My Top 5 'Desert Island' European DVDs

Top 5 Desert Island DVDs (sub-category: European)

1: Betty Blue (France) – ‘Betty Blue’ is a movie I discovered in my teens and the first French film to ever ‘break out’ on the other side of the world. It was a phenomenon in 1986 and was the biggest grossing French film of all time until ‘A Prophet’ came along in 2009. It is, in my opinion, also the only film ever to have a ‘director’s cut’ that is actually better than the original cinematic release. Jean-Jacques Beineix was told that his original 3 hour version would not be released and that after the financial failure of his previous film he was to cut ‘Betty Blue’ down to 2 hours. He did so to ensure the release of the film but then 15 years later was able to release the version he had always wanted to. It’s hard to say exactly what the main strengths of ‘Betty Blue’ are simply because there are so many to choose from. The performances from Jean-Hugues Anglade and Béatrice Dalle are mouth-watering as is the cinematography and the unforgettable soundtrack. It’s the saddest love story I can think of and that’s why it’s the greatest love story of all time.

2: Frozen Land (Finland) – ‘Frozen Land’ or ‘Paha Maa’ as it is known in its home country is about as Finnish as it gets. It is the interconnected stories of a bunch of sad, troubled people trying to get their lives together against a backdrop of poverty, crime, loneliness, alcoholism and copious amounts of despair, grief and loss. It is not a happy watch but it is undeniably brilliant. Shot in a Finnish winter as you might expect from the title it is heavy going from the beginning and doesn’t let up at any point along the way to the sad, poignant ending. What it does give you en route though is a solid insight into Finnish ways of dealing with loss and the acceptance that life just hasn’t turned out the way you might have hoped. It won’t do much to dissuade people of the idea that Finland is full of vodka-drinking suicide cases even if in my experience the Finns are some of the nicest people I have ever met. It is a hard-hitting social commentary on modern life and what people will do in the pursuit of money.

3: Mastermind (Sweden) – This is brilliant. Episode 6 of Yellow Bird’s Wallander Series 1 was so good that it was deemed worthy of a cinematic release. It is the story of a disgruntled villain who Kurt Wallander helped put in prison. While said villain was incarcerated his daughter killed herself. When he gets out it’s time for revenge and he gets a job where he can keep a close eye on Wallander and his colleagues. Both Martinsson and Wallander have their daughters kidnapped in circumstances that are both ingenious and genuinely spooky and soon both officers are desperately trying to stop the unthinkable from happening. The writing is so clever I wanted to stand up and clap the first time I watched it and it was a huge influence on my first novel. All three series are worth a watch. This just happens to be the crowning jewel.

4: Rare Exports (Finland) – Another Finnish movie here and this time we are embracing the other side of the Finnish mind-set – total craziness. Two young boys stumble upon what looks to be a large mining operation near the Finnish/Russian border but they can’t possibly be ready for what it is that the scientists are trying to extract from the ice. Santa Claus is coming to town but not the rotund affable Santa that we all know and love. No. This is the giant child-eating phenomenon that Finland has. Once his many helpers find out that Santa is about to be released from his icy tomb hundreds of naked Finnish men in their late 90s start to arrive to help him out. They slaughter entire reindeer herds and hide him in a barn where they defrost him by stealing the town’s supply of heaters and radiators as well as every single potato sack in sight. That’s right, potato sacks. Is this because Santa loves his tatties? No. It’s because you can fill them with children and then he has something to eat when he gets free. This film is disturbing and hilarious in equal measures and genuinely tickled my sense of humour. The Finns are a lot funnier than people give them credit for and this movie is a great example of that even if the humour is as dark as midnight on a Lapland winter’s evening. The title comes from the fact that all the naked ‘helpers’ are cleaned up at the end of the film and shipped off around the world to become Santas in their own rights.

