Two brothers havent spoken in forty

years, and a plague threatens to destroy

whats dearest to them their prizewinning herd of sheep. Theres blood,
there are tears, and its all set against a
brooding grey landscape.
But Hrutar, or Rams, isnt the latest
success story of Nordic noir although
its from Iceland. Its a tragi-comedy,
which its director, Grmur Hkonarson,
calls sad and funny at the same time.
We call it glgahmor in Iceland, or
gallows humour. Its very typical of
Scandinavia.
Glgahmor or gallows humour is very typical of
Scandinavia Grimur Hakonarson

Rams is on course to become one of the

most critically successful Nordic films
ever after winning the Un Certain
Regard prize at Cannes, from next
month it will be released in more than
forty countries, including the US, UK,
France and Italy. Its also Icelands Oscar
entry.

The global phenomenon of Nordic Noir began in 2009 with the Swedish original of The
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Credit: Music Box Films)

But this is where Rams stands alone in

its field bleating. While Swedish
producer Gudrun Giddings, who lives in
Los Angeles, says her phone has been
ringing off the hook since 2010 with
requests for Nordic talent, the woman
known as the Scandinavian Whisperer
for her ability to promote these countries
in Hollywood, says when it comes to
comedy, her sweet nothings fall on deaf
ears.

Were known for being dark and

depressing, she says. I suppose our
comedy can be seen like that too.
Pitch black
The global phenomenon of Nordic Noir
started with the Swedish original of The
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in 2009,
which sold six million cinema tickets. It
was followed by Wallander, The Killing,
The Bridge and political thriller Borgen.
Hollywood capitalised on Swedish
vampire horror Let the Right One In by
remaking it as Let Me In, while even the
family film Frozen is based on an old
Scandinavian myth. Next tip for the top is
Occupied, which debuted on Norways
TV2 recently and is about the fictional
Russian occupation of the country.
Comedy is one tough nut to crack Berna Levin

Stockholm-based Yellowbird productions

is behind it, as well as Wallander and
Dragon Tattoo, but even its Chief
Creative Officer, Berna Levin, describes

the comedic genre as one tough nut to

crack.
Its the one area we just cant develop,
she says. Were constantly in demand
for drama because were seen as edgy,
twisted and a little rebellious, but were
finding it so difficult to sell comedy that I
cant see us doing anything for an
international market for the foreseeable
future.

Swedens The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of a Window and Disappeared is a
recent comedy from Scandinavia that has found international success (Credit: Music Box
Films)

Its a shame. The Swedes and the

Danes in particular love the dry Anglo-

Saxon sense of humour, but it seems to

be a one-way love affair.
A matter of taste
There has been one notable international
comic success recently Swedens The
100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of a
Window and Disappeared, but this was
based on Jonas Jonassons well-loved
and best-selling book. Finlands crowdfunded Iron Sky also marketed itself a
global release in 2012, because director
Timo Vuorensola already had a fanbase
from a Star Trek parody hed made. But
Iron Sky, a B-movie romp about Nazis
living on the moon, failed in its mission to
make critics laugh its marginally more
inspired than Snakes on a Plane or The
Human Centipede was the comment of
one.

Iron Sky, a B-movie romp about Nazis living on the moon, failed in its mission to make
critics laugh (Credit: Entertainment One)

TV producer Johanna Karppinen is a

supporting partner of A Finnish Film
Affair, an event designed to expand the
local industry globally. She thinks subtitles are comedys biggest barrier to an
international audience, because so
much of comedy is in the timing and
delivery.
However, Id say our national
characteristics as nations also play a part
in holding us back we tend to be

extremely humble, and very reticent. We

dont play for laughs.
We are really very morbid, is the
confession of Peter Franzn, a Finnish
actor and director who plays King Harald
in Historys TV series The Vikings. We
spend a lot of time in the far North, in the
dark, surrounded by trees, alone. This
can end up expressing itself in craziness
such as Iron Sky or in something
grimmer.
If theres a dead body in Denmark, someone is going to
make a joke about it Anders Jensen

The dark may or may not have

something to do with the high suicide
rate amongst the Nordic countries
(Finland also has the highest murder rate
in Western Europe) but its certainly
contributed to their black humour. This
tradition, according to Rams' Grmur
Hkonarson, stretches all the way back
to the Old Icelandic Sagas and the
descriptions of Viking killing the heads
fly off and the bodies split apart, he
says. Thats very funny, sometimes.

The situation is not much better for

modern-day corpses; according to
Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen,
if theres a dead body in Denmark,
someone is going to make a joke about
it.
Jensen, who directed 2008s The
Duchess, starring Keira Knightley, also
wrote Love Is All You Need, an AngloDanish rom-com starring Piers Brosnan
but wasnt afraid to make his heroine a
cancer sufferer. This year he wrote and
directed Men and Chicken, starring Mads
Mikkelsen and Borgens Sren Malling. A
flat-out comedy, its about five
grotesquely disfigured brothers and their
estranged father running amok in a
derelict sanatorium.

Men and Chicken stars Mads Mikkelsen and Borgens Sren Malling and is a comedy
about five grotesquely disfigured brothers (Credit: Walt Disney Company Nordic)

It wont be to everyones taste, he

admits. But sometimes I love it when
people in the audience arent laughing.
Men and Chicken premiered at the
Toronto Film Festival this year as did
Return of the Atom, a bleakly humorous
Finnish documentary about life in a town
that has received the first European
nuclear reactor since Chernobyl. The
problem, according to its directors, Mika
Taanila and Jussi Eerola, was that they
werent sure if the public outside the

Nordic countries would realise it was

supposed to be funny.
Or else youll cry
Should Scandinavians, and their Nordic
cousins, be applauded for laughing at the
darker side of life, while Hollywood
makes The Hangover and Grown Ups?
Icelands 2011 Oscar submission, Mama
Gogo, by Fridrik Thor Fridriksson,
managed to make a comedy about the
onset of Alzheimers in an elderly woman.
Norwegian TV series Dag is about a
marriage counsellor who thinks everyone
should live alone; Rare Exports from
Finland in 2010 made a comedy horror
out of a Christmas movie about Santa
Claus.
If you just make pure comedy the laughs dont always last
that long Maria Pykko

This, according to Maria Pykko, a Finnish

TV director, is where Nordic humour is
most successful mixed with other
genres. Her own show, The Black
Widows, a Desperate-Housewives style

comedy-drama that starts with three

women murdering their husbands, is
being re-made across Scandinavia and
the English-language rights have been
bought by CBS in North America.

Icelands 2011 Oscar submission, Mama Gogo, by Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, finds comedy
in the story of the onset of Alzheimers in an elderly woman (Credit: SEG Distribusjon)

If you just make pure comedy the laughs

dont always last that long, she says. If
you have a bottom line of a strong plot
and drama then I think our humour has a
place. If you think of really successful
thrillers like Norways Headhunters or the
action thriller In Order of Disappearance,

the strong drama allows for those comic

moments.
The harder the drama, the funnier it can
be.
This could be the secret to Rams s
appeal, amidst its death and destructive
relationships. Grmur Hkonarson says
that he couldnt help but make it a little
bit funny; the situation itself is
humourous: two neighbouring sheep
farmers who are brothers and who
havent spoken in forty years.
Its very simple and humanistic but at
the same time most people will recognise
the themes. We have to make fun out of
our own misery or we wouldnt survive.