Seminar, three hours. Scandinavian authors have been writing detective fiction for years. Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were famous worldwide in 1960s and 1970s, especially with their Martin Beck series, and once they had established that Scandinavian writers could be successfully translated into many languages, others followed. Scandinavian authors, while following traditional rules of crime fiction, also analyze and often criticize values and cultures of their societies. Reading of these works as representations of critical social and intellectual problems not only in Scandinavia, but in Europe and world at large. P/NP or letter grading.