5: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (France) – This tender and touching film is based on the memoir of journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor-in-chief of French Elle magazine. It shows us what his life is like after suffering a massive stroke that left him with ‘locked-in syndrome’ and how his speech therapist helped him write his autobiography using the only part of his body that still moved to dictate the text to her. His left eyelid. She devises a way that he can work through the letters of the alphabet and spell out each word for her. The technique is simple but incredibly time-consuming and her patience is endless but the brilliance of the story is found in the compassion that the two main participants bring to a strange and sombre tale. There is something haunting about the movie and the gentle way that the nurse brings this broken man back to the point where he wants to tell the world about what has happened to him. I’m not usually one for these ‘guy overcomes all odds’ sorts of stories but this left me feeling genuinely moved mainly because of the relationship that is struck up between this man and his one and only link with the ‘outside’ world.

My interview with Scandinavia On My Mind

Crime writer Grant Nicol on Reykjavik’s mean streets, leaving behind New Zealand and the birthday that changed his life.


Grant Nicol was celebrating his fortieth birthday in Reykjavik when he decided he wanted to make Iceland home.

Some might think that the New Zealand writer had merely swapped one volcanic island for another but, after leaving his homeland 23 years ago to work in both Australia and the United Kingdom, Grant knew instinctively that Iceland was a country he didn’t want to say goodbye to. It’s probably a good thing Grant came back, considering his three crime novels are all set in Iceland.

Below is our interview with Grant:


You moved from New Zealand to Iceland, swapping one volcanic island for another. How different is life in Reykjavik? –

Well, I actually left New Zealand 23 years ago. I spent time in both Sydney and Belfast before settling here in Reykjavík. About ten years in Australia and then ten in Northern Ireland as well. Iceland and New Zealand have a lot in common but they’re really different too. They are both the result of some serious volcanic action but New Zealand as a land mass is much, much older. On the other hand, Iceland has been settled much longer than New Zealand. Geologically Iceland is the youngest country on the planet while New Zealand is the youngest as in the most recently inhabited. There is geothermal water abundant in both countries although it is much more abundant in Iceland where we would struggle to survive comfortably without it. Without all the underground hot water here to heat our homes and provide hot water for our showers and taps life would be infinitely more expensive. They even use the geothermal hot water here to heat the public swimming pools and underneath the footpaths in the centre of town. In New Zealand there’s a few hot pools and geysers but nothing like Iceland.

The people and the language in Iceland are both very different from back home but there are definite similarities too. Icelanders are about 50% Irish/Scottish and 50% Viking so they’re not as different as you might think. I’m from a Scottish background but my family name was originally abbreviated from a Norwegian one. We descended from Vikings on the Isle of Skye and then somehow worked our way to New Zealand. And now back again.

The weather here is colder than back home and yet very familiar. The speed with which it can change here is very like New Zealand. Both countries are surrounded by huge expanses of water. The climate in Reykjavík wouldn’t be all that dissimilar to say, Dunedin. I’ve seen snow at the beach in both cities. Both nations are quite small although Iceland’s population is really tiny and we both seem to share a real ‘can do’ attitude simply because in both countries there is a real history of having to do things yourself if you want them done at all.

Reykjavík might be small but it has everything you would want in a city including art galleries, theatres, opera, independent cinemas and a world-class concert chamber that houses the Icelandic Symphony.

The main differences that any Kiwi moving here would notice would be the daylight hours (super-short in winter and never-ending in the middle of summer) and the almost total lack of tress. In some ways Iceland is a mirror image of the North Island of New Zealand where anything and everything you throw at the ground can and will grow. There is so little topsoil in Iceland that most of it is imported. And the trees. I was in Oslo recently and it was just so amazing to be able to get on the train for 20 minutes and be in the middle of a giant forest. The real deal, just like back home.
And beaches, there no beaches in Iceland that you would sunbathe on except for Nauthólsvík in Reykjavík which was manmade with imported sand; and like the South Island of New Zealand most of the time it is way too cold to sunbathe here anyway. And there’s very little in the way of rugby here but I did notice recently a poster advertising for a women’s rugby team so there’s still hope.



What was it about Reykjavik that made you want to settle there permanently? – 

I first visited Reykjavík in 2006 for my 40th birthday. I absolutely loved the place and immediately started sprouting thoughts of moving. At the time I still only had my New Zealand passport and so any such plans had to be put on hold until I had been in the UK long enough to apply for citizenship. Once that was achieved and I had that British passport in my hand I started thinking about it much more seriously. After that initial trip I revisited Reykjavík once a year until I had made a total of 6 trips in the space of 5 years. The turning point came in 2012 when I saw Sigur Rós play here. They blew my mind. I mean totally. I spent 6 years working as a roadie in the 90s and have seen hundreds of rock bands live.

