When I was at the Bloody Scotland festival this year I had the pleasure of bumping into Norwegian author Thomas Enger in the bar. I heard he had organised a festival in Norway so here is the lowdown on Krim Festival Norway!
Thomas had been thinking about organising a crime fiction event for quite some time, but never really thought he had the time to do it. However, it turned out he is doing it anyway and revealed he is having a lot of fun with it. He told me “everyone has been so enthusiastic about my organising something like this, and I’ve been getting a yes from almost everyone I’ve invited. Those who say no, can’t come because they have some place else to be. The local community has really embraced this initiative of mine. When I posted a little teaser before the summer holiday, my social media channels went nuts. That bodes well, I think.”
The Krim Festival is going to be held in the city where Thomas grew up, Jessheim, which isn’t the biggest city in the world (it wasn’t even called a city when Thomas was a kid, but somehow they managed to get that status not so long ago, much to the local people’s delight). Thomas feels that Jessheim is a great place to organise an event like this. It’s convenient for the airport, it’s close to Oslo, and there are plenty of ways to access the city by bus or train. Thomas told me Jessheim is a place which has really grown culturally over the past twenty years or so, but there haven’t been any literature festivals or many events there yet, and he is seeking to change that.
Thomas’s ambition with Krim Festival is to create a experience where the audience can really get to know what goes on in the minds of some of the best storytellers in the world. Travelling across the world, talking about his writing has inspired Thomas to bring that experience back to Norway for the Krim Festival. He hopes in turn to inspire his audience by letting authors talk about their characters, their writing, and invite the audience to hear about what goes on inside a writer’s brain. He has personally observed “that’s when people lean forward in their seats, and they really listen.”
Krim Festival is starting big – three days long with 24 authors taking to the stage. Among the authors attending this first edition are Antti Tuomainen, Jorn Lier Horst, Gunnar Staalesen, Sofie Sarenbrant, Tove Alsterdal, Derek B Miller, Anne Holt and Torkil Damhaug. Thomas will be moderating some events* and he hopes this festival will put Jessheim on the map as a place to go if you want to get really close to your favourite crime writing authors. The festival will end in style with a delicious three-course dinner at a local venue where the readers will be able to sit next to their favourite authors. Unsurprisingly music is involved (if you know Thomas you know he loves music, playing and composing). The extremely gifted Rein Alexander will be there to sing for the diners. Sounds good doesn’t it!?
*all events will be in Norwegian except for panels with Antti and Derek.
Nordic Noir 
[…] support and enthusiasm. Miriam V Owen of Nordic Noir Buzz recently wrote about the origins of Thomas Enger’s Krim Festival. Two packed evenings of conversations and a full day of events took lots of planning; invitations […]