This paper explores topic modeling (TM) as a tool for “dis- tant reading” of two Swedish literary corpora. We investigate what kinds of insight and knowledge a TM-based approach can provide to Swedish literary history, and which methodological difficulties are associated with this endeavour. The TM is based on 12- and 24-term chunks of selected verb and common noun lemmas. We generate models with 20, 40, and 100 topics. We also propose a method for a quantitative and qualita- tive gendered thematic analysis by combining TM with a study of how the topics relate to gender in characters and authors. The two corpora contain, respectively, Swedish classics (1821–1941) and recent bestsellers (2004–2017). We find that most of the topics proposed by the TM are easy to interpret as conceptual themes, and that the “same” themes ap- pear for the two corpora and for different TM settings. The study allows us to make interesting observations concerning different aspects of gender and topic distribution.

The report provides raw listings of the results of topic modeling experiments, intended for readers interested in taking a closer look at these. Explanations and discussion are found in the main article: “Apples and Oranges? Large-Scale Thematic Comparisons of Contemporary Swedish Popular and Literary Fiction” published in the journal Samlaren, 2019.

• Crime novels from Scandinavia are commercial successes all over the world. In Sweden, the dominance of the crime genre on the book market is even more significant. According to Swedish book trade magazine Svensk Bokhandel, twelve of the top twenty books in the bestseller charts of fiction in 2010, were domestic crime novels. This has started intensive debates, where crime novels are blamed for out-competing other genres. Domestic crime fiction has had a commanding position of the commercial side of Swedish publishing business in the 2000s, but this has not always been the case. When did this literary genre-takeover take place? How did it take place? How can it be explained? Even though some research concerning Scandinavian crime fiction has been carried out over the last couple of years, no one has mapped the book market phenomenon as such. This article aims to fill this gap by offering a neutral and extensive description on the role and position of crime fiction in Swedish publishing between 1977 and 2010.

This study investigates contemporary Swedish crime fiction through a quantitative content analysis of 116 Swedish crime fiction novels published 1998–2015 and written by the most successful authors in the genre. The study discusses killers, murder motives, victims, murder methods, and detectives and other protagonists, with the aim of identifying social patterns and recurring themes.

In general, these novels are dominated by female protagonists and put much emphasis on portrayals of the main characters in their struggle to combine work and family life. This simultaneous shift to a female perspective and a focus on everyday life stands out in comparisons to earlier Swedish crime fiction. The novels are furthermore permeated by a partial realism, where depictions of everyday life, settings and contemporary details are realistic and concrete, while depictions of killers, murder motives, murder methods and victims most often are imaginative, spectacular and sensational, and thus in most cases show few similarities with actual crimes in contemporary Sweden. Also, the selection is characterised by a dominance of normality, where main characters and innocent victims affirm “normality” (they are most often middle class, white, heterosexual Swedes without immigrant background), whereas killers and unsympathetic victims are depicted as deviants in stark contrast to normality.

The content often seems to be chosen by how well it works in relation to plot lines and genre requirements. Therefore, it is argued that both contextualising and functionalistic perspectives need to be taken into account when analysing depictions of society in contemporary crime fiction. With such a dual-vision approach, the ostensible realistic social criticism in the genre to a high extent appears to be a story about the genre.

This article updates and extends Tzvetan Todorov’s classical typology of crime fiction from 1971 – where he separates plots driven by curiosity from plots driven by suspense – through a distant reading of 113 commercially successful novels of Swedish crime fiction from the early 2000s. Furthermore, it aims to initiate a methodical discussion in literary studies concerning the benefits of using semi-big materials (instead of either very big or very small ones), and in combining computer-aided and traditional methods. 

The method used – killer plotting – is a word frequency count of all the times the murderer in each novel is mentioned in the plot related to the point in the plotline where the killer is revealed to the reader (and the protagonists). These rather simple measures manage to capture the basic structures of crime novels: clues, encounters with the hidden murderer, revealing, dramatic finale. 

The results show that a vast majority of the novels in the selection can be classified into one of six different plot types of crime fiction depending on how the killer appears: 1) the all-novel present murderer; 2) the seemingly insignificant murderer; 3) the suspected murderer; 4) the out-of-the-blue murderer; 5) the second murderer twist; and 6) the non-hidden murderer. All six types lie in the range between the two poles presented by Todorov, which demonstrates that contemporary Swedish crime fiction is dominated by recurring narrative structures that in various ways combine suspense and curiosity.

This dissertation deals with Swedish crime fiction and its successes on the Swedish book market in the early 2000s. The genre’s expansion, marketing and literary content is mapped and analysed in three studies that together paint a thorough picture of this literary phenomena in Swedish book trade.

In study no 1 the development of the genre in Sweden in the last 40 years is discussed from a quantitative perspective. With the base in bibliographies of Swedish crime fiction publication trends are analysed in several ways and concerning topics such as genre growth, gender balance, publishing houses, successful authorships, bestsellers and library lending. The results include: a significant genre expansion in the 2000s; a great dominance for the genre on the bestseller charts in the 2000s; and a shift in the author group, from male dominance to even gender balance.

In study no 2 the marketing of the genre is examined through an analysis of book covers, titles and other elements in the concrete packaging of just over 150 Swedish crime fiction paperbacks. With book history as an important theoretical influence book covers and other peritextual elements are understood as a significant part of the marketing of the genre, but also – and wider – as of crucial importance for how genres themselves are established, withheld and re-negotiated in the interplay between different actors in the society of literature – publishers, authors, booksellers, readers.

In study no 3 a quantitative content analysis of 116 Swedish crime novels published 1998–2015 is used to chart and discuss recurring themes and tropes within the genre. Focus is primarily directed towards what is understood as the most central parts of crime fiction: murderers and their motives; methods used in committing murder; victims of murder; and detectives and other protagonists. The results include: a distinct dominance of female protagonists; a partial realism, where depictions of everyday life in general is realistic while the murder plots are spectacular and sensational; and a dominance of normality, where main characters and innocent victims confirms normality, while killers and unsympathetic victims are depicted as deviants in stark contrast with normality.