Sigur Rós inhabit the heady stratosphere of modern rock somewhere between Radiohead and heaven. I decided that night as I left the gig that any country that could produce a band like that, I want to be part of. And so serious plans were finally put into action and a year and a half later I made my move.



You began by writing screen plays: how did you move into writing crime fiction? –

My early attempts at writing were rather half-hearted and very much took 2nd place to my rather successful apprenticeship in Sydney as a social butterfly. I never really let the writing get in the way of going out and having a good time so unsurprisingly the screenplays never really amounted to anything but they were good practise for what was to come. In 2011 a really old friend from my school days at Northcote College in Auckland was killed in a car accident. Simon’s death was a huge shock and really drove home the point that your life can be over and done with at any time. It was then that I decided to prioritise my life and put all my free time into writing. And this time novels, not screenplays. When I was looking for somewhere to set my first book Iceland came to mind because I was spending so much time up here every year and so it became the location for book ‘On A Small Island’ and the story pretty much had to be crime fiction because that was what I’d grown up reading. From the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series to true crime books about Jeffrey Dahmer and Andrei Chikatilo to the works of James Ellroy and James Thompson, crime both real and imagined had always been my literary world. A lot of the ideas for my books still come from true crime. I have always been, fascinated by the extraordinary evil that men do.

You said your first book, ‘On A Small Island’, took you longer to write than anything else. Can you tell us how you got from page one to getting published? – 

‘On A Small Island’ was a 4 year project for me. A lot of that time was spent wondering what the story was actually going to be about and writing my way through the doubts I had about my early storyline ideas. The first two or three drafts bore no resemblance to the finished product at all.
By the fourth draft my story finally started to appear. It was heavily influenced by an Icelandic documentary on child abuse called ‘Syndir feðranna’. This true story provided the backstory for the book and became very important to me. It’s a poignant and harrowing tale about a home for wayward boys that used to operate in Breiðavík in the Westfjords. Today it has become a guesthouse for tourists. When I was happy with what I had written which was about draft #7 I started looking for an agent and/or publisher. Nothing happened for me so I decided to self-publish the book. It was a really good learning experience and definitely helped me find Number Thirteen Press who published my second book ‘The Mistake’. I have recently agreed a deal with Fahrenheit Press to publish my new book ‘A Place To Bury Strangers’ and to re-release ‘On A Small Island’ so it’s been a complicated story and one that’s still not over.

I think most visitors to Reykjavik would have trouble imagining the cute and quirky city as being inspiration from crime fiction. Does the city have its mean streets? Is there a darker side (not talking about winter!) that tourists may not be aware of? – 

Not really but as with any city there are definitely people you would to avoid. There is very little in the way of crime here but it does exist. To imagine otherwise would be naïve in the extreme. There is a drug dealer who lives right across the street from us in what is otherwise a lovely, leafy suburban street. Not only does he constantly deal to his customers on the street in broad daylight but the police won’t do anything about it. He has been in and out of Litla Hraun so many times that he has his name on one of the cell doors there and they know he is selling drugs out of his apartment but still they do nothing. The guy knows every junkie and lowlife in town and occasionally makes amphetamine-fuelled threats to the neighbours so despite what most visitors might think, Iceland is no paradise. It’s just a whole lot nicer than most other places I’ve been. Apart from idiots like this guy the police only really have to worry about booze-driven domestic violence and a few methamphetamine labs.



6: Why do you think the rest of the world is so in love with Scandi-noir? – Scandi-noir is enjoying the success it is because of what the rest of the world has seen in the last ten years or so coming out of Sweden and Denmark in particular. The foundation of this, for me anyway, was the Wallander novels by Henning Mankell and the awesome Swedish television series starring Krister Henriksson. That series was followed by the awesome ‘The Bridge’ and there were also Stieg Larson’s books that really put it on the map worldwide. It has been a heady mixture of literature and television that has done it and long may it continue.



