You turn 18, you get sent a gift, you open it and think ‘oh, how nice’, and before you know it, you are involuntarily at the center of a most strange dispute.
This is more or less how things have gone for Norwegian Princess Ingrid Alexandra, who turned 18 on 21 January and who will one day ascend the throne as the country’s reigning queen.
The hop in the whole is that the Norwegian Publishers’ Association would like to give the princess a gift, and it consisted of a selection of Norwegian books, which in recent years have thrown away prizes for authors, illustrators, translators and comic book creators.
However, one very popular genre that has dominated Nordic literature for the last many years was not to be found on the list of the more than 50 books that the princess received. Namely the crime.
And then the Norwegian crime writer Anne Holt went to the keys on her Facebook profile.
»This genre (crime, ed.) Is a locomotive from the industry and does Norwegian literature a great service abroad. It is incomprehensible that the donors did not include last year’s Riverton winners, ”she wrote.
The Riverton Prize is awarded each year in Norway for the best crime fiction work.
And then it was as if the Publishers’ Association could suddenly see that, of course, the princess should also have detective stories.
Then one might think that that chapter had been put to an end, but no.
Dagfinn Nordbø, Norwegian author and satirist, took to the stage with the attitude that the princess – and everyone else – was wise to refrain from reading detective stories.
»What does a young person with crime literature need? 18-year-olds need crime as much as fish need a bike. And the same goes for all other ages, “he wrote VG.
He mentions that detective stories revolve around fictitious, bestial murders, preferably of young women, and for the rest of the money you get a story about an investigator who either drinks like a pig, is divorced, unhappy, messes and pigs, has no control over his finances or can make the relationship with his child work.
“Iron out what does not fit, but at least three of these elements are always present,” said Nordbø.
This has probably led a crime writer, Ingebjørg Berg Holm, to write a post in which she criticizes Nordbø for writing off the entire genre in advance based on her prejudices, and that his post is pure snobbery.
The only one who – perhaps wisely enough – has not said anything is Princess Ingrid Alexandra, who is obviously busy reading in the many books – and now also detective stories – she has received as a birthday present.