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akademiskacademic quarterkvarterReligion in Scandinavian Crime FictionKim Toft Hansenclose to the outer limits of human capabilities, things requestingomnipotence – this omnipotence is common forGod and the author. / To put it another way: Salandersperformance is so excessive that we must think of them aspure literary fiction or as an expression of something supernatural,divine.” (ibid.)Hence, they continue to locate parallels: “The journalist Dag Svenssonresembles St. John the Babtist” (ibid., p. 17). “In the trilogy, thepolice occupy the role played by the Romans in the gospels” (ibid.).“Mikael Blomkvist is the Peter of the Salander-trilogy, about thatthere is no doubt” – even though we may note that Mikael does notlet down Lisbeth as Peter lets down Jesus. The authors of the articledo, however, underline that Salander’s forgiveness is very hard tolocate: “Where Jesus would say that the smallest offence needs anequal grace as the biggest, Lisbeth says that the smallest offence canand must be punished as hard as the biggest” (ibid., p. 23). The endscene in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2007) where she nailsher murderous half-brother to the floor leaving him to the vindictivebikers instead expresses a retributive eye-for-an-eye logic incontrast with the Christian ethics of turning the other cheek. As faras I can see it is very hard to determine whether or not the parallelsare as obvious as the authors claim them to be. I find their analysisin a way too determined to cross-read the trilogy and the gospels,but I find it very interesting that theologians actually attempt thisreading. This does not in itself tell us a lot about crime fiction ingeneral or Stieg Larsson in particular, but it tells a lot about howcrime fiction is appropriated by the church in order to gain a voiceby way of a popular media phenomenon.God, one point…I return to the relationship between media and religion later. Now,I turn to my second literary example: Håkan Nesser’s novels aboutthe investigator Gunnar Barbarotti. Nesser’s series consists of fourbooks so far, running from Man Without Dog [Människa utan hund](2006) to the recent The Lonely [De ensamma] (2010). Barbarotti is acomplex detective character with a firm belief in rational and empiricalinvestigative methods, but on the side he is trying to proveor disprove the existence of God. He employs a complicated pointVolume03 238