Subverted Image of women

Nordic Noir Research
How women are represented in Nordic Noir- The Bridge, and Girl with dragon Tattoo
(http://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/mm/subscribers/downloads/archive_mm/_more_mm/issue41/MM41_web.pdf)

Between Lund (The Killing), and Salander (Girl with the dragon tattoo) who is clearly the more showy character. With her bisexuality,motorcycle leathers and ‘fuck off’ T-shirt, she is a classic rebel.  The character has, however, come in for criticism, particularly when compared to Lund. What the two apparently very different characters reveal are aspects of the undercurrents in Scandinavian society

‘Salander is the product of a male fantasy of how a woman could act under pressure

Lund is a woman’s idea of how a man would act.’

Through their representations Lund and Salander have become iconic, whilst behaving in ways that are actually iconoclastic. Salander in no way made her sexless, and that her ownership of her assertive sexuality is itself part of her empowerment. This is appropriate for characters whose identities are so strongly tied to their gender yet who remains outside of the ‘male gaze’ stereotypes still widely applied to women in the media. They are not defined by the people around them and are not, as was often the case with female detectives of the past, ‘the story of a woman in a man’s world’. Both characters subvert the stereotypical view of women, and women in crime, genuine, interesting and idiosyncratic human beings.