Friday, July 29, 2011

The Norway Tragedy

What happened last week in Norway is astonishingly horrible. It is a small country, just under 5 million, only a million more than CT. The impact of what happened is, proportionately, more horrific than 9/11 was for the U.S.

And everyone seems shocked, appalled and asking 'how could this happen there?'

I've been reading lots of Scandinavian mystery novels the last few years. The Steigh Larson trilogy everyone has read and lots of Henning Markell and Anne Holt and Karin Alvtegen among others.

Mystery novels, it seems to me, are mirrors of a society, stories of the darkness of a culture. And those novels are full of characters like the mass murderer--white supremacists, neo-Natzis, serial killers, anti-immigration extremists. There is a dark underbelly to the low unemployment, high (and free) education, great health care image of the Scandinavian countries. I knew that through Mystery Novels. The writers of mysteries in that part of the world are not surprised by what happened last week.

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some ponderings by an aging white man who is an Episcopal priest in Connecticut. Now retired but still working and still wondering what it all means...all of it.