Book Review

By Derryll White

Blaedel, Sara (2016).  The Killing Forest.

                  “He who sits there at the land’s end, to defend the land, is called Surtr; he brandishes a flaming sword, and at the end of the world he shall go forth and harry, and overcome all the gods, and burn all the world with fire.”    – from the 1916 edition of Snorri Sturluson’s The Prose Edda.

This is the eight book from Sara Blaedel in the Louise Rick series.  Louise returns to work after an extended absence and enters into her early history in a small rural Danish town. The author is fastidious with the inter-personal relationships, charting what Louise remembers, why she left and how the small community interacts. The whole is cloying in its intense rumours and exchanges but brilliant as a piece of social history.

In Louise Rick’s investigation of the disappearance of a 15-year-old Danish male she runs into the Asatro – the old ways of the Vikings and the worship of the old Nordic gods.  Blaedel brings the religion to the fore and makes it very real.  Her work also takes her back in time to the death of her first love and this becomes interwoven into the current investigation. The character Louise Rick grows exponentially and clearly demonstrates why Sara Blaedel is so popular in Europe.  The actions are intense and the reader is kept glued to the page.

The story takes the reader into the Danish mind, into the beliefs of one sect of current religion. It also very clearly demarcates the gender roles as they existed in rural Denmark and clearly shows Rick’s frustration and distrust of this. Exposing what is, the author clearly points at the need for change.

Sara Blaedel pulls up the old ways. Old Norse religion believed in various gods and goddesses, chief among them Thor and Odin. The cosmology revolved around a world tree known as Yggdrasil, and this element features prominently in ‘The Killing Forest.’

The author encourages the reader to explore, to expand one’s knowledge, and she does it in a most delightful, if sometimes terrifying, way. Sara Blaedel is aptly called ‘the Danish Queen of Crime”.

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Excerpts from the novel.

BROTHERHOOD – “The boys are accepted into the brotherhood at their initiation ceremonies.  It’s different for girls, more like a confirmation without a priest.  Girls confirm their belief in the Nordic gods and they’re accepted among the adults.  But it’s special for the boys, becoming part of the inner circle.  They make a vow to support each other.  It’s a male thing.  Sune had been looking forward to it for a whole year, and that’s where he was the evening he ran away.”

COMMUNION – “Something very special happens when you’re in harmony with nature.  When you stand in a circle with the heat from the campfire, the light of the moon, the stillness of the forest, you can feel the force of the gods.  You feel their presence, spiritually and physically.  You get the very strong feeling you’re not alone.  It’s very peaceful.”

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org

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