Nordic Ecohorror - Naturecultures and Feminine Monstrosity in Contemporary Nordic Literature and Film

What happens when Nordic landscapes long associated with recreational friluftsliv and the egalitarian rights to roam cease to be a source of comfort and belonging, and instead become uncannily unfamiliar? Nordic Ecohorror investigates the rise of Nordic ecohorror across contemporary literature, film, and television, tracing how ecological disruptions and feminine forms of monstrosity challenge dominant Nordic imaginaries of national identity, social progressivism and environmental exceptionalism. Spanning slashers to arthouse cinema, highbrow literature and popular fiction, close reading and empirical reader studies, this book moves through ultra-green folkloric forests, white Arctic icescapes and red corporeal terrains to explore the ways Nordic ecohorror unsettles the boundaries between nature and culture, human and nonhuman, body and environment. Ultimately, Nordic Ecohorror argues that Nordic ecohorror and its feminine monstrosities provide a critical vocabulary for engaging with naturecultural entanglements in a time of planetary change. Julie Kolbeck is a literary scholar at the Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University. Her research focuses on ecocriticism, horror studies, affect theory, and contemporary Nordic literature. Her work explores intersections between ecology, monstrosity, and environmental imaginaries in literature, film and television.