The Norwegian tradition of reading crime novels during the Easter weekend has attracted attention in Sweden in recent decades, but has not had any wider impact.

"You have seen it in marketing campaigns in recent years. It is a national phenomenon that has certainly spread here, but not with the force that exists in Norway, says Mikaela Zabrodsky.

In their statistics, there is nothing to indicate that sales of crime novels go up during Easter in Sweden.

"Crime fiction is such a strong genre all year round. In physical sales, holiday reading is visible, summer is a strong detective season. Detective fiction is an incredibly strong genre as an audiobook, and in that channel there are no direct seasonal variations, says Mikaela Zabrodsky.

Started as a PR coup

This year, Norwegians are celebrating 100 years of the tradition of Easter Crimea. It writes NRK, which traces the phenomenon to the crime novel "Bergenstoget plyndret inat!" from 1923. The launch of the novel is described as a PR coup.

The publisher at Gyldendal bought a full-page ad in the newspaper Aftenposten. And since the book title ("The train to Bergen robbed last night") sounded like a newspaper headline, and many readers must have thought that the text referred to a real news, it aroused great interest. The book was a sales success.

Going out to the cottage

Since the PR coup 100 years ago, Easter is the time of year when many Norwegian publishers publish new crime novels, and when many Norwegians buy books to read during their holidays.

"On the one hand, they have much longer Easter holidays. And so they have a tradition of going out to their "cabins" and sitting in the country and being quite isolated in the evenings. Then the Easter crime has worked well in Norway, says Karin Alfredsson, chairman of the Swedish Academy of Crime Fiction.

Karin Alfredsson, chairman of the Swedish Academy of Crime Fiction, recommends three crime novels in the clip above.