proponents -- and their nominees, as it were -- how it has developed over the years, and by way of wondering why there is such debate about the authorship of the plays, how an increasing, and increasingly insistent, belief that an author's life will inevitably be reflected in great detail in his works.

Shapiro says right off that he believes that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, but he maintains a fairly level-headed fairness throughout, only seeming a bit baffled at times how someone as intelligent as, for example, Freud, would become so obsessed with proving that someone else wrote the plays.  Shapiro's book is very readable -- it could in fact have been a bit more academic, and have included more than just a "bibliographical essay" at the end, especially since on this topic there are so many people who will argue and counter-argue about particular points apparently until Doomsday.

(Why, why, why, do publishers think that readers of non-academic works are not interested in footnotes?)

So, anyway, I got interested in reading a biography of Shakespeare, so tottered down the street to the public library, and picked out two of the most-recent on the shelf, starting with Anthony Holden's Shakespeare : the Man Behind the Genius.  Now, I have had a fairly high opinion of Anthony Holden for many years, admiring his biographies of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, but I found this book, while comfortably readable, to be superficial and filled with speculation presented as fact.  He blithely states one one page that there is no evidence that Shakespeare attended the Stratford grammar school, as the registers for the period have not survived, and then almost on the next page is writing as though it were fact, "In 1571, the year of William's arrival in the senior school..." which I find really shoddy scholarship.  He does lots of things like this: "Capitalising an intial letter, second only to moving a comma as the nicest of nicities among textual emendations, could see 24-year-old Shakespeare on the road with the Queen's Men in 1588.  'I sick withal the help of bath desired / and thither hied a sad, distempered guest ...'  What does this mean? An out-of-sorts actor-poet in need of a hot bath?  Capitalise the 'B' of Bath in Sonnet 153, and you have a sick player -- no doubt after some post-performance over-indulgence with his fellows at the local inn -- seeking solace in the waters of the West Country spa, already renowned for their medicinal properties.  The Queen's Men made a documented visit to Bath in 1588.  Was the hungover actor a new recruit, enjoying one of his first forays out of London?"  It's a short step from "could have" and "might have" to "did": "[Shakespeare's] brief, half-hearted attempt at retirement to Stratford had made him realise how bored he would be in his native rural backwater, for all his fondness (tinged with guilt) for his daughters."  Three assumptions presented as fact in one sentence! four, if you count the parentheses.  And he does not hesitate to assume the validity of sources who must be taken with at least a grain of salt.  There was it seems an old tradition that Shakespeare kept his own half-pint mug at the local inn, “out of which he was accustomed to take his draught of ale at a certain public house in the neighbourhood of Stratford every Saturday afternoon.” “Our source for this engaging vignette,” Holden writes guilessly, “is, for once, as respectable as a Treasury man, James West, who ‘assured’ George Steevens of this solemn truth in the 1770s.” The 1770s! I ask you.

I went back to the library after that, and borrowed Peter Ackroyd's Shakespeare : the Biography.  I admit that reading this hard on the heels of Holden's book may have made me look on it with a kindlier eye, but I liked this one much better.  The two make almost exactly the same points -- regrettably, judging by the respective bibliographies, neither did much original research -- but Ackroyd is a better writer, and his chapters on London are vivid and fresh.

That said, Ackroyd also does allow himself reams of speculation -- I found it both amusing and frustrating that he can say things like "Shakespeare had been writing 'The Winter's Tale' in the preceding year, and its overwhelmingly pastoral setting has suggested to some critics that he wrote it at New Place in Stratford.  The same reasoning would suggest that he wrote 'The Tempest' while temporarily residing on an island in the Mediterranean," and yet in another place, "As a boy Shakespeare had passed [New Place] every day on his way to school, and it impressed itself on his imagination as a most desirable residence.  It represented his childhood dream of prosperity," assigning motives that he has no way of authenticating. 

And perhaps I notice this more because of my interest in genealogy and thus church records, but over and over again Ackroyd assumes, it seems (because he doesn't footnote his sources), that Shakespeare was the godfather of various children in Stratford and London simply because the boys were called William -- a possibility, I will agree, but to say it with certainty is misleading, since the baptismal records of the time included not even the name of the mother, let alone the godparents.  (On a somewhat related note, I find his assumption that Shakespeare attended various Stratford funerals rather sentimental.  He says at one point that the journey from Stratford to London took four days on foot or two days on horseback.  If the average time between a death and the resulting funeral is two or three days, then if you allow two days for the news to get up to London, and two days for Shakespeare to travel down to Stratford, he's already at least a day late, less if the death was from an infectious disease.)

And almost no footnotes!