Do you think that Iceland will continue to be the setting for your future crime novels? – 

For my next three books at least. ‘A Place To Bury Strangers’ is set there, my next novella ‘Out On The Ice’ is set there and the book after that is as well. After that, who knows? I had dreamed that at some point I might drift around Scandinavia and my stories would just follow me. That might still happen. I’ve found over the years that it’s not always wise to plan too far in advance.



What are your five favourite places anywhere in Scandinavia and why? –

In no particular order whatsoever… Told og Snaps in Copenhagen for the best open sandwiches, craft beer and small batch schnapps in Denmark, Svartkulp just to the north of Oslo which is my favourite deserted forest hideaway, Restaurant Zeleste also in Copenhagen for the best lobster lunch anywhere, Huk Beach in Oslo which is an incredibly relaxing little spot so close to the city centre and on-board the Arlanda Express – I just love really fast trains!

Svartkulp, Norway

How I Got Here From There (Iceland 2016)

In 2009, the year after the banking crash in Iceland, and the rest of the known universe, I decided the time was finally ripe for me to visit the unique North Atlantic hideaway and tick another country of my to-do list. It was back then a somewhat mysterious little island hidden away near the top of the world that I knew remarkably little about and yet I was very aware of its fearsome reputation for being cool as hell. A reputation that is, I can now categorically confirm, well deserved. Seven years later and here I am reflecting on exactly how that trip changed my life. I was so taken with the tiny nation of just over 300,000 people that I returned the next year and over and over again until I had somehow made six visits in the space of five years and finally decided that I was going to leave the UK behind and have a crack at making Iceland my home. I moved to Reykjavík from Belfast eighteen months ago and not only have I made the place my home but I would now seriously struggle to imagine myself leaving it. I read somewhere once that home is not where you come from but where you no longer want to run away from. Well, that’s what I’ve found.

Since my first visit here I have published two books ‘On A Small Island’ and ‘The Mistake’ which are both set in and around Reykjavík and now have a third and a fourth book on the way. I have been embraced by the close knit crime writing community here and am on the organising committee for the 2016 Iceland Noir crime writing festival which will be held at Nordic house in Reykjavík this November. Two years ago I attended the festival as a fan and this year I’ll be moderating the closing panel. That’s how quickly the weather can change around here. In the years between my first visit and my actual move here I spent a lot of time reading any translated crime fiction I could get my hands on from Iceland and got to know the work of authors such as Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson, Árni Þórarinsson, Arnaldur Indriðason and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. Since arriving here I have discovered that in addition to them there are many other local crime writers as well whose works are only now being translated into English or will be soon.

The crime writing scene here is much bigger than I could have ever imagined and everybody is very supportive of each other in a way you might not experience in larger countries. I can now count Sólveig Pálsdóttir, Lilja Sigurðardóttir, Jónína Leósdóttir, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and Ragnar Jónasson among my friends here as well as British author Quentin Bates who spent ten years here before moving back to the UK and whose books are all set in Iceland. All of these lovely people will be appearing in one shape or another at Iceland Noir this year.

The idea for Iceland Noir was dreamt up in 2013 by Ragnar Jónasson, Quentin Bates and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and to their immense credit the initial one-day festival went ahead after only six months of preparation. In 2014 Reykjavík was the host city again before the festival moved to the Shetland Islands in 2015. It is now back in Iceland again for 2016 before it takes to the road once more and heads to Hull in England next year. It is one of the smaller crime writing festivals around but that is definitely part of its charm. Its size makes it very easy to mingle with writers and other fans, something that is not always easy at some of the larger festivals. When you couple its intimate size and its lovely local authors with the picturesque setting of Europe’s most northerly capital it really is a combination not to be missed. Just in case you need some more convincing to head up this way here is the website for the coolest crime-writing festival in Europe: http://iceland-noir-iocy.squarespace.com/

As well as the local writers we also have a superb selection of visiting authors from all over the world including Val McDermid and Craig Robertson from Scotland, Viveca Sten from Sweden, Sara Blædel from Denmark, Leena Lehtolainen and Kati Hiekkapelto from Finland as well as Alexandra Sokoloff and Jeffrey Siger from the US. There will also be one and two-day guided tours following the festival with local crime writers showing off some of their favourite destinations around the country and settings from their books including a tour to Siglufjörður with Ragnar Jónasson to see the locations from his Dark Iceland series.

