Arnaldur Indridason: "It was very hard to be a colony of Denmark"

BarcelonaArnaldur Indridason (Reykjavik, 1961) has been one of the leading lights of contemporary Nordic crime fiction for years: he has been translated into more than forty languages, has sold more than twenty million copies of his books and is the father of Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson. The Icelandic writer has come to Barcelona to participate in the BCNegra and present his latest book, The King and the Watchmaker (RBA), where he abandons his famous detective story to travel to the 18th century. Indridason imagines an unusual encounter between the Danish monarch, Christian VII (1749-1808), and a watchmaker from an Iceland where children are dying of hunger, epidemics ravage the population, and they have to dig through metres of snow to get out of their peat huts.

Why has detective Erlendur Sveinsson abandoned his story and travelled to Denmark and Iceland in the late 18th century?

— I found a good story, that of a watchmaker named Jón Sivertsen, whose father was executed in Iceland for breaking the Stóridómur code. This code provided very harsh punishments for various moral crimes, such as incest or having children out of wedlock. In the novel I introduce a fictional element, which is the fact that this watchmaker manages to restore a famous clock inside the palace and there he meets King Christian VII. I invent a meeting between the son of the man condemned to death and the son of the man who signed the death sentence.

Were punishments for "moral" crimes harsher in Iceland than elsewhere in Europe?

— There were codes that could be compared to other places, but Iceland was an island and the danger of incest was considered to be higher. In my book, a man and a woman are sentenced to death because she had sexual relations with him and his child. The intention of the code was to prevent children being born out of wedlock. This was a serious problem because women could hardly get rid of the evidence of the crime they had committed. Many mothers were forced to leave their children outdoors to save their own lives.

The book deals with events from the 18th century, but it has echoes in the present day: the helplessness of the most vulnerable in the face of the abuse of power...

— Absolutely. The story takes place in Iceland, where the authorities were very strict and went to great lengths to punish women. At the same time, there is the king's abuse of power and censorship. Everything materialises in the relationship between the king and the watchmaker, who must decide whether to tell the truth or tell lies. The monarch cannot tolerate or bear to hear the truth, and the watchmaker is very aware that depending on what he says, he risks his life. This is something we see every day and it is getting worse. There is a lot of fake news circulating and there are those who want to believe it.

Despite the power imbalance, the horloger gives the king a lesson.

— Yes, because he is an intelligent storyteller. He knows what he can tell and when to do it. However, he is not aware that he is also revealing a secret of the palace that no one dares to talk about and that irritates the king even more.

Therefore, storytellers have great power...

— We hope so [laughs].

The king asks the watchmaker what time is.

— In all my books, this question comes up: what is time, how does it influence our lives? How events in the past influence our present. However, in this book, time has much more weight, especially the concept of time. In the 18th century, ideas about time were quite primitive. Of course, we don't know what time is now either.

Has your concept of time changed with age?

— It is possible. I am still grappling with this issue. I do not know what the phenomenon of time is or its influence on us. All I can say is that it will eventually kill us all. The watchmaker does come to the conclusion that every time he takes a step forward in the present, he takes a step back in the past.

How did you approach the life of such a controversial monarch as Christian VII, who was removed from power due to his mental problems?

— I tried to make it as funny as possible. I was lucky that he is a real character who lived at the time I set my story and is interesting in Danish history. I made the most of the fact that he was unpredictable, had abrupt mood swings and fits of rage. The watchmaker never knows which version of the king he will meet. For a writer, he is a fantastic character.

Iceland was a colony for many centuries. To what extent has this affected the country's identity?

— It was very hard to be a colony of Denmark, because the Danes did what all countries do with their colonies: exploit them as much as they could for more than six hundred years and give little in return. The positive thing was the cultural exchange, because many Icelanders went to study in Copenhagen. However, economically it was disastrous.

And this still lingers in the country's memory?

— No, there is not much left. We have a very affectionate relationship with Denmark. Since 1944, the year we became independent, relations have been very cordial. One important thing was that they returned our manuscripts, which they had had for centuries and considered theirs.

Your father, Indriði G. Þorsteinsson, was a famous journalist and writer. Has he made things easier or more difficult for you in your career?

— My father was very well-known and I didn't want to follow in his footsteps. But I grew up in a house that was always full of journalists and writers, and the first sound I remember is that of the typewriter, because my father spent all day writing. When you grow up in a place like that, you end up catching it. However, this meant that I didn't start writing until a late age and that I wrote crime novels, a genre that my father never touched.

Is that why you write crime novels?

— It's a genre that I like. For many years it was difficult to consider writing crime fiction in Iceland because there was a belief that it couldn't work. It was very undervalued, it was considered to be newsstand literature. Now it is the most popular genre in my country.

Did your father like your novels?

— It was very exciting to let him read my first novel. I didn't say anything to him until I had completely finished my first manuscript. He managed to read four of them before he died. He was always very interested and supportive. He was also delighted that I wrote crime novels and not any other kind of literature.