But as I say, Ackroyd is a good writer, and I enjoyed reading his book -- perhaps his eye for detail allowed me to forgive his lapses, although obviously not the more egregious ones. 

And I thought it would be appropriate to include with this post some of the portraits alleged to be Shakespeare.  At the top is the famous Chandos portrait.  This is thought to have been painted somewhere between 1600 and 1610, although on what grounds I don't know.  It was thought for many years to have been painted by Richard Burbage, Shakespeare's contemporary and fellow-actor, and also something of a dab hand at painting; it is now thought that the painter John Taylor is equally if not more likely to be the artist.  An expert from the National Portrait Gallery notes that in addition to damage from over-cleaning, the hair and beard have been lengthened at some point. Next is the so-called Grafton portrait, alas somewhat more discredited these days than it was a few years ago.  The resemblance to the more-iconic portraits is tentative at best, but this of course assumes that those portraits are accurate representations.  I personally would very much like to believe that this boy would go on to write all of those wonderful plays.  Third is the Soest portrait, which even to my eye looks at least a hundred years too late to be from life, but it's a lovely doublet.  Just above is a relatively new contender, the Sanders portrait, with a label identifying it as Shakespeare and having been painted in 1603.  The smile is certainly unusual in portraits -- although frankly I see it as more of a smirk, and find it in fact slightly unpleasant. The collar is interesting and unusual -- I wonder if any period-clothing experts have weighed in on the dating.  And below is the Cobbe portrait, claimed by no less an authority than Stanley Wells on behalf of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to be a portrait from life to be dated 1610.  A nice portrait -- the beard is especially well done.  Is it Shakespeare?  Are any of them Shakespeare?  Will we ever know?

Rainy Days and Mondays

Well, it's actually Tuesday, of course, but still.  It's a suprisingly grey one, as it happens -- good thing I took this photo already as there is almost no light, even in the middle of the morning.  This is a Serpentine Mitt in progress, atop a Gaia shawl ditto.  Both fairly simple knits, although taking a long time, it seems, as I keep getting distracted by other things.

And in my literary travels, I am venturing a little further south, reading Krabat by Otfried Preussler, a German children's fantasy novel from the early 1970s, based it seems on a much-older tale.  It's a strange little story, of an evil miller and of the boy who becomes his apprentice, and thereby unwittingly a pupil in the miller's school of sorcery, and how the boy -- sort of an ur-Harry Potter -- eventually learns to overcome his master and escape the dark mill in the fen of Kosel. 

Mary Delany, a Nice Person

I am currently reading The Paper Garden : an Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72 by Molly Peacock, a biography of the woman who invented the art of paper collage -- rather accidentally, it seems, by noticing the similarity of a piece of colored paper and the petal of a geranium.  Interesting to think that of such trivial coincidences are art forms born.

I don't remember ever having heard of Mary Delany (1700-1788), so this was all new to me, and thus perhaps all the more amazing, to look at a collage like the one above and try to comprehend that it is all little bits of colored paper meticulously cut and pasted onto a black background, with startlingly life-like accuracy.

Delany had an interesting life, a marriage arranged by her family when she was seventeen to a much-older landowner who turned out to be an alcoholic and a gambler, which hardly surprisingly with hindsight turned out to have been such a disaster that Mary could not help being more than a little relieved when he dropped dead quite unexpectedly after seven years.  Now only 24, Mary could perhaps have hoped to live the rest of her life in peace, but unfortunately her husband had not altered his will, and so she did not inherit even what little remained of his estate, and spent the next twenty years living with various friends and family, trying to secure a court appointment, setting up a small household and yet still finding time to produce reams of intelligent, witty, and sensible letters. 

In her forties, Mary received a proposal of marriage from Patrick Delany, an Irish clergyman of her acquaintance (later Dean of Down), who it seems had long held her in the utmost regard.  Now both widowed, the two enjoyed a very happy marriage until the Dean's death in 1768.  A few years later, Mary made the connection between the bits of colored paper and the flower petal, and made nearly a thousand of these flower portraits, what she called collectively her "Flora Delanica", until her eyesight failed in her late eighties.

I found the book at the public library, opened it at random and read the first pages of the chapter on the passion flower, and was enchanted.

A portrait of Mary Delany, by John Opie, 1782.

Peacock, being a poet, has a way with words, so that her prose too is often very poetic.  I did, though, I must confess, get a little tired of the amount of autobiography Peacock stuck into Mary's story.  I can understand objectively why she felt it works, I guess, but subjectively, as it went along, I really wanted more Mary.  The book itself is beautifully made, which I thought a lovely dollop of extra poeticism -- lovely creamy thick pages, a handsome dark font and wide margins.  I was not sure in the end, though, that I wouldn't rather have simply a catalogue of Delany's "mosaicks", and spend a great many hours enjoying a vicarious friendship through her letters.

