“The author with 18 million readers worldwide”! The banner, which flashes on the cover of the new novel by Icelandic Arnaldur Indridason, would have something to frighten the writer of this country in the far north, populated by barely 350,000 inhabitants. At 62, an old adventurer with a rich work of 25 opuses, the father of the famous Erlendur, a dark policeman tormented by the past, does not seem to be moved by this cohort of fans. It is true that he had twenty-five years to get used to his status as a leader – with the Norwegian Jo Nesbo and the Swede Henning Mankell – of the Nordic thriller, whose success he explains “by the new breath, tinged with social realism, brought to the noir genre, while introducing other kinds of crime and climates”.
Translated in 40 countries, Indridason met many of these readers from the other side of the world, before reducing the sails, except to play planetary pirouettes. However, he is there, in Paris, on one of those icy mornings which must remind him of the springs of Reykjavik. In what honor this special treatment? “I have always been well received in France [NDLR : 150 000 exemplaires vendus au bas mot pour chacun de ses tires] and then, this work, The King and the Clockmakeris very different from my usual novels, it was important to come and talk about it.”
Second World War (The King’s Book, The woman in green, what the night knew, The Shadow Trilogythe Cold War (The man of the lake, The dual, ie the match of the century between the Russian Boris Spassky and the American Bobby Fischer organized in 1972 in Reykjavik) … The novelist Indridason, a history graduate, likes to go back in time. But it had never gone so far back, in the Iceland of the 18th century, a dark century for this distant colony of the kingdom of Denmark – it will acquire autonomy only in 1918 and independence only in 1944. The climate is disastrous, the harvests bad, the infantile mortality without equivalent, and the terrible famine. In question ? The royal monopoly of trade and, above all, the eruption of the Laki volcano in June 1783 which gave rise to a vast cloud of acid rain falling on all of northern Europe: “It would have prepared the ground for the French revolution “, emphasizes Indridason.
Inspired by a True Story
No revolution for the time being, but a fragile king, Christian VII, well manhandled by his son, and confined to his castle of Christianborg, in Copenhagen. It was there, in the royal reserves, that he came across Jon Siversten, an Icelandic clockmaker, commissioned to restore a masterpiece clock, a miniature of that of Strasbourg Cathedral designed by the Swiss Isaac Habrecht. Intrigued by Jon, on the mode of “how can one be Icelandic?”, the king is soon fascinated by the story of the watchmaker who tells him the terrible fate of his father, Sigurdur, thirty years earlier: this man “honest and just”, accused of fornication and usurpation of paternity, was beheaded with an axe, while his companion, governess of his agricultural estate, was condemned to be drowned, all on the orders of Christian’s father VII, the cruel Frederick V.
If the encounters, alternately almost friendly and stormy, between the watchmaker and an increasingly tormented king were born of his imagination, the couple’s death sentences did indeed exist, confides Indridason. Curious writer who, for entertainment, devours books on trials that took place in the Westfjords: “I read there that a certain Jon Siversten was linked to a specific trial, but I also knew that “He was a watchmaker. Eureka! I had my novel. Everything that happens in Iceland is based on historical sources, such as the Supreme Judgment, this set of iniquitous laws supposed to fight against the levity of morals.”
For having slept with Gudrun, the woman who had also slept with her son (actually adopted), Sigurdur is therefore beheaded. From impressive Icelandic scenes to exquisite paintings from the Danish court and elaborate portraits (such as that of the poet and naturalist Eggert Olafsson), Indridason navigates masterfully through this historical novel as hectic and intriguing as a good thriller.
The King and the Clockmaker, by Arnaldur Indridason, trans. from Icelandic by Eric Boury. Editions Métailié, 318 p., €22.50.