DARK SHADOW OF MIDNIGHT SUN
Canmore writer’s second historic murder mystery returns to the eerie north of her Swedish childhood
The Midnight Sun Cecilia Ekback HarperCollins
When author Cecilia Ekback was a little girl, she would visit her grandparents’ farm in northern Sweden in the summer. The property was far enough north that it would often experience the “midnight sun,” unbroken 24-hour periods of sunlight.
She would play with her cousins deep into the night. They would ride bicycles, sit around campfires and enjoy the endless daylight in a forested area near the farm. It sounds idyllic. But Ekback says it wasn’t. It was actually unsettling and provided dark inspiration for her second novel, The Midnight Sun.
“There was always this eerie sheen to things,” says Ekback, in an interview from her home in Canmore.
“You could almost see the mythology, the stories you have been told as a child. You could almost see these figures popping up. It wouldn’t have surprised you too much.”
In Sweden’s north, the dark woods were where evil elves and trolls and vengeful spirits dwelled. Ekback remembers being told dark stories, for instance, about the Swedish Santa Claus, a nasty grey goblin who lived in a barn; or the “boy in the bog,”who would enter the minds of children who had evil thoughts. All of this may explain why Ekback, like many Scandinavian writers, is so good at writing nightmarish thrillers that deal with murder and mayhem.
When it came time to write a followup to her bestselling debut, Wolf Winter, Ekback knew she wasn’t finished with Blackasen Mountain, the fictional Swedish Lapland setting of her first book. But even she was surprised at how dark Midnight Sun became.
“Religion and spirituality is something I think a lot about because of the way I was brought up in the north, which at the time was very religious,” Ekback says.
“But this book did not go where I expected it to go. It became more gothic in a way, more spiritual than I expected. I blame this on the midnight sun. It’s really quite particular. In the beginning you have all this energy, you are out and about, you never want to sleep.
“But there is an eeriness that sets in after awhile. Maybe it is because you don’t sleep enough. But there’s the eerie quality to the light. I think that’s what happened with the book. It became eerier than I expected it to.”
Which is not to say that she expected it to be sunshine and lollipops. Born in a small village in northern Sweden, Ekback’s debut novel introduced a writer who could skilfully layer darkness, paranoia and dread onto a historic murder mystery. Wolf Winter, which picked up the HWA Goldsboro Debut Crown and was named an Indigo Best Book of the Year, was set in Lapland circa 1717 and involved the discovery of a mutilated body in the woods.
Midnight Sun takes place more than 100 years later and ups the body count. Set in 1856, the tale begins with the slaughter of three people — a priest, policeman and settler — by an indigenous Sami man. Sweden’s minister of justice sends his son-in-law, a dashing geologist named Magnus, to the mysterious Blackasen to quietly investigate the massacre.
The area is full of minerals, making it too strategic a location to be disrupted by violence or an indigenous uprising. Magnus is joined by his sister-in-law, the minister’s troubled and stubborn 20-year-old daughter Lovisa, banished by her father for reasons that aren’t immediately made clear.
Ekback tells the tale through shifting points of view, with Magnus, Lovisa and Biija, an elderly Sami widow who is also suspicious about the official ruling on the three murders, taking turns as narrator.
While Wolf Winter took place in a time when Sweden was reeling from generations of war and violence, the country was in flux again in 1856, lagging behind other European powers when it came to industrialization and clinging to its past as the world changed.
All of which makes it a unique backdrop, particularly for a headstrong young woman like Lovisa.
“For women it was hard, especially for women who wanted to do something or had character,” Ekback says.
“In this period in Sweden, you can feel if you read the history books that it was very torn between people who want industrialization to come very quickly and people who have a longing for the past; people who want to stick to traditional roles and traditional views on religion and people who are dying for new science and new things opening up. For young women, I imagine that it could have been really hard, especially if there were expectations of what you should be doing and you felt differently.”
Ekback says she hopes to write at least two more books that take place in the mysterious Blackasen. The next one will be set during the Second World War. She plans to return to her home country this year for research.
The author left Sweden in the mid-1990s and worked in marketing before turning her attention to creative writing. Her journey as a published writer is a fairy tale all its own. In 2007, she was studying creative writing at Royal Holloway at the University of London when she met an encouraging literary agent. Ekback wrote Wolf Winter a few years later and sent it to her. Three days later, the manuscript was sold to a publisher.
But while this may seem like a publishing Cinderella story, Ekback admits she put herself under intense pressure when it came to writing a followup.
“Writing Book 2 is exactly as awful as all the authors say,” she says.
“When you write Book 1, you have no idea it’s going to be a book. So you pour your soul into it but you don’t worry too much. But with Book 2, you know it will be a book so suddenly have a responsibility and I think you question yourself. Should I do the same? Should I not do the same? It’s not helpful. There’s a lot of noise.”
Still, she reached a point in the writing process where she knew she was on the right track.
“I like to be scared when I read and I guess it’s the same thing when I write,” Ekback says.
“I must say, with The Midnight Sun I scared myself. There were two weeks when I slept with the lights on.”
This book did not go where I expected it to go. It became more gothic in a way, more spiritual than I expected.