I Dream of Horses

Last night I sewed some pillowcases for the girls with fabric I'd originally bought for carry-all totes but realized was not really enough for a good-sized bag.  There wasn't enough of the print to make full pillow-cases, so I used the solids (which I'd bought for lining the bags) and pieced them onto the ends of the cases.  The proportions are not really what I'd do on purpose, as it were, but needs must and all.  I was rather pleased with myself that there is not a raw edge visible anywhere, as the edging is folded over inside and out to meet the patterned fabric, and the seams are all French.  Finished size 20x30 inches (51x76 cm).

David came in from a bike ride this morning and said, "I really shouldn't tell you this, but there's a garage sale around the corner with lots of yarn."  "Lots" didn't really describe it, either.  Boxes and boxes and boxes, plus ribbons (cloth and gift), laces and other notions, dozens of hats.  The lady said that her mother had just moved into an assisted-living place, and she's been cleaning out the condominium.  "The craft stuff will be out tomorrow morning."  It was a little sad to think about, really, what we leave behind.

I bought a half-dozen balls of kitchen cotton for new dishcloths, and this length of woven ribbon, which I don't really have a plan for, but I liked the colors and that it was pretty from both sides --

Last week I read The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure, a memoir about seriously geeking out on Laura Ingalls Wilder and the "Little House" books.  I say that with about 30% gentle revulsion -- you know, the way you draw your skirts in a little -- and 70% secret envy that I haven't done all of the things McClure has.  Having grown up, like so many of us did, feeling somehow a part of Laura Ingalls's life through her books, McClure succumbed to the temptation to try some of the things that Laura experienced -- wearing a sunbonnet, making candy by pouring maple syrup in the snow, twisting hay into sticks, churning butter -- and to visit all of the places where Laura lived.  The book is actually more serious in places than I thought it would be, and McClure has some interesting things to say about Rose and the contentions that it was actually she who did most of the writing, as well as about why we continue to find the books so compelling.  But she is also at times laugh-out-loud funny -- you can tell that she, too, has that mixture of revulsion and fascination when she comes across some real "Little House" um, aficionados -- although, in an appealing way, much more often her humor is about her own self-admitted dorkiness.

I also learned something I hadn't known before, that Almanzo is not pronounced, as I have for years assumed, all-MON-zo.  There is in fact a recording of Laura herself in later life -- she sounds, I thought rather wistfully, like someone's Midwest grandma (like my Midwest grandma) -- and she says the name almost as though it were two words, the first rhyming with "pal", Al MAN-zo.  (This is so obviously where Royal's nickname for his brother, "Manny", and Laura's own nickname for him, "Manly", came from that I wonder it didn't occur to me before, but it is still going to take some serious mental adjustment.)

And just because I like the idea of seeing the faces behind the stories, here are some photos of the Ingallses --

Pa and Ma, Charles and Caroline Ingalls.  I don't know the date -- perhaps someone else does -- but Ma looks fairly young.  Pa's beard always surprises me, as it is completely out of my own experiences of beards, as well as nothing like the Garth Williams illustrations.  I might like the second photo a bit better, perhaps because it is more "like" Pa, somehow, with his hair not staying slicked down, and his eyes looking as though the twinkle is not far away --

Carrie, Mary, and Laura.  Carrie hasn't quite grown into the hand-me-down dress yet, I think.  Laura's hand has been pointed out, I think by Zochert, as pent-up energy, but you know, I think it's just resting on the back of Mary's chair.

Laura as a teenager in DeSmet.  Remember her cutting the bangs and curling them with her slate pencil?

Ma, Carrie, Laura, Pa, Grace, and Mary.  (Does anyone look good sitting in a bustle?  My own great-great-grandmother's photograph looks the same, as though she's about to slide out of her chair -- and curiously enough, with a similarly-misshapen bust, as though the stays aren't the right size any more.)

 

This is the iconic portrait of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Author -- it's on the bookplates I sent away to Mansfield for all those years ago, that still grace the endpapers of my copies of her books -- but I think I prefer the other lesser-known one, which I'd never seen before now, though it is obviously from the same photographic sitting:

"But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods.  She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle.  She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

"She thought to herself, 'This is now.'

"She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now.  They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now.  It can never be a long time ago."

Two "New" D.E. Stevensons!

The D.E. Stevenson community has been abuzz for the past few months with the debut of two lost novels, Emily Dennistoun and The Fair Miss Fortune, both published this month by Greyladies of Edinburgh.