There is a gala dinner with the authors at a luxurious inner city hotel on the Saturday night and a city crime walk with readings from a few handpicked local authors including myself on the first night of the festival. So it is definitely one to keep in the back of your mind if you’ve ever entertained any thoughts of visiting Iceland. 2016 might just be the year to do it. It really is a wonderful place and very easy to get to from the UK, mainland Europe and the US. In November the weather will be chilly and the days short but that will only add to the feeling that you are tucked away safe and sound at the top of the world with a bunch of crime-writing lunatics.

The festival coincides with the advent of the ‘Noir in the North’ conference at Háskóli Íslands (the University of Iceland) and one of our participating authors Val McDermid will be appearing at both events. The star of Icelandic crime fiction is very much on the rise at the moment with the huge success of Ófærð (Trapped) by RVK studios here in Reykjavík. In Norway the show drew 500,000 viewers per episode which is 10% of the Norwegian population and in the UK it pulled 1.2 million viewers per episode on BBC4. Ragnar Jónasson’s Dark Iceland series has been optioned for television, Lilja Sigurðardóttir has sold the film rights to her book ‘The Trap’ and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s book ‘I Remember You’ has already been shot here in Iceland and will be in cinemas this Christmas. Iceland is quickly becoming a hot seat of Nordic crime fiction action after many years of being in the shadow of Sweden and Denmark with their shows such as The Killing, Wallander, The Bridge and those movies about the girl with the dragon tattoo. I can quite easily see this year’s Iceland Noir being the best yet and needless to say I’m really looking forward to it. In the next month I will be publishing my third book ‘A Place To Bury Strangers’ through Fahrenheit Press who will also be republishing my first book ‘On A Small Island’ while I finish work on book number four so it’s shaping up as a pretty busy year for us all and that’s just the way we like it here in Iceland. And now I’m off to the shops to get some more coffee.

'The Mistake' longlisted for the 2016 Ngaio Marsh Award.

Out of 40+ entries this year 'The Mistake' has made the final nine of the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel

The finalists will be announced in July with the winner announced at WORD Christchurch on 27 August.

Shaken, Rattled and Rolled: From Auckland to Reykjavík in 3 easy moves.

Grant’s story begins properly in January 1995 while he’s sitting on the side of stage next to Billy Duffy’s guitar tech as Ian Astbury and the rest of The Cult shake their collective money-makers in front of 40,000 people on a hot day in Sydney, Australia. In the midst of a distinguished six year stint on the road that included meeting Jeff Buckley and getting stoned with Evan Dando on a rooftop in Christchurch he would come to realise that you can do pretty much whatever you want with your life if you’re prepared to put in the hard yards. On that summer’s day long ago along with Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy there was also Mark Lanegan, Al Jourgensen and Bobby Gillespie on hand to inspire Grant with their free-spirited and wholehearted approach to life. You can read whatever you want into that. We all know what those guys are about.

Jump forward fifteen years and for his sins Grant finds himself living in Belfast, Northern Ireland. We can only assume that his sins were extremely serious and that hell was never going to be good enough for him. The sudden death of a dear friend back in New Zealand brought about the realisation that life can end any time it feels like it and that the time to do what you really want to do with your life is now. It’s always been now but in this painful instance the word hit home with a new and pressing urgency. So it was finally time to stop fucking around and write that book that he’d always wanted to write.

So now we jump forward one more time to the here and now and not only is Grant living in Iceland - the land of the midnight sun, 24 hour party elves and cartons of milk covered in magic mushroom eating Yule Lads - but he’s put his head down, done the hard yards and published a novel and a novella. ‘On A Small Island’ and ‘The Mistake’ have made quite a name for themselves in the world of Iceland Noir and he’s just about to publish his third book ‘A Place To Bury Strangers’ with Fahrenheit Press. It’s beginning to look a lot like he was right all along.