Emily Dennistoun was originally titled "Truth is the Strong Thing". There is no date attached to it, but it seems to have been written in the late 1920s, then put away and never published. I have to admit that if I had written this, and then, say, Mrs. Tim of the Regiment, I would have stuck this in a drawer and tried to forget about it as well. It is surprisingly overwrought for a Stevenson, even a serious one -- which she does now and then -- although, to rather curious effect, the dialogue at least often has her usual light touch. The plot is a "typical" Stevenson one in which a quiet, reserved heroine, under the thumb of a tyrannical parent, falls in love unexpectedly and must suffer several changes of fortune and twists of plot until we find out how exactly -- for the outcome is never in doubt -- she is rewarded with happiness in the end. With Stevenson, like Vivaldi, it is the journey, not the arrival, that is what makes things interesting and often compelling. Emily Dennistoun is not, though, I regret to say, Stevenson at her best. There are a number of editorial inconsistencies that I expect would have been fixed if she'd meant to publish it, and the prose is very Mills-and-Boon.

"Emily's soul was in tune with the storm, she suffered with it, suffered as only those can whose art lives upon their nerves like a hungry animal.  Suffered all the more because she was gentle and sweet in every-day life.  She was like the quiet pastoral English country that smiled in the sun.  The storm came to her heart and roused its slumbering rage, changing the familiar scene to a nightmare of madness.  What did it all mean -- where did it come from? Whither was it going?"

I have to say, though, that I did really appreciate that the heroine is not young -- in her early thirties for the main part of the drama -- and that the hero is not some dark and brooding Rochester-type, but tall and ugly with bright red hair. I think that it takes a bit of courage to buck the trends when one is starting out as a novelist, so I give Stevenson credit for that.

The Fair Miss Fortune, however, is classic early Stevenson. It was written around 1937 -- and was rejected by Stevenson's then-publisher as "too old-fashioned". (Stevenson replied bemusedly, "I am old-fashioned.")  Charming heroines -- two of them, identical twins, which was the publisher's kick against the story ("it's been done") -- likeable heroes, characters of both supportive and hindering stripes, misunderstandings, sparkling and easy dialogue, all of Stevenson's hallmarks.  One doesn't like to bandy the word "delightful" about too often, but this one probably deserves it!

And here are two knitting patterns to go with them -- for Emily Dennistoun,

a sensible 1920s jumper, don't remember now where I found this. Plain garter rib, yet with hidden depths in the differently-colored trim....

and for The Fair Miss Fortune, from around 1935, a flirtatious ruffled dress of Moorland Tweeds wool -- with "that English flair" so essential, we think, for a D.E. Stevenson knit-along.

Easter Mysteries

It is a tradition in Norway at Eastertime, I learned recently, to read mystery and crime novels over the long holiday from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday.  Now, I like Norway, and I like reading, so this just seems too good a tradition not to adopt!

(A little too blurry to read most of the titles, worse luck, here in an Oslo bookshop called Ark, from an article in an Oslo news-site.)

This tradition is of fairly long standing, dating from 1923 when writers Nordahl Grieg and Nils Lie decided to write a crime novel -- but instead of the publisher releasing their book in the autumn as usual at the time, the story ran in an advertisement in a Bergen newspaper just before Palm Sunday, under the headline-looking title "Bergen train looted in the night".  This caused great excitement and even consternation -- shades of Orson Welles -- in those who didn't notice the "advert" in fine print at the bottom, and the whole thing proved to be so popular that a number of crime and mystery novels began to be published in the spring.  As well as books, radio mysteries were broadcast, and later television shows -- often the great British shows such as the Lord Peter Wimsey series in the 1970s, "Miss Marple" and "Poirot", the Adam Dalgliesh series, and more latterly, "Foyle's War".

Apparently, Påskekrim -- the å is pronounced like the RP "aw" in "law" and "jaw", but "POHS-keh-krihm" is pretty close -- remains to this day a puzzle to the "outside world".  The Norwegian Wikipedia writes a little bemusedly, "Not even the Swedes have been infected with the Norwegians' penchant for murder mysteries and suspense."  I can't think why, really -- a long holiday, inclement weather, a juicy murder mystery, it sounds like a perfect combination to me!

These are the most popular Norwegian crime writers available in English:

Karin Fossum
Jo Nesbø
Kjersti Scheen
Gunnar Staalesen
Anne Holt
Kjell Ola Dahl

some of whom are discussed at Elusive Moose and in more detail at Scandinavian Books.  I have, I confess, only one book by one of these authors -- Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer novel Black Seconds -- mostly because when I went back to the bookstore the other two titles were already gone!